Ohhh ohhhhhhhhhhh! I like!!!
Itâs not exactly a corneal implant, but a lack of the lens. (Or, maybe more recently, a lens that is not UV-opaque.)
I wonder how the retina copes with the high-energy near-UV, if it is not being degraded.
It is nice but Iâd go rather for near-infrared, more useful stuff there. If you arenât a bird of prey or a bee. But ideally Iâd get both. (No good photoreceptors for far-IR. Snakes have bolometers but they are good just for heat source location, or sensing thermal, not for seeing thermal. But electronics can help here. A third eye with direct brain interface could be fun.)
Check out gene therapies for color-blindness. They managed to get new receptors growing, and integrating into the image processing networks; the animals (rats? chimps?) became able to recognize the colors they werenât able to handle before. I assume this could be done for gaining polychromacy, with receptors for extra wavelengths. I also assume there would be screams from various âbioethicistsâ and âphilosophersâ how it is wrong because the impairment is shared by everybody so it is not sickness so it should not be treated - and thatâs why we need rogue labs that donât have to listen to these killjoys. Something that was the Neuromancerâs âChiba Cityâ with its black clinics.
Iâm holding out for the ability to move the visible range up and down the electromagnetic spectrum at will âŚ
1 Like
Use augmented reality. Or even use Oculus Rift (or its ilk) with external cameras and fuse the signals together to rgb. Add synthesized environment from e.g. sonars (if you work in muddy water). Lots of possibilities with already existing technology.
Thought⌠gene-therapy induced polychromacy, and using VR with modified DLP projectors, using more wavelengths corresponding to the ones the modded eyes can do for illuminating the mirror arrays. That should provide you with quite more channels than mere RGB, cram way more information into field of vision.
Itâs all a bit too bulky at the moment, but yes. And youâd want a system that doesnât allow UV to fall on the retina â folks with Aphakia are going to be at higher risk of retinal melanoma. Which presents late and has often metastasised by the time itâs detected.
I was naturally blessed with the distance vision that Tiger Woods and Co. had Lasik to obtain, but now my arms are too short to be able to read without glasses âand I hate them. But not so much that itâs worth risking sacrificing distance vision to get rid of them. But in the future, when that goes too âŚ
There was actually a University of Washington research group that was able to give naturally dichromatic monkies trichromacy by putting the human gene for green red sensitive pigment into a viral vector and injecting it into their eyes.
It was on Radiolab. The researchers were getting so many requests from colorblind people for the stuff they had to destroy the small stock of their research virus and change their contact info.
1 Like
âFalseworkâ was deliberate, yes. It letâs you talk about a framework, but one that can then â hopefully â be dispensed with. It suggests you are trying to get past the need for support. I use âfalseworkâ at any opportunity. Those opportunities are damned few.
I disagree with you on how to treat someone trying to put his life back together, even a rather repulsive fellow, but I appreciate your affection for a good word.
This is probably the same I am referring to.
I didnât know this. But it doesnât surprise me. And is another argument for the Chiba City approach; risky but years can be shaved off the progress with just some volunteering casualties.
I wonder how difficult would be to duplicate the virus in some Chinese, Thai, or Korean lab. And provide the services there, with the added cost of a flight ticket; medical tourism already works in a similar way.
Should be far from impossible. Even fairly large gene sequences can be bought on open market, made to order. Viral vectors are a stock tech, and there are other gene delivery methods as well, liposomes for example.
It is big and bulky. But it is available NOW, with off-the-shelf parts. (It will be in contact lenses tomorrow, but then, who wants to wait.)
The only not so great thing is that the injection had to be behind the retina and it took (it was either months or years) for the monkeys to develop an awareness of their red sensitive pigment. They were brought into the lab for color vision testing every day for a very long time before they started noticing red colors. But the cool part was that as soon as they started seeing red, it was just a completely normal thing. One day they couldnât see red if they were run over by a fire truck, the next day red was everywhere.
So more tests are needed, including on human subjects who can tell better what they see.
This is promising for other kinds of add-on senses, too. Possibly also for smell (e.g. ability to smell carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen, or other gases you are working with or your equipment could release). And magnetic fields (use those cells with magnetite particles, knockoff of natural ones). And generic inputs (electronics interfaced to nerves, though here no gene modding is actually needed).
Yeah, I think one of the procedures is called the âTommy Johnâ or somesuch. Surgery to move tendons in the elbow or something like that?
A powered wheelchair race? Well okaythen, this has both a chair and a wheelâIâd like to be powered by it:
Yes, this one.
1 Like
up his silicone ring?
1 Like
âFell in with a bad crowdâ, as they say.
Sounds good, but I bet the first controls will be like the dial on the shower faucet. Good luck seeing normal colour ever again.
2 Likes
Now Iâm just imagining what happens when Iâd have to âdegauss my eyesââŚToiiiiiinngngngngng
4 Likes
And then the bionic versions come.
âI have eyes of my father.â
Is that supposed to mean âI have my fatherâs eyesâ or is it a deeper literary reference I donât get? Like you say, explained jokes are like cold pizza, still pretty good.
It was back-translated from dubbed version of Hot Shots!, meant to refer to the scene with the eyes in the box. With double reference to the cyberpunk scifi theme of eye implants, allowing both the eyes-installed and eyes-not-installed interpretation
