Way cool. I wonder if they will start harvesting fetal cells for this, despite the “don’t want to go that route” bit. That would, of course, upset many people, who believe that aborted fetuses should just be discarded with no effort to retain any value. You (Rob) know my position on abortion, but I’d still rather see something of worth come from them.
I wonder how this tech will compete with cyber eyes. Will we be able to build effective mechanical eyes to replace biological ones, possibly with some advantages, like immunity to excess brightness, or sensitivity to extra wavelengths.
I didn’t intend to go on so long. I just wanted to reassure everyone that I don’t just respond to threads with vulgar names.
Ooh, I think bionic eyes would be rad. Is anyone even considering doing something like that? I’m clear too lazy to look it up.
Seems as though it’d be damn hard to do. Create a machine that passes impulses to a brain in such a way that the brain recognizes them in the same way it recognizes those from an eye. Would be cook, though.
And everyone is happy to know that you respond to posts with vulgar OR rodentish names.
How about my typing “clear” instead of “clearly” and “cook” instead of “cool.” And those are just the ones I saw in the first instant after I submitted the comment. Sad.
I don’t know that the big challenge to bionic eyes would be getting the data in useful form to the brain. It’s pretty simple data, and the brain already does the heavy lifting in sight. There would probably be a “retraining” period for those with previous sight, but maybe not long. There was an experiment with people seeing through a device that inverted images. For a limited time, they had trouble, but quickly (couple days?) adapted and saw everything right-side-up. When the devices were removed, they had the same problem. The physical connections might be tricky, but it’s amazing what they can do now with nerves.
“Everyone”? Surely you’re exaggerating. Your blog may not be as popular, or populated, as you think!
If I descend into typo flames (when they aren’t funny), please let me know so I can reassess my priorities.
The device, if I remember correctly, was lenses in a pair of glasses. They just turned stuff upside down.
But still, that’s the same organ delivering the data….
And I did mean everyone. Those who don’t read the blog surely received my mental broadcast. I asked that if they disagreed, they should say so. No one did.
But one piece of the article tripped my interest:
“The cells were then transplanted into animals which had been genetically designed to have conditions which meant they would gradually lose their sight.”
My daughter recently raised the issue of animal testing (she’s 9). I asked her what she thought, and then walked her down an ever-twisting path to show her that these things aren’t simple.
This one raises all kinds of interesting thoughts. Now we’re not killing animals, we’re merely designing them to go blind. Is that better or worse than jabbing stuff into their eyes to see whether they go blind?
No answers here. Just questions, always more questions …
Who was it who sang something about wishing he knew now what he knew when he was younger? Dylan? I know Billy Joel has a song about how he used to be an angry young man, but now it’s all shades of gray.
Way cool. I wonder if they will start harvesting fetal cells for this, despite the “don’t want to go that route” bit. That would, of course, upset many people, who believe that aborted fetuses should just be discarded with no effort to retain any value. You (Rob) know my position on abortion, but I’d still rather see something of worth come from them.
I wonder how this tech will compete with cyber eyes. Will we be able to build effective mechanical eyes to replace biological ones, possibly with some advantages, like immunity to excess brightness, or sensitivity to extra wavelengths.
I didn’t intend to go on so long. I just wanted to reassure everyone that I don’t just respond to threads with vulgar names.
Ooh, I think bionic eyes would be rad. Is anyone even considering doing something like that? I’m clear too lazy to look it up.
Seems as though it’d be damn hard to do. Create a machine that passes impulses to a brain in such a way that the brain recognizes them in the same way it recognizes those from an eye. Would be cook, though.
And everyone is happy to know that you respond to posts with vulgar OR rodentish names.
How about my typing “clear” instead of “clearly” and “cook” instead of “cool.” And those are just the ones I saw in the first instant after I submitted the comment. Sad.
I don’t know that the big challenge to bionic eyes would be getting the data in useful form to the brain. It’s pretty simple data, and the brain already does the heavy lifting in sight. There would probably be a “retraining” period for those with previous sight, but maybe not long. There was an experiment with people seeing through a device that inverted images. For a limited time, they had trouble, but quickly (couple days?) adapted and saw everything right-side-up. When the devices were removed, they had the same problem. The physical connections might be tricky, but it’s amazing what they can do now with nerves.
“Everyone”? Surely you’re exaggerating. Your blog may not be as popular, or populated, as you think!
If I descend into typo flames (when they aren’t funny), please let me know so I can reassess my priorities.
The device, if I remember correctly, was lenses in a pair of glasses. They just turned stuff upside down.
But still, that’s the same organ delivering the data….
And I did mean everyone. Those who don’t read the blog surely received my mental broadcast. I asked that if they disagreed, they should say so. No one did.
LOL
Yep. Great news.
But one piece of the article tripped my interest:
“The cells were then transplanted into animals which had been genetically designed to have conditions which meant they would gradually lose their sight.”
My daughter recently raised the issue of animal testing (she’s 9). I asked her what she thought, and then walked her down an ever-twisting path to show her that these things aren’t simple.
This one raises all kinds of interesting thoughts. Now we’re not killing animals, we’re merely designing them to go blind. Is that better or worse than jabbing stuff into their eyes to see whether they go blind?
No answers here. Just questions, always more questions …
Who was it who sang something about wishing he knew now what he knew when he was younger? Dylan? I know Billy Joel has a song about how he used to be an angry young man, but now it’s all shades of gray.
I don’t know if this is the song you mean, but Bob Seeger sang that he wished he didn’t know now what he didn’t know then.