Good-ish News

That rat bastard cornea scratch has healed BUT my vision, in that eye, is not yet up to pre-scratch quality. When, oh WHEN will that happen? //shrugs// Word from the doc is, maybe never or, possibly, I’m just a slow healer – time will tell. Yeah, I suck with this whole waiting shit. I want answers now, now, NOW.

I only mention it BUT Geordi Laforge, in Star Trek:The Next Generation, had ocular implants with telescopic vision AND heat-detecting infrared capabilities. That last bit might be more than I rilly need BUT if it don’t cost more, I’ll take it!

So, when do mine arrive. Oh wait, that’s sci fi. Mind you, it’s fiction only because it’s not been invented YET.

The retinal implants currently available consist of a grid of electrodes placed directly on the retina. The implants are wired to a pair of glasses and a camera and to a portable microcomputer. The camera captures images that enter the implantee's field of vision and sends them to the computer, which turns them into electrical signals that it transmits to the electrodes. The electrodes stimulate the retinal ganglion cells based on the light patterns detected in the field of vision. The implantee then has to learn how to interpret the incoming visual sensations in order to 'see' the images. (source)

Wow! Just fucking WOW!

Cochlear implants would’ve seemed all sci fi before the 1980s but now they’re the norm.
Not all of these miracles of science work for everyone. A cochlear implant bypasses damaged portions of the ear to deliver sound signals to the auditory nerve.

I gots a dead auditory nerve, ya see. For me, when the time comes, there’s the ABI (auditory brainstem implant) – which, in contrast, is pretty scanty. Still, it exists.

“Sci-fi movies, shows or stories do provide an inspiration for the foremost and upcoming human-computer interaction challenges of our time, for example through the discussion of shape-changing interfaces, implantables or digital afterlife ethics,” say Jordan and co.
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“We speculate that the explicit referral of sci-fi in human-computer interaction research represents a fraction of the actual inspiration and impact it has had,”
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That’s a small step toward better understanding the complex relationship between the way humans imagine the impact of technology and the way it actually occurs in reality. Indeed, technology companies increasingly employ futurists who use science fiction as a medium for exploring potential new technologies and their social impact. They call this science fiction prototyping.  (source)

Will John Scalzi’s BrainPal one day be a reality? This would, amongst so many other damn things, make being deaf/blind significantly less horror show scary.

Who knows what those big science brains will come up with next?