Monday, November 28, 2011

Electronic Eye: Another step towards cyborgs?

I recently read from an article about this electronic eye piece that is shaped and used just as a contact lens. This was just an idea 2 years ago, and now is a reality. This electronic lens will allow for multiple things, one of which, being capable of reading things from just that lens, making books or even computers obsolete. This lens has already been tested on animals and had been a success, only issue at the moment is that it is only one pixel big, and needs to be at least 100 pixels.



The real ethical question about this electronic eye: Is this making us more like a robot, or is it just a more convenient computer? This technology is still very primitive. The cell-phone was never imagined to text, use pictures, and use the internet, this new electronic eye may do much more than just simply read text.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-11/terminator-eyes-might-not-be-far

2 comments:

Andrew Linkugel said...

One of Ray Kurzweil's more controversial predictions in 1999 was the increased presence of tiny computers associated with the human body. He expected each of us to have "dozens" by 2010. This prediction seems to be becoming realized, but later than Kurzweil expected. In his vision of the Singularity, our organic bodies become indistinguishable from these machine parts. Maybe this is just Step 1!

Evan Harris said...

I would not think that this is a step toward being a cyborg. I mean when they gave pirates a wooden leg, did they think that they were not the same person anymore? No. So this eye implant is really only like a wooden leg, just more intuitive.