Interesting piece from CBS News about a very basic retinal replacement device that provides rudimentary sight to a woman who went blind from retinal disease. The device includes a camera mounted on the glasses that converts what it sees into electrical impulses sent directly to her optical nerve cells.
The drawbacks? The device costs $100k and at the moment only provides a 60 pixel image. That is still a dramatic improvement over being blind, but a long way from fully restoring sight.
I’m at very high risk of macular degeneration (technically already have early stages of it), and the best hopes are research into the genetic causes of macular degeneration and something like this. I’d hate to wake up 20 years from now and realize all the time spent amassing that huge Internet porn collection went to waste. So please, scientists, kick it up a notch, okay? By the time I’m really going blind I expect the 20gb DDR3 version that plays Duke Nukem VII and digitally removes the clothes from attractive passersby.
