A Better Life With Bionics

Check out the latest National Geographic feature on Bionics – complete with a feature article, an interactive section on the bionic body and a photo gallery capturing how bionics are changing lives for the better.

"Eyeborg Man" Plans To Replace Eye With Video Camera

Wired reports today that Rob Spence, a 36 year old Canadian filmmaker who lost his eye in a childhood shooting accident, plans to replace his current prosthetic eye with an ocular video camera. The original cyborg man, Steve Mann, help Spence on his quest to become the Eyeborg man. Spence will literally have the potential to film everything he sees (except for his dreams), making him a superb candidate for personality capture. The trick, once again, is going to be organizing the bountiful video footage. A feat that becomes possible with the arrival of the semantic web in all its multimedia-savvy, search engine glory.

Touch Bionics Releases Commercially Available Bionic Hand After 40 Years Of Research

The new iLimb from Touch Bionics possesses tiny motors in each digit that respond to electrical impulses in the arms muscle (called myoelectric control). The hand enables unprecedented bionic dexterity (picture gallery here).

Contact Lens Could Bring Internet Closer

The contact lenses, implanted with circuits, and developed at the University of Washington, allow the user to view displays while maintaining their focus on the real world. The researchers hope to add wireless communication to the lens and in the future, they say, an individual could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see. If the lens is the iphone format in ten years, it would for the most part eliminate the value of memorized knowledge – who needs it when the internet is in your eyeball – and put much more emphasis on the creative utilization and synthesis of that knowledge (this is already happening of course). And, our conversational edicate would require some redefinition (this is already happening to I suppose..."stop texting while I am talking to you!")