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Blind People: if you could get robot eyes drilled into your brain so you could see like a normal person would you do it? (self.Blind)
submitted by [deleted]
[deleted]
fastfinge 4 points 5y ago
No. I was born blind. I have no interest in paying millions (or even hundreds of millions) of dollars in medical bills, re-learning how to do absolutely everything from traveling to reading to identifying people and colours, and probably never being as comfortable using my sight as someone who was born with it. In fact, that is a possibility for me. A cure for my condition is in trials, but it's going to cost over 1 million dollars per eye. If I had that kind of money, I could happily live without sight; I wouldn't have to worry about employment or anything else anyway.
Ramildo 3 points 5y ago
Definitely! Regaining my sight is my biggest dream. I wouldn't give a crap about the aesthetics as long as I could recover the functionality. Bionic eyes already exist, but their resolution is very very low and the vision they provide is monochromatic. I would accept bionic eyes if their resolution was just 320x200 with color since that would allow me to read magnified text from the screen and code again, because coding with a screen reader is extremely unpleasant.
modzer0 1 points 5y ago
Code again? I've worked with a blind systems programmer who used a braille device to do his work. He used linux terminal based applications. He could read and code quicker than I could. I don't know what the device was called, but I do remember him saying that it was around eight thousand dollars. When I commented on the price he just shrugged and said it was worth it because that's how he interacted with the computer.
Ramildo 1 points 5y ago
It's a Braille display, and that doesn't fix the underlying problem of coding blind: the fact that you can't take a quick glance at other lines of code without moving the system caret or simply scroll code and quickly find what you need to edit, because the blank lines, indentation, and syntax highlighting that serve as landmarks to the sighted aren't usable by the blind. If I still had sight and a blind guy could code faster than me with such a disadvantage I would quit my job.
modzer0 1 points 5y ago
Then he wasn't typical by any means because he's still one of the best C programmers I've met. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of programming, and his setup was highly customized. I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote a large part of it himself.
He was using screen or tmux, and could switch between virtual screens with key combos among lots of other things as an example of the type of things he was doing.
He was using screen or tmux, and could switch between virtual screens with key combos among lots of other things as an example of the type of things he was doing.
Ramildo 1 points 5y ago
And because you found someone exceptional who doesn't seem encumbered by the discomfort of coding blind you assume that every blind person should be at the same level? When you play soccer, do you always play like Cristiano Ronaldo?
KillerLag 2 points 5y ago
Regarding what /r/Ramildo, low resolution is almost an understatement.
The Argus 2 has 60 electrodes (I believe in a 6X10 grid), which roughly translates to 16 pixels of resolution (as comparison, it would look somewhere between the 4X4 and 10X10 pictures http://images.gizmag.com/inline/bio-retina-provides-new-vision-to-the-blind-2.jpg ).
The Alpha IMS (currrently the more advanced device) has 1,500 electrodes, but they connect to the brain, so it isn't so straightforward to figure out the resolution. In the most recent article I read, a small sample (29 people) with the Alpha IMS installed were able to get a visual accuity of 20/546, which is quite astounding, but still much poorer than legal blindness (at 20/200). But there is one number that is a bit telling... only 13 of the participants (45%) reported "*useful* visual functions in their daily life". While the that is almost half, it also shows that even with a marked improvement of their visual acuity, the current technology isn't enough to make it useful to people on a daily basis.
I'm sure the devices will eventually improve and the costs would go down (current cost is roughly $150,000 USD for either device and surgery). But for the vast majority of people, the device just isn't worth the cost. I've worked with three people who have gotten the Argus 2, and it is not useful for two of them (and barely functional for the third... they can use it to identify the drop off along the sidewalk, if conditions were perfectly optimal.... but if the day was slightly too cloudy, or slightly too bright, she can't see it anymore).
Oh, the technical term for such an implant is called a visual prosthesis, or a bionic eye.
The Argus 2 has 60 electrodes (I believe in a 6X10 grid), which roughly translates to 16 pixels of resolution (as comparison, it would look somewhere between the 4X4 and 10X10 pictures http://images.gizmag.com/inline/bio-retina-provides-new-vision-to-the-blind-2.jpg ).
The Alpha IMS (currrently the more advanced device) has 1,500 electrodes, but they connect to the brain, so it isn't so straightforward to figure out the resolution. In the most recent article I read, a small sample (29 people) with the Alpha IMS installed were able to get a visual accuity of 20/546, which is quite astounding, but still much poorer than legal blindness (at 20/200). But there is one number that is a bit telling... only 13 of the participants (45%) reported "*useful* visual functions in their daily life". While the that is almost half, it also shows that even with a marked improvement of their visual acuity, the current technology isn't enough to make it useful to people on a daily basis.
I'm sure the devices will eventually improve and the costs would go down (current cost is roughly $150,000 USD for either device and surgery). But for the vast majority of people, the device just isn't worth the cost. I've worked with three people who have gotten the Argus 2, and it is not useful for two of them (and barely functional for the third... they can use it to identify the drop off along the sidewalk, if conditions were perfectly optimal.... but if the day was slightly too cloudy, or slightly too bright, she can't see it anymore).
Oh, the technical term for such an implant is called a visual prosthesis, or a bionic eye.
[deleted] [OP] 1 points 5y ago
[deleted]
[deleted] [OP] 1 points 5y ago
[deleted]
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