This is cool but I'm already nervous about my colleagues, acquaintances, and friends telling me about this like I can pick it up at Walmart on my way home.

...takes a while for them to iron out the kinks and make it available to the masses.

This is really awesome and gives me a lot of hope, especially in the kind of tough time that I'm in (having lost almost all of my vision). Still, we're a long way from being able to watch movies with that kind of thing or accurately tell what facial expressions someone is making. For that, we'll probably have to wait another 20-30 years. Dr. Daniel Yoshor said in the article that he believes functional sight can be restored "within his lifetime". I quickly looked him up and saw that he was born in 1968. That means he is currently 51. If we give him an average lifespan of 80-85 years, we're talking about another 3 decades (2050). I'll be about 60 by then, so I could still make ample use of the device. Many on this sub are even younger than me.

The fun thing about bionic eyes is that technology doesn't really know any limits. Maybe one day the blind will be the new superhumans because we all have like 10 times the normal vision ;-). Or maybe climate change is just gonna fuck us all up by 2050...

Sounds like it will be great for those who have no vision, but less helpful for the partially sighted. Still, we are living in exciting times! This actually seems like it functions similarly to Geordi LaForge’s VISOR in Star Trek by using an external device to collect data and transmit it to the the brain. I’m looking forward to advances in nerve regeneration. My eyes are (mostly) ok, but my optic nerves are damaged and atrophied. Restoring (or bypassing) that connection would likely restore my lost vision.

How can we sign up