Bionic eye may help blind to see!?

[Darren Dirt]

 

Here's another option for completely blind people.  This wouldn't apply to Mr. Analog and Tonnica, since they have some site, but I found it interesting

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2004-2005/m...2005-04-02a.mp3

Seeing with Sound

Listen to or download the mp3 or Ogg files.  (what's ogg?)

Pat Fletcher with her tiny camera hidden in her sunglasses 

Imagine being blind for 25 years, and suddenly being able to see again - using your ears. It sounds impossible, but that's exactly what happened to Pat Fletcher. For the past few years, she's been experimenting with a revolutionary new technology that allows her to see through sound. Using a simple computer program that she downloaded from the Internet, called "The vOICe", which translates visual images into soundscapes, Pat's brain is able to translate those sounds back into images.

Toronto science journalist Alison Motluk spent a day with Pat Fletcher at her home in Buffalo, New York. She plugged her recorder into Pat's computer, so we can hear what Pat hears. She also spoke with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a neurologist at Harvard University, who believes that brain cells have the latent ability to process information from a variety of senses. That means the brain can translate input from one sense into another.

Alison's documentary is called, "See, If You Can Hear This."

Fascinating. I could almost "see" the bannister. Not. To me it's like those crazy pictures-in-the-chaos, nobody wants to admit they don't see anything.

Actually it was weird at the beginning of that MP3. Made me think of this: "I'm Bob McDonald, and I'm curious about... everything. About why things are the way they are, and why they're not something else." <-- Boy do I feel old, as do those who also recognize this blurb

PS: that CBC show is bleeding edge; they have both mp3 and OGG format! Yay!