Two questions--

Discuss the technology of any incarnation of Ghost in the Shell
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Locke
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Two questions--

Post by Locke »

Since these are relatively quick-to-answer questions, I decided to roll them both into one thread:

1) Batou's prosthetic eyes--I want some like his (but yes, I know that right now that technology isn't available). Masamune gives some brief insight as to how they function, but I'd like to know if there are any books on the eye/optic nerve, etc. that you all would recommend, so I can at least form some layman's theory about it all.


2) This might belong in the SAC-area, but remember when, in the last volume, Batou flees to the Major's safehouse? When the police shoot out the window, something happens, and I don't know what exactly except that whatever happened disabled the lot of them. Post your hypotheses here, please. :D

Edit: Added the third question.
Edit2: Answered my own question, deleted it, so the third question is now the second and last.
Last edited by Locke on Fri Feb 06, 2009 5:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Freitag
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Re: Three questions--

Post by Freitag »

Locke wrote:1) Batou's prosthetic eyes--I want some like his (but yes, I know that right now that technology isn't available). Masamune gives some brief insight as to how they function, but I'd like to know if there are any books on the eye/optic nerve, etc. that you all would recommend, so I can at least form some layman's theory about it all.
I don't have answers for that, but I too am tracking tech and waiting for the point to jump in.

But at least one place where you might find the links already collected for you is this blog that I have found. I've been reading it for a while. It's a blog from an artist who lost an eye to an accident. She is looking for a replacement that is a camera. She doesn't want to see out of the replacement and that is where my goals differ from hers, but at least one of those links points to another guy that DOES want to see out of his new eye.

I've also been tracking the latest physiological theories on vision and the newer theory states that there are like 11 different centers of vision. Some focus on edge detection, some do shape recognition (the army has a cool pair of binoculars based on this research) and a whole slew of other processes both conscious and unconscious that are all rolled into "vision".

I can't find the other links just now. But I read one article where a blind guy could tell you what color que card you were holding up (indicating some subconscious process still having access to data from the retina/optic nerve)

Some metrics that need to be addressed
resolution and other metrics
frame rate
Do you let the machine "see" for you or do you just let it give you a neural feed?
If the latter, do you feed the optic nerve or feed each visual center directly?
How much
How many other neural pathways do you grab to use as visual inputs?
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Freitag
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Post by Freitag »

Found this story online "seeing machine"

Which brings in some logistics. The first real developments will be so crude that they will be suitable only for people who have lost all sight.

I have a friend that has a fake knee. When the doctor was advising her on when to go ahead and get the surgery his comment was to wait until her natural knee hurt unbearably all the time. His point being that a replacement was so inferior that even a multifunctional natural knee was better. I think that most prosthetic technologies will have a similar development cycle.

And this level of developmental technology heavily depends on non-chaotic world order.
People tend to look at you a little strangely when they know you stuff voodoo dolls full of Ex-Lax.
Locke
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Post by Locke »

Freitag wrote:"...and that is where my goals differ from hers..."

It's definitely the same case here. I have slightly defective vision, and it's nothing surgery can't handle, but I'm always thinking, "What if ______ event happens and I lose an eye/finger/____?" I'm probably one of the minor percentage of teens that doesn't feel invincible, this way.
Freitag wrote:"...most prosthetic technologies will have a similar development cycle."
Oh, I have no doubts about that. I have a feeling, though, that prosthetic technologies will advance at a similar pace as, say, computers. (If you think about prosthetic limbs, they certainly have not advanced very quickly at all, but I'm not referring to those.) Hey, I can quote the Major here: "When man realizes that technology is within reach, he achieves it, like it's damn near instinctive!" Something like that.

I'm probably missing something.

Thanks so much for the links! You're a helpful one. :)
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Freitag
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Post by Freitag »

My vision is also slightly defective. And sometimes darned peculiar. I am right handed, but my left eye produced higher cognition.

I was reading a sign one day while lamenting the fact that my astigmatism fell between two standard corrections so neither setting was satisfactory. (this is another rant - see bottom)
While I was comparing one eye to the other I realized that with my left eye I could read the line I was focused on, but I could also read the text of the lines 2 above and 2 below it and also several words at a time left/right of it. With my right eye (the supposed good one with less correction) I could only read the exact line I was looking at and only those words adjacent to where I was focused.
I spent about half an hour looking and pondering and covering one eye and then the other - at the end I could actually feel the back of my head straining at the effort to turn that stream of neural input into language.
That is when I really started looking not just at the vision aspect of things, but also in the processing that takes place after the actual "seeing" is over with.

I think there are huge opportunities for atypical applications. Sort of a "what if" type scenario.
Imagine if you had a wearable sonar device like the old camera range finders hooked to something that gave input to an area of the visual cortex. Would you be able to know distance exactly?
How about if you added a data stream from a CCD that saw in some other spectrum - could you watch a radio tower broadcast songs? If you cross linked this to a hearing center and created an artificial synesthasia would you be able to tell what song was playing by looking at the tower? And how do you do this kind of test on a rabbit or a chimp?

And that is why I had all those links. Oh did I mention I get loqacious too? ;)







I used to work at Coburn Optical Industries. I wrote the user interface for the equipment that makes you glasses in an hour at the mall. In fact it makes them in about 5 minutes. We had one guy (responsible for translating those few digits the doc writes out into a set of CNC instructions for the lens lathe. A really sharp guy!) that had figured how to make progressive lenses out of ANY blank.
Side note here on how glasses are made.
1. You had your 'script to the lackey behind the counter and he walks behind the curtain.
2. A hockey puck shaped blank gets attached to a clip using liquid metal (a really nasty cocktail of 5 or 6 heavy metals that melt at about 115 F). The "front" of this blank is protected by a piece of thick plastic and already has a specified curvature on it.
3. Cool equipment (that can't even be screwed up by some high schooler on his summer break - yes that was a requirement) carves the inside curve into the back of the lens combining the spherical and cylindrical corrections as directed by the 'script. The blank exits this process with a roughness of 20 microns on the surface
4. Next piece of equipment polishes the inside curve to a really nice shine using some tools that look like the belong on the floor of a shower. (I'll see if I can find pics later)
5. Last piece of equipment carves the shape of the frames onto the now very thin lens.
6. Dip it in hot water to melt the metal, detach the protective plastic form the front. Stick it in the frame and stick them on your face.
5 minutes from beginning to end per lens and yes, you can run the process in parallel once the first lens is off the first machine.

Anyway, the patent for the no line bifocals requires that you buy the special blanks from the patent holder and if you do not have the blank in stock that has the right set of curves on the front you have to order it and that hour turns into a week or more.
Our technology would take the ordinary (and MUCH MUCH less expensive) blanks and carve the combination of curves in the back of the blank. You get exactly the same optical results. But because of the patent law in this country, customers are changed whopping large amounts for fewer features. Oh and did I mention this technology is from 1993?

But the real crime is that 'scripts are only written in 0.25 diopter increments because the very old equipment could not make an arbitrary cut.
But Coburn's could.
If your astigmatism was of a non-standard strength and in a non-standard angle, their equipment could make the exact lens you needed.
My "perfect" glasses are now at the bottom of lake because they fell off while I was on a jet ski. I had them for 5 years (and really by then, my eyes were no longer the same, but heck, they were custom made lenses!!)
People tend to look at you a little strangely when they know you stuff voodoo dolls full of Ex-Lax.
Locke
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Post by Locke »

Firstly, I do hope that your vision looks up eventually (no pun intended).
Freitag wrote:I think there are huge opportunities for atypical applications. Sort of a "what if" type scenario.
Imagine if you had a wearable sonar device like the old camera range finders hooked to something that gave input to an area of the visual cortex. Would you be able to know distance exactly?
How about if you added a data stream from a CCD that saw in some other spectrum - could you watch a radio tower broadcast songs? If you cross linked this to a hearing center and created an artificial synesthasia would you be able to tell what song was playing by looking at the tower? And how do you do this kind of test on a rabbit or a chimp?
I can see the military getting their hands on that hypothetical range finder in no time. Enlist and you can see just exactly how far you hit that golf ball that one time on your leave!

Also, I bet you wouldn't really even have to look at a radio tower--just keep your eyes open. There's noooo escaping radio waves around here. Maybe I didn't get the point, though.
Oh did I mention I get loqacious too? ;)
Hah. Hey, better loquaciousness than brevity.
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M4nu3l
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Post by M4nu3l »

[quote="Freitag"]My vision is also slightly defective. And sometimes darned peculiar. I am right handed, but my left eye produced higher cognition.

I was reading a sign one day while lamenting the fact that my astigmatism fell between two standard corrections so neither setting was satisfactory. (this is another rant - see bottom)
While I was comparing one eye to the other I realized that with my left eye I could read the line I was focused on, but I could also read the text of the lines 2 above and 2 below it and also several words at a time left/right of it. With my right eye (the supposed good one with less correction) I could only read the exact line I was looking at and only those words adjacent to where I was focused.
I spent about half an hour looking and pondering and covering one eye and then the other - at the end I could actually feel the back of my head straining at the effort to turn that stream of neural input into language.
That is when I really started looking not just at the vision aspect of things, but also in the processing that takes place after the actual "seeing" is over with.

I think there are huge opportunities for atypical applications. Sort of a "what if" type scenario.
Imagine if you had a wearable sonar device like the old camera range finders hooked to something that gave input to an area of the visual cortex. Would you be able to know distance exactly?
How about if you added a data stream from a CCD that saw in some other spectrum - could you watch a radio tower broadcast songs? If you cross linked this to a hearing center and created an artificial [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia]synesthasia[/url] would you be able to tell what song was playing by looking at the tower? And how do you do this kind of test on a rabbit or a chimp?

And that is why I had all those links. Oh did I mention I get loqacious too? ;)







I used to work at Coburn Optical Industries. I wrote the user interface for the equipment that makes you glasses in an hour at the mall. In fact it makes them in about 5 minutes. We had one guy (responsible for translating those few digits the doc writes out into a set of CNC instructions for the lens lathe. A really sharp guy!) that had figured how to make progressive lenses out of ANY blank.
Side note here on how glasses are made.
1. You had your 'script to the lackey behind the counter and he walks behind the curtain.
2. A hockey puck shaped blank gets attached to a clip using liquid metal (a really nasty cocktail of 5 or 6 heavy metals that melt at about 115 F). The "front" of this blank is protected by a piece of thick plastic and already has a specified curvature on it.
3. Cool equipment (that can't even be screwed up by some high schooler on his summer break - yes that was a requirement) carves the inside curve into the back of the lens combining the spherical and cylindrical corrections as directed by the 'script. The blank exits this process with a roughness of 20 microns on the surface
4. Next piece of equipment polishes the inside curve to a really nice shine using some tools that look like the belong on the floor of a shower. (I'll see if I can find pics later)
5. Last piece of equipment carves the shape of the frames onto the now very thin lens.
6. Dip it in hot water to melt the metal, detach the protective plastic form the front. Stick it in the frame and stick them on your face.
5 minutes from beginning to end per lens and yes, you can run the process in parallel once the first lens is off the first machine.

Anyway, the patent for the no line bifocals requires that you buy the special blanks from the patent holder and if you do not have the blank in stock that has the right set of curves on the front you have to order it and that hour turns into a week or more.
Our technology would take the ordinary (and MUCH MUCH less expensive) blanks and carve the combination of curves in the back of the blank. You get exactly the same optical results. But because of the patent law in this country, customers are changed whopping large amounts for fewer features. Oh and did I mention this technology is from 1993?

But the real crime is that 'scripts are only written in 0.25 diopter increments because the very old equipment could not make an arbitrary cut.
But Coburn's could.
If your astigmatism was of a non-standard strength and in a non-standard angle, their equipment could make the exact lens you needed.
My "perfect" glasses are now at the bottom of lake because they fell off while I was on a jet ski. I had them for 5 years (and really by then, my eyes were no longer the same, but heck, they were custom made lenses!!)[/quote]

Very interesting read.
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