[tt] iHead

[Hughes, James J.]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/02/the-birth-of-th.html

The Birth of the iHead?

By Casey Kazan Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff on Biotechnology

Shutterstock_1678606_2 There's been a huge upsurge in cool prosthetic
technology recently, thanks to a mysterious increase in the number of
first world otherwise-healthy citizens who are suddenly stumbling around
the place missing a limb or two.  But while advances like
bluetooth-controlled legs are undeniably awesome, they're only half of
the equation needed before the Detroit crime rate is cut by someone part
man, part machine but All Cop.  Mechanical parts and squishy human
brains have a bit of dysfunctional relationship at the moment - while
machines can learn how to interpret the desires of twitching muscles,
the gooey nervous system tends to get annoyed or dead when the machine
tries to inject signals back.

Which makes new surgery performed at the Ohio State University Medical
Center all the more exciting.  Surgeons have implanted tiny electrodes
which successfully connected with the brainstems of people whose
auditory nerve connections had lost a fight against neurofibromastosis.
These electrodes transmit signals from a microphone in the ear and
provide a sense of hearing.  The sounds delivered to the brain don't
exactly match the originals, but give people the choice between
"slightly imperfect sounds" and "total science forever" and they'd have
to be the most perfectionist librarian in the world to choose the
latter.

The treatment has already helped five hundred patients, but the landmark
in machine-mind interfacing heralds a new step in evolution.  The
ability to connect external devices to the inputs of the brain means we
can not only replace missing senses, but in time develop fully
integrated prosthetic (or additional) limbs or even engineer entirely
new senses.  At the moment the focus is on repair and replacement, where
medical and research grants can fund the research. When the time is
right expect a surge of commercially-financed advnaces when the "iHead"
allows you total access to music at any time (and the RIAA starts suing
people for even thinking of copyrighted music). 

After that point, with the technology loose, well developed and well
funded, expect the most incredible things to start happening.