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Any way to see things that others cannot see?
It's a bit hard to explain my thought, I don't know as much as I'd like to about technology or biohacking or anything like that even though I'm very interested in it all. So my thought was, would there be any way to make an implant or something that can make things display over your eyes? Like something you'd do to the optic nerve that could cause it? I'm not talking about a DIY thing or something anyone could do, but could it be done at all? My apologies if this is a completely stupid question, I'd love answers though.
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My first thought is the patch route, rather than modification. Electronics are getting pretty small these days, so much so that some labs are working on augmented reality contact lenses:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionic_contact_lens]As for physical modification, a company called Second Sight has developed a prosthesis called the Argus II, that supplements the sight of the visually impaired. Here is a fascinating study on the accuracy of the device from a few years ago:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345188/]From my understanding, the technology works like this. The subject receives an implant that surrounds their eye, which contains an electrode array and an inductive receiver. They then wear a pair of glasses with a camera, which processes the images and sends them to the retinal implant via an inductive transmitter. The signals are then fed into the electrode array, which is located near the optic nerve and the "sight" proceeds to the subject's brain as it would conventionally.
The implication of developing this technology is that a determined user could send any kind of data to the electrode array, not just visible light from a glasses-mounted camera. When bio-hackers like us get our hands on that tech, we can attempt to send a variety of other signals to the brain, like sensor data in the Infrared and UV ranges.
As is usually the case when asking the hard questions about becoming more as a species, the major hurdles relate to funding. But if you want to come to bullshit mountain with me, then yeah, we could totally do it.
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hallucinogens?
