So this David Eagleman (well he certainly inspires as much respect as eagles do, and seems free as a bird), wants no less than to "change our experience as humans"! Yes yes, he wants to expand our senses, I mean wowwww
He learned about something discovered for the first time in 1969, something absolutely crucial: your senses do not depend on where your eyes/ears/tongue etc are, they depend on which signal (electrochemical) goes into your brain, in any way whatsoever it uses to get there. Yes your eye gives a clear signal to your brain of what can be seen, but if this same signal comes from another part of your body (let's say your booty of course), your brain understands it as well! I told you you would be amazed.
A few studies have been done and they showed for instance that blind people could get something very close to vision itself, with signals coming from a little object on another part of their body: "they [blind people] get to see through their tongue"explains Eagleman. They could even throw a ball in a basket!!! I didn't realize how much can be done for blind people with new technologies, it's impressive.
Eagleman and his fellow researchers in the Laboratory for Perception and Action at the Baylor College of Medicine, are focusing now on deaf people. They are looking for sensory substitution for the deaf. They came up with a possible solution to hearing problems: a vest that produces signals you brain can understand. As someone speaks, the sound is being translated into dynamic patterns of vibrations on the vest someone else (or himself) is wearing. The person wearing the vest is able to understand the words, after of course a bit of practice. How cool is that!! Plus it's 40 times less expensive than a surgery (the only other option for deaf people).
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| Credits: Dario-Jacopo Lagana' @Flickr |
Despite this success, Eagleman does not stop there. He wants to expand our 'senses' even more: now you get to feel on the vest data coming directly from the internet. This still needs more experimentation but it is already impressive. Eagleman wants us to experience and feel information (and especially big data), more than reading it only. But it's also giving us the ability to do things we never could: for instance knowing instantly what hundreds of people say on Twitter, and get the overall impression (if they're mostly positive or negative in their tweets).
Okay there are a few drawbacks, well mostly one: it's a bit too crazy for us, at least for our current state of mind. I mean it jeopardizes deeply human nature and how human beings see themselves (especially the religious ones). We are playing here with nature itself and by changing how our body works, using technology, it makes us loose our specificity as humans, makes us look a bit as robots.
So we'll see how it goes on, but definitely a situation worth watching!
