An Eye for an Eye

19 November 08

Tanya Vlach is an artist in San Francisco who lost her left eye in a traumatic car accident. She has put out a call to engineers to refactor her ocular prosthetic into a functioning “eye-cam.” Her article has drawn considerable attention, much of it favorable, and somewhat eerily a lot of supporters are suggesting to her rather radical, invasive ideas, like tapping her optic nerve or storing power packs in her stomach or breast. I guess it’s easy to get caught up in the science fiction of it all, but it seems there’s a lack of cautionary words for her against all the sideline cheering. Tanya, if you’re listening, I’d like to offer my humble perspective.

Tanya,

First I would like to say I’m sorry about your eye loss. I’m sure it was immensely frustrating, though you do seem to be dealing with it well. Good for you.

You should also understand I am not an engineer nor a medical doctor and I have both my eyes with good vision. Nothing I say should be considered prescriptive in any way, nor do I mean to suggest I understand your motivation, but after reading your Call for Engineers article, and especially the follow-up comments where there seems to be very little concern for your personal safety otherwise, I can’t help but be motivated to offer you a few public words of caution, if only that. I could offer the same words as a comment to your article, but being the 121st (or later) commenter, I fear it would get lost under all the praise. (Indeed, after reading 120 of those comments in little white text over black background, my eyes are a bit strained. You might want to consider web site accessibility as something to pursue as well, for the sake of your other eye, as well as for your web visitors.)

We have seen remarkable engineering achievements, such as the first total artificial hearts, the bionic hand, exoskeletons for augmenting bi-pedal weakness, and wearable computing as a few examples of many, and I find it as fascinating and encouraging as the next person that these might become so ordinary as to not think twice about them. However, these things come with time and lots and lots of robust testing, so despite all the enthusiastic feedback you’ve been getting from the basement engineers of the world, you should consider this a long-haul ordeal and not — absolutely not — make any hasty decisions of putting something in your eye socket before it’s exhaustively experimented following real scientific methods.

I was surprised, actually, that your doctor is on board with this, until I read the article about “Dr. Danz” The Ocularist, which gave me more the impression of a skilled glass artist and not a medical expert. My first word of caution would be to get a real medical opinion, and then another one, and then at least one more after that. At the same time, make sure you’re speaking with doctors who specialize in radio waves, cerebral trauma, or whatever should be relevant against the potential risks for that region of the body.

I noted many folks who commented were also declaring themselves as “monocular,” and most giving you encouragement and “good luck” with your endeavor. You may not realize it, but you have become a roll model of sorts to these people, giving them a sense of hope perhaps? This seems positive on the surface, but is it? I don’t know. I would be more keen on listing to the fewer of those voices who said there is no benefit to your disabled condition by pursuing an eye-cam. The sense I get from a lot of those commenting on your article (and elsewhere around the web now) is they are more caught up in the “tech” and “cool” aspects (such as adding a red laser beam), than it is about your disability, which again brings me back to advising caution against all the cheering.

There were a couple interesting and perhaps sensible suggestions about getting organized and maybe taking an open source approach. This is interesting, but make real medical advice a part of that organization and brainpooling.

Finally, with regard to those suggestions about starting a PayPal account for contributions. Remember there is a risk here, and should it go bad or unfinished, how will you account for all that donated money? You might want to talk to a lawyer too, to make sure legal issues are covered as much as anything else. Here is another interesting channel to consider: Google funding. Anything they throw at it (and they should have money to burn) will certainly get the seriousness it deserves. I think they are looking for ideas to fund, in fact, so if this leads to benefiting others in your situation, then it could be accepted as a Google funded project. Likewise, if they are not interested, maybe that’s saying something.

Whatever path you take. I wish it the most success possible.

Respectfully,

Destry Wion

… end of address

Updates:

Since making this post, I came across CNET’s interview of Tanya and learned from commenters there that work in this direction is further along than I imagined, including work done at Seeing Aid (a truly accessible web site, which says a lot about where their hearts are at), Second Sight, The Boston Retinal Implant Project, and at the University of Washington (see Photos: LEDs in your contact lenses?, which I’m happy to say is where I did my Master of Science. Undoubtedly DARPA has got something secret and sinister too. There’s even a man in Canada, Rob Spence, doing the exact same thing and partnering with Steve Mann, a graduate of MIT and a celebrated cybernetics professor at the University of Toronto. Oddly enough, Mr. Spence is a producer (film) in arts too, just like Tanya.

Still, and as others seem to be cognizant of as reflected by comments to the CNET article, this technology is young, perhaps too premature to be putting anything into the eye socket yet without a great deal of safety testing. I do not mean to come across as discourage dreams, absolutely not, and this is indeed fascinating, exciting, hopeful stuff. Just be careful when it’s your own head in involved in the pioneering stages.