I’m sure you all have heard about color blindness. But I think not everyone knows how this illness was discovered. John Dalton living in XVIII and XIX century one day decided to buy his mother a pair of stockings. He picked nice light grey ones and imagine his astonishment when his lovely mother told him that she would never wear them, because this color was inappropriate. She explained to him that was not a good idea for an older woman to wear red stockings. That’s when he realized he was color-blind.
Nowadays
color blind people have a lot of
obstacles in their everyday life. They can’t
start a driving course, they may wear odd colors
(because they don’t realize what they’re wearing) and mainly they can’t see the
beauty of nature: flowers, trees and so on.
Neil Harbisson
is a color blind person, but recently he can listen to colors, what sound even
better than observing them. A color detector was created for him. His
electronic eye detects colors and sends to his head sounds. In that way he can
recognize colors, but that’s not all. He also
can watch music. As he learned color names he can listen to music and present
it using colors. He is also capable of hearing faces. Sounds really awesome,
doesn’t it?
As people who were born color blind aren’t able to dream in colors – he can! It is really amazing.
People who have never seen any color – can’t imagine it. That’s obvious – how they could be learned what for example green looks like? Neil Harbisson actually learned colors in his way and now he lives as we do. I mean – not really, he has a really interesting life now ;)
Now he treats his electronic eye as a part of his body. And he’s right saying that he looks like a cyborg, but it really makes his life easier.
In my opinion his life is really awesome, but I’m not sure if I would like to hear all colors and finally listen to something all the time.
At the end of his speech he tells a very wise and important statement “I think life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body.” I totally agree with him.
As people who were born color blind aren’t able to dream in colors – he can! It is really amazing.
People who have never seen any color – can’t imagine it. That’s obvious – how they could be learned what for example green looks like? Neil Harbisson actually learned colors in his way and now he lives as we do. I mean – not really, he has a really interesting life now ;)
Now he treats his electronic eye as a part of his body. And he’s right saying that he looks like a cyborg, but it really makes his life easier.
In my opinion his life is really awesome, but I’m not sure if I would like to hear all colors and finally listen to something all the time.
At the end of his speech he tells a very wise and important statement “I think life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our own body.” I totally agree with him.
Comments
When it comes to programmable body I would focus on helping people out first. Personaly I don't see anything sepcial or exciting about human apps. Many people follow Elon Musk ideas these days so check it out https://www.neuralink.com/
And I'm also already satisfied with my current human functionality. No need for enhancement :)
To the point of seeing colors - I've seen somewhere, that blind person was taught about colors with objects - cold stone was blue, hot one - red. I agree with those, no more colors were shown.
After seeing this I started to think how would I describe other colors. This is really hard! Easiest ones were shown.
It is really hard! How would you describe yellow to someone, who has never seen sun or sunflowers? How would you describe grey color?
The hardest thing about it is that except blue and red percepion of colors is very differently.
Most people think that green is soothing, while it is teasing me.
Yellow could be describes as feeling, when spring, warm sun is touching your skin, how about other colors?
I would like to create an app or smartphone that allows people to send smells and tastes. It'd be wonderful. Video in 360 with smells. (Ok, maybe it wouldn't be wonderful in every case). But we could try food before buying it.
There are already attempts to create fake skin for people with burn wound or mechanical heart to be used in transplantation.
The hardest problems to solve are ones with neurons so if I would be a person to solve that problem, it would be nice ( of course I know it will not be me to do it, but it is nice to have dreams :) ). Also I would like to create an app that would help diabetics.
At the end I would like to mention about Cyborgs, because that is what it is about. Think of body modification as improving our bodies, not helping ill people. Adding some mechanism to make us better in some way. Sounds nice, but what about security? There is a saying "no system is safe". What about mechanical heart - can it be hacked? Technology is a great think but we should not put it in every aspect of life without serous reason.
If i had a choice, what app/device would you like to create? Which sense would you like to extend?
Generally speaking, it doesn't matter what kind of app it will be, but it definitely must help people with diseases(cancer,hiv,aids) and for disabled.
In my opinion for sense to expand I’d choose hearing. I think that interesting thing would be some kind of echolocation for people. Dolphins are able to use echolocation, such a thing would be very useful for soldiers for instance in difficult areas.
About describing colors - I think it's impossible to explain how any color looks like. Not only to color-blind people, but also to blind people.
And sure this idea has application. Not only has it given intimate color perception to someone that has never seen colors before, but he also explains he can sense the intensity of ultra violet radiation on a sunny day.
With enough training in color theory people with his condition could become normal artists using color to sound devices, unlike people with more common color blind conditions. That's unheard of.
The app is interesting, but I found even more interesting how his body responded to him using the app. He mentions that in his dreams his brain started to transform colors into sounds and that he also started to be able to see sounds as colors. These are the symptoms of synthesia disorder. It is a phenomenon in which simulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic triggering of experiences in other senses.
Quite a few famous people had this disorder including Franz Liszt, Stevie Wonder, Nabokov and physicist Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman saw letters as colors, so he experienced the mathematical equations as colorful pictures. He often wondered "what the hell it must look like to the students" :)
I find it fascinating that the speaker developed this sensory and cognitive pathways' modifications later in his life and due to being stimulated by the app. We still know so little about how our brain works. It is exciting to get a glimpse into each occurrence of a new phenomenon.
As for what kind of app I would like to develop, I go with what Anastasiia wrote about creating an app that could produce an experience of gustation.
I enjoy cooking and good food so that would be a treat for me. I'm not sure about a smell app though. I'm having a nightmare imagining a mixture of smells in Warsaw public transportation, which already leaves us rich in odour experiences.
I believe that human body is full of bad engineering decisions and requires an upgrade. The way we perceive the world around us, our weakness in the face of multiple diseases, genetic diseases etc., all of these problems cn be solved with cybernetical improvement of the incomplete mechanism created by nature. The age of gods from the machine is coming. What a time to be alive, as they say.
I heard about glasses which was made for color-blind people. I watched reaction of people who are color-blind and after they wear such glasses they start crying and behave like they see colors. I am not sure that it is true. Maybe this is only marketing because I don't know person who is color-blind and also tried this glasses.
I hope that I will have opportunity to work somedays on project which helps some people to win with their disabilities. I feel that we as programmers have a huge occassion to use our abilities to make this world a better place.
If I had a chance, I would extend not one of the senses but our memory. As for me it is the only big advantage of today's AI comparing to human. If we could remember things in a seconds and keeping them in our memory forever, then our life would be a lot of better.
The ones that I truly admire and perceive as something which would make people's lives easier are the ones aimed for the disabled. We shouldn't focus on upgrading senses that work like they're supposed to. Instead, we should probably focus on fixing the faulty ones.
On this video we can see the early technology that helps the disabled. It's pretty primitive, but it has a chance to become something better. I fully support that kind of technologies and hope they would evolve fast.
If i could make app like this i want to create something like true mind control app. It will be great to make all things in our smartphones even touching it. It will be helpfull for ex. for paralyzed people. I know that we have trial versions of such applications but i know that it isn't works.
Another interesting example covered in that documentary, was the use of an exoskeleton to speed up recovery of patients with fractured spines. Basically, allowing people to walk using the exoskeleton, stimulated their bodies to faster rebuild the damaged nerves, and speed-up their rehabilitation.
It's only a matter of time before we move from prosthetics for war veterans to the stage, when we provide all people with body augmentations on daily routine, changing their lives entirely. I am waiting for technology letting people transfer their minds to new bodies. I am waiting for a time, when people change functions of their body parts at will, don't have to care about diseases, can change malfunctioning parts at any time and so on. This is the future.
About creating some devices, I think I've seen too many episodes of Black Mirror, what makes me a little bit pessimistic, haha. Futuristic, high tech devices, that can integrate with our brain are excellent, without a doubt. Unfortunately, there are people, who would love to hack those devices and who knows what are they able to do with our minds.
In my opinion we should create more apps for our bodies. This is a great example how the technology can help us and make our world more colorful.
I would find such device quite annoying I guess. I often get tired of hearing the noises of a city all the time and can't imagine hearing colors added to them. But if it works for him that's just great.
I would definitely extend seeing. I would like to see music during listening to it. I'm curious how the smells would look like. And touch. Seeing every other senses would be amazing!
In my opinion these kind of apps are great steps to use technology to help people in their daily live. That could improve live in huge amount of different areas.
If you had a choice, what app/device would you like to create? Which sense would you like to extend?
I think about something to help some disabled people in moving their bodies, in a way that the brain sends signals to electrodes to shrink the muscle. That could be very helpful for people with broken core who are paralyzed.