Technology Corner

The Silicon Revolution

There are a lot of people around the world that do not believe that their lives have been improved by the Silicon revolution. Many of them feel that their privacy has been com- promised, others believe that the employment market has shrunk since the humble computer came onto the scene.

I am not one to jump into the middle of this argument, and besides I think my outlook may be just a little biased. However there can be no doubt that there is one group of people who's lives have been improved beyond all comparison, and that is those of the physically and mentally disabled.

Computers have been used to bring back the power of communication to those that have not had the ability to do so in the past. I think that the best example of such a state- ment has to be Stephen Hawking. Most people around the world will recognize this man as being one of the most outstanding thinkers of this time, however before his computerized voice was developed for him, he was unable to communicate to any great extent, and it took him a great deal of time and the help of others to get even small sentences across.

Computers are not only useful for turning easily inputted text into the spoken word, they are also useful in converting the written and now the spoken word into a form that the blind and deaf can understand such as Braille. All this is hap- pening in the here and now, what does the future hold for these people and how will the computer aid them.

At the moment there are experiments going on that could mean that it is possible to replace a vision that is defective in certain ways. Although fraught with technical difficulties and uncertainties, the research, if successful, would partially restore vision to some of those people who have been without it up until now. Before I start I would like to stress that your sight is something incredibly complex. The obtaining of information and the sheer complexity and power of the processing required to recognize even simple objects in an everyday environment is beyond comprehension of all but the most finely tuned scientific minds.

Some people are unlucky to suffer damage to the light sensitive rods and cones that exist in the retina and (put simply) enable the eyeball to convert light into a series of very small electrical pulses. When this damage occurs, sight is lost and at present there is no treat- ment for an ailment of this type. There is currently research taking place that will enable scientists to implant a small chip into the retina at the back of the eyeball.

This chip is able to stimulate the cells in the retina in the same way as the damaged rods and cones did, thus providing the patient with some restoration of vision. The stimulus provided by the chip is controlled by a beam of laser light that is in turn controlled by a small computer that obtains visionary in- formation from a head mounted camera. Now at the moment this technology is in it's infancy and the kit required to generate even a small image is quite bulky, but this is the least of their problems.

Research into exactly where the retina needs to be stimulated to provide part of an image is still very much unfinished and even when scientists know where the stimulus should be the resolution will still be low. Nobody is jumping up and down shouting Eureka yet, however, in my opinion, the fact that they have got this far shows remarkable promise.

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