Pages

Total Pageviews

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

World's first legally recognized cyborg

 
Neil Harbisson is the world's first legally recognized cyborg

The 32-year-old was born with an illness that makes him completely colorblind

He has a device implanted in his skull which translates color into sound

As a child growing up in a coastal town in Catalonia, Spain, Harbisson was diagnosed with achromatopsia, complete color-blindness. In 2004, he decided to find a way out of his black-and-white world, by developing a technology that would provide him with a sensory experience that no other human had ever experienced.

The idea came while studying experimental music composition at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, England. For his final project, Harbisson and the computer scientist Adam Montandon developed the first incarnation of what they called the "eyeborg." The apparatus was an antenna attached to a five-kilogram computer and a pair of headphones. The webcam at the end of the antenna translated each color into 360 different sound waves that Harbisson could listen to through headphones.

A cyborg (short for "cybernetic organism") is a being with both organic and biomechatroniv parts.

The term cyborg is often applied to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedbak

No comments:

Post a Comment