But where would she go?

but Molly's shades always struck me as being shaped roughly like swimming goggles or those clip-ons you wear in a sun-bed - only cold and hard as quartz...

For some reason I always believed that her eye-lids were removed altogether, and that there'd be some kind of super-clear gelationous stuff to keep her retinas from drying up. I can see how that presents a problem when you take into account that there's no mention of gel spewing as they were broken open, but, hey: there's no need to kill the potent imagery with techno-babble, is there?

quote:

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but, hey: there's no need to kill the potent imagery with techno-babble, is there?

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Actually, that's one of Cyberpunk's oldest and fondest traditions .

-Hawksfire, the Cheshire Harlequin

<smile class=wink>you have a point there</smile>

quote:

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Of course I am making the broad assumption that a Clorox Wipe equivalent exists in Gibson's future Vision.

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Some inventions are just timeless. Like matches, or zippers, or "Hello Kitty" face masks. Or Clorox Wipes.

Eye-implant shows promise

I always saw molly's eyes like a flashlight and by that I mean..her actual eyeball is the bulb suspended in a halfcircle of complete mechanics (as I saw the light amps going behind the eyeball in the sockets the whole eye socket would be replaced) and then covered by mirror...there's not alot of skin under there to mark the lenses. And her eye would be moistened by hardware....mechanical eyes are sexy on a woman...something new to see (flesh has been done to death)

The whole eye-thing is a moot point, I think. Molly's eyes are just a cipher which reads 'hard bitch at work'... no further justification is required.

BBC - that's an interesting article. Fantastic that our technology is catching up with Gibson's.

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The whole eye-thing is a moot point, I think. Molly's eyes are just a cipher which reads 'hard bitch at work'... no further justification is required.

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We Know. But we like to talk.
And what it takes to get/maintain that kind of 'hardness' and the implications of same are pretty fascinating, right?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're Cyberpunk reading geeks. Trivial arguing is what we -do-.

-Hawksfire, the Cheshire Harlequin

Thread unlocked.

There are a few issues that haven't been raised yet during this thread and I know from back entries the in the Gibson blog that not even the man himself thought it through entirely. I'm getting more and more sure that the idea of Molly's eyes is close to doable even if we don't have all the materials yet

The first problem I thought of concerned the attachment. We could stick the lenses to Molly's face with some kind of glue. This idea is good because it involves minimal invasive surgery and would be almost entirely reversible. However, it would mean that she would have difficulty with certain facial expressions and there is the risk that the glue would fail or react with her skin.

The other option is to graft the lenses onto her skull. This is doable, assuming that we split the muscle which closes the eylids.* This method has the advantages of allowing her to still use facial expressions. However, it's more permenant. If the lenses get damaged it's going to be difficult to fix them.

We could make lenses which graft to implants just below the skin. If we wanted to detach the lenses we would simply disconnct them from the implants. The implants would penetrate the muscle through the skull rather than the entire lens.

Any other thoughts?

The other problems I thought of and tried to solve concerned the physiology of the eye. It was mentioned earlier about the eyelashes, which we could just remove. Her tear ducts have been routed to her mouth which solves the tear problem. The skin shedding is still an issue.

There is also the problem, as yet unaddressed, that the cornea gets it's oxygen from the air as it has no blood vessels. The lenses would have to be gas permeable to prevent her cornea getting damaged. Of course, we could put in manufactured corneas which are not cellular material, thus eradicating this issue.



*This is the only thing between the skin and skull according to McMinn's Principles of Anatomy.

I always thought of the lenses as part of the "eye".

They would have to be permanently or at least mechanically connected to the skull (glue wouldn't be practical as the connection is only as strong as the connected parts and I don't think that living tissue like skin is strong enough).

Thinking about it now I wonder what kind of technological advantage comes from the lenses? I am only sure it makes an attitude statement. Considering the technological possibilities it must have been possible to get "eyes" with gimmicks that look like eyes.

I also think that the "eyes" are artificial, because it would be easier to use artificial eyes for video feed then taking the video feed from biological ones.

It's the brain that the feed comes from in my mind. May already be able to do it in meat space by now.

From Wired Magazine 1999:

A Cat's Eye Marvel
by Leander Kahney

3:00 a.m. 7.Oct.99.PDT (Note the witching hour )
In a dramatic demonstration of mind reading, neuroscientists have created videos of what a cat sees by using electrodes implanted in the animal's brain.
Garrett Stanley of Harvard, and Fei Li and Yang Dan of the University of California,Berkeley, were able to reconstruct in startling detail scenes flashed before a cat's eyes.


Read ongoing Med-Tech coverage

The reconstructed scenes clearly demonstrate the scientist's ability to decode the language of the cat's visual system.

The researchers attached electrodes to 177 cells in an anesthetized cat's
thalamus, a region of the brain falling about half-way in the visual processing pathway.

Having recorded patterns of firing as various scenes were flashed before the cat's eyes, the team was able to reconstruct very closely what the animal saw, which varied from people's faces to scenes of a dark forest. The research was applauded by other neuroscientists.

"The demonstration that you can reconstruct a movie from the multiple cells in the thalamus is an important step in our understanding of how signals are represented in the activity of populations of cells," said Fred Rieke, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington.

Stanley, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, said the research provides clues about how prosthetics may one day be wired into the mammalian nervous system. By understanding the language of the brain, scientists will be able to create devices that talk to it, he said.

"Trying to understand how the brain codes information leads to the possibility of replacing parts of the nervous system with an artificial device," he said.

Stanley predicted that in the next couple of decades, as more and more of the neural code is decoded, brain interfaces may start to appear.

But he cautioned it may take a lot longer.
He noted that the team also recorded the activity of cells higher up in the cat's visual pathway -- in the visual cortex -- but the results were not as startling because of the greater complexity of the cells.

"So little is understood about thoughts,perceptions, dreams, it's impossible to predict how much progress we'll make in understanding them," he said.

However, Ken Miller, as associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said researchers around the world are using similar techniques to decode higher brain functions.

"These methods could be applied to further up the visual pathway," he said. "It will become more difficult ... but it's a promising direction."

***EDIT***
Here's the BBC article.

Looking for an update on progress now.

Moved to Neurobiology Thread in News and Current

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eric,

quote:

Originally posted by gHast:
Thinking about it now I wonder what kind of technological advantage comes from the lenses?

I think she says that she can see in the dark with them at one point but on the other hand, when Case is using the Sensorium*, he wonders what they actually do as they're rubbish at reducing the sunlight.

It probably would be possible to remove the eyes and replace them with video feeds but doesn't the book say, when the lenses are broken, that the eye itself isn't damaged? I assume from that statement that the eye is still present.

----------------------------
*A great idea, if not just for the innendo-strewn phrase "I'm just off to jack into Molly for bit."

As far as I can remember the lenses do light amplification, but otherwise there is no mention of her eyes themselves being modified (well, if I recall correctly the clock was actually chipped into her optic nerve directly). I think their main purpose is probably to look badass.

quote:

"... Got a readout chipped into my optic nerve."

...

The glasses didn't seem to cut down the sunlight al all. He
wondered if the built-in amps compensated automatically. Blue
alphanumerics winked the time, low in her left peripheral field.
Showing off, he thought.

...


Molly's face, with smooth quicksilver drowning the eyes.

...

She closed her eyes and there was a click that Case felt rather than heard.

...

And then, his face pink with the pleasure of cocaine and meperidine, he swung the glass hard into her left lens implant, smashing vision into blood and light.

I just went over the text and from everything mentioned I would say:

The lenses are implants.

The eyes are biological.

The eye lid is still there.

There is stuff added to the eye.

Your a star! I had to take the book back to the library after I finished so I couldn't check back once I started to think about the issue.

Have a look here. With Firefox it is rather easy to search the text. It was interesting and showed me one thing: I'm not paying enough attention.

That's why I can read books again and again.

Blessed be! That certainly makes citations a lot easier.

I would consider that her optic nerve chip counts as a modification to the eye. To try and get to the optic nerve other that through the pupil would be a right bastard if I remember my anatomy.

For the first part of the book, the chip in the optic nerve really irked me because it was only being used as a clock and seemed a bit pointless.

Molly: Ooh! Ooh! Guess what? I've got a clock in my eye!
Me: W00t. I've got a clock too. It's on my arm and I can take it off if I want to.
Molly: Touché, reader-girl. Touché...

It seemed like a futuristic way of doing something no better than we already do it. I was glad to see that it could be used as a sort of ticker tape display of messages too as this made much more sense. Having said that, how annoying would it be if it could be hijacked by advertisers?

--Left---Left---Danger!---Danger!---Frosties They're grrreeaat!--- etc...