As my friends who’ve known me since the 80s will recount, I’ve always been an enthusiastic advocate of upgrading the human race. In fact, before going to M.I.T. to start my PhD (aborted after two years to make Crash Bandicoot), I applied to all sorts of MD/PhD programs in biomedical engineering. I chose M.I.T. (AI Lab) over Johns Hopkins (Bio med eng) partially because I always had more fun with computers than in bio lab (despite having majored neuro-bio) but also because my enthusiasm for “improving” mankind with technology seemed to fall on deaf ears in the medical community. Somehow it’s perfectly alright to talk about giving sight to the blind — which, by the way, I’m all for — but uncool and oh so Dr Neo Cortex to discuss bionic eye upgrades.
In any case, check this guy out!
He’s replaced his eye (albeit already missing) with a camera and transmitter! For real!
Too bad he hasn’t yet overcome the really big hurdle: sending the signal to his brain! That’ll be a while, splicing any kind of video signal into an optic nerve or V1 (the early visual cortex) is, as we used to say at M.I.T.: non-trivial!
Get too it Eyeborg!
More information can be found at the Eyeborg Project’s home page.
All Things Andy Gavin 
I’m just curious, do you ever regret not finishing your PhD? Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad that you and Jason went ahead and created Crash and Jak, but do you feel that you missed out on something by not finishing the PhD?
Very slight dose of regret. I had a great time at M.I.T. and I learned a huge amount. But it came to a matter of efficiency. Finishing my PhD would’ve taken approximately 5 more years, and the curve as to how much I was learning was already slowing way down. I use a sort of breadth-first with selective depth-first approach to life.
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