I saw this experimental technology for the blind on the Discovery Channel that was something like what some of you are talking about but it’s aural rather than tactile. A camera creates a low res picture of the field of view and assigns a major scale tone to varying shades of light and dark. A frame is then “played” from right to left. They had blind people using the device describe what was in front of them and they did a pretty damn good job of getting the rough idea.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/mediarel/archives/001718.html
I haven’t read this whole thread yet, but the subject reminded me of this article…sounds like what you might be interested in.
I don’t think depth is that important. I am practically blind in one eye, and it no way affects me. I’m bad at playing baseball, but I have an otherwise normal understanding of space and vision. The mind has a lot of power to understand context.
Except that depth and color aren’t, mathematically speaking (which is what’s relevant for the amount of information) dimensions in this argument. Each of our eyes can detect only two spatial dimensions. Depth, we inferr by comparing the information from the two eyes. But the total amount of information is still only two eyes worth of two dimensions of spatial information.
Likewise, our color perception does not contribute even one full dimension, much less three. For color to contribute even one dimension, we would need to have full Fourier resolution of wavelengths of light, like we do for sound with hearing. To get more than one dimension, we’d have to extend it to something (I know not what) which would be beyond anything we could remotely think of as color.
To elaborate: Suppose I had six computer screens, of high spatial resolution. On screen one, I show, in monochrome, the red component of what I see in my left eye. On screen 2, I similarly show the green component of my left eye, and on the third, I show the blue of my left eye. Screens 4, 5, and 6 show the red, green, and blue components of my right eye’s vision. You agree, do you not, that these six screens represent the complete amount of information I’m receiving through my eyes? But counting time, those computer screens are only three dimensional. And just the fact that there are six computer screens doesn’t change the fact that the total of all of them together is still only three dimensional. This is the same as the number of dimensions we could achieve with a pin array pushing on skin.
Now, I don’t know what the “resolution”, so to speak, of human skin is, and it’s quite possible that you can’t get enough information this way for a good image. And I likewise don’t know if the brain could adapt to getting this information from a different source. But I can say, at least, that the skin has enough dimensions of information.
As for “smelling by ear”, the ear picks up two dimensions of information (frequency and time), whereas I don’t know how many dimensions of information smelling entails (I’m pretty sure it’s at least two, but I don’t know if it might be more).
I am a bit confused as to how I see time.
I like your link mnemosyne, especially since it is from one of my old schools. They also agree with something I was thinking about with these devices which help you navigate by sound, which is that it would be difficult because you are always trying to hear other things too. Ideally you would like to have an input system which does not conflict too badly with your other standard sensory inputs.
I’m guessing that while Chronos is correct about the strict mathematical definitions of the dimensionality of the system. I suspect homercles is using a colloquial definition which is more useful in his field.
The extra dimensions due to color are because the eye uses basically a RGB system right? I don’t see any reason why you would have to build a system based on these if you are not actually using sight. Perhaps, if you are using electrical impulses on the skin, you could just use a simple linear range of frequency of the pulses to represent the color.
treis, the time dimensionality is just that objects may be moving (changing position in time). Thus, in the mathematical sense, time is a dimension.
Good point sven, context is very important. I use both eyes all the time, but I can recognize distances of objects when I close one eye.
I still don’t understand how I see time. My eyes take in the visual data and my brain percieves the motion by time. The same way I don’t feel time when someone runs their finger up my arm. I am recieving input from different nerves and my brain says its moving.
Ugh that didn’t make sense. My eyes take in the visual data and my brain percieves the motion by comparing the images.