Almost bionic women

January 2, 9:16 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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That old television show, "The Bionic Woman", was cancelled thirty years ago.  The shows protagonist, Jaime Sommers, was nearly completely outfitted; bionic arms, legs, eyes, the works,  But, in real life, the use of medical bionics have advanced only in baby steps these thirty years.  Cochlear implants for the deaf and artificial hearts are the bionic components that are furthest along.  But the one organ, the holy grail of bionic devices, has gotta be the bionic eye.

There's a terrific article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a local artist who lost an eye in an auto accident three years ago.  And now, as part of an artistic experiment, she wants to wear a miniature video camera behind her fake eye.

(Tanya) Vlach, with the help of enthusiastic strangers who responded to a call for engineers on her blog, hopes a tiny recording lens can be developed to help her launch various art projects, from filming documentaries to live Web casting through her eye. Meanwhile, another one-eyed filmmaker in Toronto named Rob Spence has announced that he's enlisted inventor Steve Mann, an expert in "wearable technology," to also enter the race for the world's first recording eyeball.

Given a choice, Vlach would have gotten a bionic eye, which turned out to be a development that is still years away. Yet both her and Spence's cyborgian art projects speak to the growing acceptance of transhumanism - a broad term used to describe the community of inventors, academics and enthusiasts who, among other things, encourage the ethical use of technology in bodies to expand human capabilities.

This increasing desire to merge technology with flesh has already led to implants that can improve hearing, and adherents believe that next on the horizon are inventions that will improve memory and cognition.

"When you have personal loss, you think of ways to re-create things," Vlach said. "Technology is one way of doing it."

There's now a design and Silicon Valley image sensor chip manufacturer, Omni-Vision, has agreed to help in the development.  In the end, it's about becoming whole again.

"When you lose a part of your body, your attention gets dramatically drawn to its absence," (author Michael Chorost) said. "Re-creating that body part, to an extent, is a way of reasserting mastery over that new component of your body. You're making a distinctive choice: This is my body, and I'm now going to use it in a creative way; that's a very humanizing thing to do, to respond to loss by becoming more creative. It converts you from being a victim to being a creator."

All the best wishes to Tanya Vlach and Rob Spence.  It is, indeed, a brave new world.