I sometimes wonder what technology would look like if it were developed by an alien culture with no sense of vision.
I somehow believe that the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so large (i.e. the benefit of sight is so great) that we're essentially guaranteed any sentient biological extraterrestrial will have it.
Well, under terrestrial Earthlike conditions, anyway.
In the deep ocean, the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so slight that most animals gradually lose it (there is too little light).
I somehow believe that the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so large (i.e. the benefit of sight is so great) that we're essentially guaranteed any sentient biological extraterrestrial will have it.
>essentially guaranteed any sentient biological The evolutionary pressure toward radar or at least sonar is pretty fucking big too (huge benefit) so where's mine?
Most people get a lot of information from their environment from passive sonar...how "echoey" a room is, for example. People can take this ability much further.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U
I somehow believe that the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so large (i.e. the benefit of sight is so great) that we're essentially guaranteed any sentient biological extraterrestrial will have it.
Well, under terrestrial Earthlike conditions, anyway. In the deep ocean, the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so slight that most animals gradually lose it (there is too little light).
Is that really true? There are many photo luminescent creatures there, so light must be important to them. I'm thinking they appear to be blind to us in normal daylight, perhaps because their sensitivity is to extremely low levels of light. In their environment, they can see perfectly well?
Please don't share sites like this. This is a common theme. People advertise "revolutionary products" for blind people, whithout actually explaining what kind of microactuators they use. I am 99% sure this is a fake non-invention that does not exist.
In the video on the linked page they show several blind people using the watch, they seem genuinely surprised at the information they read from its face. Do you suspect this to be faked?
Please don't share sites like this. This is a common theme. People advertise "revolutionary products" for blind people, whithout actually explaining what kind of microactuators they use. I am 99% sure this is a fake non-invention that does not exist.
In the video on the linked page they show several blind people using the watch, they seem genuinely surprised at the information they read from its face. Do you suspect this to be faked?
Yes, I believe it is faked. I worked in the braille community for years and micro-actuators that actually work are like a holy grail. If they had one that actually worked, they would be plastering their site with descriptions of their new world changing mirco-actuation mechanism. They don't show a real video of it actuating. It just makes no sense. Its like if you invented fusion power and spent the entire time showing videos of smiling kids next to dish washers, and never even tried to explain the breakthrough for the containment material.
How are the "pixels" turned on and off, technically? Is it done by a small magnetic coil? Or by electrostatic means? Or otherwise? Does a non-switching pixel require a current?
It is a tiny magnet inside a solenoid. At each end of the solenoid there is a steel part, which the magnets stick to when on or off. To switch state the coil is energized. Hall effect (or other) sensors can tell where the magnet is and what state the pin is in. It doesn't use any power when it's holding state but switching can consume a relatively high amount of power.
The clicky pen mechanism is actually patented, and it also can't be made as small as you'd like for this.
Please don't share sites like this. This is a common theme. People advertise "revolutionary products" for blind people, whithout actually explaining what kind of microactuators they use. I am 99% sure this is a fake non-invention that does not exist.
In the video on the linked page they show several blind people using the watch, they seem genuinely surprised at the information they read from its face. Do you suspect this to be faked?
Its like how theranos speaches were all about how world changing it was, and didn't include a description of what trick they used to make the leap in inovation.
I somehow believe that the evolutionary pressure towards sight is so large (i.e. the benefit of sight is so great) that we're essentially guaranteed any sentient biological extraterrestrial will have it.
true, but consider other sighted animals but which have a different dominant sense: dogs (smell), moles (touch), platypus (electric-fields) even sight-dominant animals may have radically different vision to ours. Cats for example are more sensitive to motion than to static resolution How we obtain our data about the world is a huge influence over how we conceive of it. I wonder how different programming would be were…
It is theorized that cephalopods can see color through chromatic aberration because of the unusual shape of their pupils. They don't have cone cells like humans.
Please don't share sites like this. This is a common theme. People advertise "revolutionary products" for blind people, whithout actually explaining what kind of microactuators they use. I am 99% sure this is a fake non-invention that does not exist.
This site seems to share the common theme - a Braille tablet:
I think the vast amount of seeing marine creatures is a massive counterexample. Evolutionary biologists think that the ability to detect any photons grants an advantage: in environments where there is light, eyes evolve, even when the light is dim. It's only in completely lightless environments that eyes no longer provide an advantage (i.e. abyssal plain or caves).
Agreed, the sea creatures have evolved to capture even more light. I'm only guessing, but I would think the pressure and temperature sensors on fish would be more important than sight?
You mean, sensors to detect at a distance? For temperature, most deep-sea creatures have large amounts of insulation to survive the cold & thus would be difficult to detect (especially since water is also an insulator). For pressure, those exist and are called tendrils/antennae.