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I don't think this would be good for recreational use.

You will absolutely see the things I described happen (assuming you don't pass away too soon).

If I had to choose between the two, I'd take sight over hearing any day. I wouldn't take invasive surgery for a hearing device that connected me to my friends when a phone works just as well. But the ability to send/receive exact visuals to/from self/others would be an awesome thing.

Also, partial blockage of vision by the gizmo will be worked around. They'll splice/jack the feed straight into the optical nerve behind the retina at some point. It's going to happen. Completely obvious in my opinion. The good thing here is, it's going to happen soon. I should see this in my lifetime.

Humanity will be profoundly changed. It will be interesting and frightening for those of us who were born before these things but for those born in that time they won't think twice about it.

These surgeries are destructive, believe me, I've seen them first hand.

They don't do cochlear implants until the hearing is completely shot because when they are finished, that ear will never heal naturally again. In addition, what they are giving is a poor substitute for the real thing.

The technology is decades away from providing what God gave you when you were born. Even if they could jack HDTV into your brain, it would take some way to re-engineer the brain to perceive any improvement. We are wired to use our senses as infants and if new or improved senses were added after about the age of two, the brain would never process the information. It may be possible to stimulate new neuro connections but it would probably increase your risk for a brain tumor.

We are decades away from engineering simple things like artificial limbs with touch and position sense wired directly into severed limbs.

With the steady progress in technology, it will in the end probably be supplanted by bio-engineering anyway. It would be much easier to stimulate endogenous stem cells to grow a retina than try to recreate it with semiconductors. The stem cells come with instructions for making a perfectly functioning retina.

The next time they have the desert robot race, pay attention. Engineers from across the country take powerful computers and all the sensors they can pack into a full sized vehicle to try to autonomously cross a hundred miles of desert. I think somebody finally navigated the course last year for the first time. On the other hand, butterflies with CPUs too small to see without a microscope cross thousands of miles every year to winter in the same spot in Mexico every year.

We have come a long way but when you look at what God has made