In 1984, the world got its first iconic man/machine hybrid in the form of James Cameron’s Terminator.
He was big, scary, didn’t say very much, and had a job to do — just one job. And it wasn’t pleasant.
According to Kyle Reese — the savior of the movie’s protagonist — technology like the kind implied by The Terminator wouldn’t be around for another 40 years.
It’s now been 31 years since Kyle Reese uttered those prophetic words, and we’ve been seeing glimpses of this technology appearing for years already.
There was the Boston Dynamics “Big Dog,” which first introduced the world to a four-legged machine with a fluid, almost natural-looking ability to walk and maintain balance back in 2008.
Then the same company took it a step farther and produced the Atlas — a humanoid robot with a large, square head that made him look like the love child of the aforementioned T-800 Terminator exoskeleton and Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet.
As time goes by, robots seem to be becoming both more human in appearance and function and more super-human in their strength, precision of motion, and sensor capability.
However, the one thing we haven’t seen much of — yet — is the “org” part of the cyborg portmanteau.
The realistic problem with meshing man and machine, or living tissue and metallic/electronic systems, is opening the communication channel between the human brain and the artificial components.
In this regard, the Terminator actually had it pretty easy… His brain wasn’t human.
For modern engineers to create a seamless link between the conscious mind and external mechanisms, the challenges are far greater.
Modern Tech Verging on Magic
However, wherever there is a challenge, science and technology rise to the occasion, and this is no exception.
For almost two decades, a California bioengineering firm has been working on the problem of teaching a machine to speak to the brain.
Today, success has been achieved, and right now, they’re marketing one of the most amazing inventions to hit biotech in the last half-century.
It’s an artificial eye, and what it does was thought impossible for a long time: It lets the blind see again.
Literally.
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Making the Blind See With the Push of a Button
The device translates images collected by a set of camera-equipped glasses worn by the user into impulses, which are then sent along the optic nerve and into the brain.
It literally streams videos straight into your mind, bypassing the damaged or malfunctioning photoreceptors in the eye.
Right now, the device is most commonly used on individuals suffering from retinitis pigmentosa — but this is changing, and soon, different versions of the device will be available for a much broader list of conditions and injuries.
Most likely, however, age-related eyesight loss (including retinitis pigmentosa) — which will become a much larger problem as the average age of the world’s population increases — will present the biggest market for this technology.
So while the world’s most famous movie cyborg was big and mean, the world’s first real cyborgs are actually most often fairly harmless people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.
And what this device is doing for them is nothing short of miraculous.
The company isn’t a big one, and it doesn’t do anything besides this — which puts it in a rare category… a very exclusive sub-sector of biotech.
My colleague Nick Hodge recently did a full write-up on this company, the technology, how it works, and where it will go as the device evolves to help people with different forms of blindness.
It’s a fascinating, uplifting story, both from the social and the financial perspective.
Because as you can imagine, this tech trend is just now getting started.
Check out Nick’s full report free of charge right here.
Fortune favors the bold,
Alex Koyfman
Check us out on YouTube!His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.
