DARPA Develops Implant With ‘Terminator’ Vision: ‘Plugs directly into a person’s DNA and visual cortex’

For now, the technology is in ‘crude’ form undergoing R&D through animal testing, specifically with the neural connections of a zebrafish.
In the longer term, DARPA researchers (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) believes the gene modifying optical technology will be able to restore vision to the blind and impaired, and replaced current conceptions of virtual reality, with an internal display that will provide vital stats and more about the target, err, object in view.
According to CNET, the DARPA boffins are reportedly working on a device known as a ‘cortical modem’ that plugs directly into a person’s DNA and visual cortex. Not only does this unique device help someone overcome blindness or poor eyesight, it generates a built-in heads-up display (HUD) that appears right in before their very eyes.
The implants create an augmented reality projection that appears like magic in your natural vision and without the need for helmets or special eyeglasses. (source)
The visual overlay could be developed, as in the Schwarzenegger ‘Terminator’ films, like an automatic panel of information that meshes seamlessly with the real world, or it could integrate interactive ‘Minority Report’-style panels, but internally. Regardless, the implications are fantastic, and perhaps, unsettling.
Though it is hardly the first DARPA foray into brain implants, this technology represents a new breakthrough, as it requires modification to a person’s DNA, an application of optogenetics that bypasses our natural visual sensory system and makes use of what is, for now anyway, a simple $10 devices that produces the LED-like display:

This post was published at shtfplan on February 18th, 2015.