Theres a large difference on how a camera and an eye percieves things. New research indicate that as much as 12 different, low quality "images" are send to the brain containing different qualities (edges, moving parts etc). The brain then "guesses" the percieved image. A camera cant prioritice what it depicts in the same fashion. So to develop an artificial eye you'd have to tamper with not only whats in the eye socket, but also the optic nerve and the visual cortex + cognitive processes. Improving on the biological eye sounds more feasible.

wow, ain't the eye amazing or what?

:ditto: And the threads name, i would say yes.

Hell, why not have USB slots in it so you can plug into the computer.

....

I'm going to ignore that and hope thats not an omen of what the human race is coming too...

Hello, My name is Microsoft sam, I.........*freezes*

IMHO of course it would be better to have organic replacement parts, its easier on the body.

But I picture situation where hardware will be preferred. Military applications such as SOCOM teams and maybe a post disaster situation where you have larger numbers of people needing prosthetics.

In alot of SciFi and Anime (Ghost In The Shell for one) you see poor people getting no prosthetics or cheap mechanical ones that obviously people can tell its a prosthetic. Then you have the high tech mechanicals that look more natural. Then you have the high end mechanical and at the top organic replacements. The goal is to get you back looking normal and not disfigured. The more natural looking the replacements the easier and more natural for you to blend back into society and function.

And in their own category because it would be a special use type things are the military hardware. Spec Op teams with bult in IR/UV/Night Vision gear with 10X zoom, auto targeting and auto tracking and ability to take hardcopy pictures that can be used for data analysis. Most prosthetics would have normal human abilities but military tech stuff would probably have more abilities than us civs and thus would be "More human than human"

Genetic Engineering was the whole point of Replicants in Blade Runner. Instead of hardware androids they built genetically engineered humans for military and labor tasks.

The problem was the Replicants did not have the advantage of a childhood learning to how to deal with situations and learning to deal with their emotions. Thus they were given a five year life span. Some when their end was coming didnt want to die and went on a killing spree or simply ran.

Thats when a "Bladerunner" was called in. Basically a cop liscensed to "retire" Replicants. Retirement usually meant a bullet through a vital part of the body be it a heart, lung, or head.

Thing is it's actually not that difficult to regrow an eye, it simply takes careful placement of the proper stem cells to begin the reconstruction process. In the video posted earlier, it showed treatment on patients with deteriorated pieces of tissue, and showed how the body can naturally heal itself of many wounds, it simply needs a trigger, which they found can come from liposuction fluid, yes that's right, stem cells out of liposuction fluid. The eye is much more complex to regrow than most parts of the body, but it's still possible, and probably rather cheap.

On the terms of military hardware I doubt many soldiers would willingly give up an eye for a fake one and if it only applied to people who lost their eyes in combat then they would seem like better soldiers, and that leads to a situation where it becomes successful to expose soldiers to shrapnel more often to get them to opt for replacement parts. With genetic technology how ever, you could for example replicate the effects of night vision that dogs have, or use the aforementioned dream state overlay for recon picture taking, though then soldiers are at risk more so if they get captured because they'll want to destroy the brain rather than a camera to get rid of information.

If they got the tech down and working id gladly give up an eye for a prosthetic that could serve as a unit identifier and low light capable vision source.
Its bad enough trying to stay connected with not only your own squad but associated units in a mix environment (ING/IA. Foreign coalition, PMC, op-for and civilians) but it gets worse when you through in smoke noise, terrible light conditions and malfunctioning comms and electronics equipment. If they could make it work id be the first in line.

If there are still malfunctioning comms and electronics who is to say whether or not the eye will malfunction or not as well? It's also rather hard to protect from EMP side effects as Faraday cages will obscure vision. Given the choice of an organic version or a tech version, which would you invest in?