Comment on Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported
deranger@lemmy.world 11 months agoI don’t see how complex electronic implants can be designed to function on the same timelines as “inactive pieces of metal”.
Considering the already existing issues with inactive implants, maybe electronics shouldn’t be allowed in implants until they can demonstrate reliability.
I don’t disagree with holding those implants to high standards and reliability, but think of it this way:
My iPod is great, and has worked great for over a decade and it’s still going strong. However, I don’t think it’ll be around long enough to get passed down to my grandkids, but my wrench set probably will.
That’s my point. You can’t hold complex electronics to the same lifespan as a wrench, or replacement hip, no matter how well built they are.
I think if you look around hospitals and science labs you will find there is some old electrical equipment that is still used because of how reliable it is.
When we want we can make lighbulbs that last a century
Space probe Voyager 1 (1977) is still communicating with earth from beyond the solar system, Space tech is a good general example of advanced technology that is designed to keep functioning, EDIT: After 46 years it had a computer glitch just today. It was designed to last only 5 years.
Other examples include bakelite Telephones from the 30s and Radios from even earlier still being fully operational.
Incorporating electrical equipment in implant and prosthesis should be just fine, but it should come ready out of the box with no need for updates whatsoever and the software that is prevalent open source so you don’t need to rely on a for profit company to maintain your health post surgery.
You are not doing an accurate comparison here.
You are ignoring all the stuff that died early (survivor bias). You are ignoring the maintenance crews that keep that stuff going which you know isn’t the same as performing surgery. You are ignoring replacement parts. You are ignoring the conditions of operations, the human body is wet. You are ignoring the changes of electronics that made them less reliable but not prone to giving people lead and mercury poisoning. You are ignoring the amount of work being asked to perform from the electronics.
Also Voyager was not designed to last 5 years the engineers involved admitted that. They planned for it to last much longer but NASA management didn’t want to oversell it.
Developing things that are too robust and reliable means you run the risk of saturating your market and then going out of business.
Developing things that are intended to break down or fail only requires a competent enough legal team to ensure that your company is not liable for that happening approximately sooner than when your disclaimer no one reads states the customer may expect that to happen by.
Developing software that is bug free, ie, robust, violates both of the proceeding rules of private enterprise in a ‘free market’ capitalist society.
You want people to be dependent on software updates so maybe you can earn a subscription fee of some kind, or have the ability to remove pre-existing features in the future and then offer their return for a one time or recurring purchase.
Also, developing robust code that does not fail requires testing and sometimes extensive redevelopment, which is expensive, requires paying competent programmers good salaries, and cuts into the impossibly fast initial development timeframe the idiot manager with a business degree promised to the VP.
After years working various programming and data analytics jobs for various tech firms, I can tell you that no one cares about making a good product or delivering a good service, maybe other than the actual people designing it. Everyone else only cares about whether it either makes money or earns them social status of some kind.
I am 34 and am now far too jaded to ever attempt to work any tech job as an employee ever again. The number of times I have explained to managers with no background in computer technology that no, that is a bad idea for all these reasons, then one of those reasons massively delays a project, forces another team to make their project compatible with mine due to absurd imposed design limitations, or outright makes the whole project fail… and then all the blame is pinned on me for a failure I told them would happen if I listened to ‘their idea’, is so vast that I am just going to make my own video game now.
I have never met an experienced programmer who has not had this happen to them countless times.
I get it. Most days I would love to get out of tech. Any given project I got half a dozen sales people and PEs who want to trash my software/electrical designs. It is commonplace for me to downgrade my work. Giving customers a less reliable more expensive system. Given how much of my work is for the government there is zero mystery where cost disease is coming from.
I just worry that if I walk away no one will stop them.
Yup sounds look one of the good reasons to hate on capitalism. The guys able to create reliable long living stuff should be praised to the highest degree. Its why I believe job/career should not be attached to survival income. So much energy gets wasted because stuff is designed to break. So much talent is wasted because too nice things are not profitable
What you describe is exactly why I don’t think electronics should be in implants. “Dumb” implants already have issues; adding electronics will only increase the issues.
SCB@lemmy.world 11 months ago
if someone is willing to pay $150k to see blurry grey dots I don’t see how it’s anyone’s business but there’s to ban that.
This is a pretty wild take you’re making here. You’re essentially telling anyone who has received a derp-brain implant for Parkinson’s to go kick rocks.
ringwraithfish@startrek.website 11 months ago
Just a thought, but with deep brain implants aren’t the electronics separate from the electrodes that actually go in the brain? That would make them a little more accessible without needing to do brain surgery every time.
Maybe that’s the middle ground for this situation at this moment in time: make the sensors/electrodes/static components needed for the health issue follow the same life+20 years and separate the processing pieces into a container that could still be surgically stored under the skin, but more easily accessed for maintenance, repair, replacement.
Theoretically, this could allow 3rd parties to come in and leverage existing installations by leaving the lifetime components in place and replacing the processing unit.
This could be the beginning of human device engineering standards similar to what IEEE does for computers and technology.