General The Blind Man Who Taught Himself to See

tom_mai78101

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Daniel Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark.

The first thing Daniel Kish does, when I pull up to his tidy gray bungalow in Long Beach, California, is make fun of my driving. "You're going to leave it that far from the curb?" he asks. He's standing on his stoop, a good 10 paces from my car. I glance behind me as I walk up to him. I am, indeed, parked about a foot and a half from the curb.

The second thing Kish does, in his living room a few minutes later, is remove his prosthetic eyeballs. He does this casually, like a person taking off a smudged pair of glasses. The prosthetics are thin convex shells, made of acrylic plastic, with light brown irises. A couple of times a day they need to be cleaned. "They get gummy," he explains. Behind them is mostly scar tissue. He wipes them gently with a white cloth and places them back in.

Kish was born with an aggressive form of cancer called retinoblastoma, which attacks the retinas. To save his life, both of his eyes were removed by the time he was 13 months old. Since his infancy – Kish is now 44 – he has been adapting to his blindness in such remarkable ways that some people have wondered if he's playing a grand practical joke. But Kish, I can confirm, is completely blind.


Read more here.

Interesting read.
 
Wow, it's pretty amazing what the human is capable of!
 
Definitely interesting, but this technique has been around for a while. It's a nice story, but nothing new.
 
this guy is amazing, the only thing that I was disappointed by is the lack of support..
 
"He's regarded by some in the blind community with deep veneration. Others, like a commenter on the National Federation of the Blind's listserv, consider him 'disgraceful' for promoting behavior such as tongue clicking that could be seen as off-putting and abnormal."

They can't be serious. The dude's blind. He doesn't even have eyes. Why worry about looking 'abnormal' when you definitely are?

I hate people.
 
You cannot conclude from this article how most people treat him. It's up to the tone and wording of the journalist to control the way you feel about this guy. The word "disgraceful" is that of the author, not necessarily anyone else. In other words, there is nothing new here, only the tone at which it is presented.
 
Am I the only one who tried clicking for at least 10 minutes after reading this?
Just to feel what it's like; I think I'm a degenerate human because I failed =/
 
Am I the only one who tried clicking for at least 10 minutes after reading this?
Just to feel what it's like; I think I'm a degenerate human because I failed =/

haha I wish there was an audio file somewhere that lets me listen to his "click", as I tried that as well, but my computer is a bit too noisy for me
 
He's not the only one that can do this. There's some kid I read about somewhere that did something similar, and somehow manages to play video games.
 
Next level professional gamers will be blind
 
I will impressed when I see a blind tower worker.
 
I have tried the clicking thing... *hangs head low* yeah I don't even know how they do it.

Someone should make them a clicker so that they don't need to use their mouthes. The clicker could use a frequency that loses the least volume? or sounds most pleasant? or has different options? etc... They could wear it like a headlight or necklace or something.
 
Sounds like a good idea, Dan, but maybe the reason they're able to be so effective with it is because the sound originates in their mouth, where it echoes and reverberates throughout their body to make it much louder than if someone else made the sound even inches away from them. I feel like it has to be a self-made sound from the mouth in order for them to be able to use it for echolocation.

Also, the word 'disgraceful' was supposedly a quote from somebody else, not the author's own words, even if he did choose to use them in this article.
 
Someone should make them a clicker so that they don't need to use their mouthes.

you missed the part where they implemented it inside the white cane with high frequency, and also added a microphone + adapter for headphones
 
Google cars can drive themselves. Get with the times Firecat
 
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