Dr. David Eagleman

And then people worked on this.

The first major paper was in 1969 in Nature.

A guy named Paul Bakirida took blind people and he put them in a dental chair.

And he had this thing that would poke them in the back, a grid of 40 by 40 little solenoids that would poke in the back.

And he set up a video camera.

Whatever the camera saw, you would feel that in your back.

So if it's looking at a triangle, you feel that triangle poked in your back.

If it's looking at a face, you feel the face.

So...

Blind people got pretty good at doing this, especially once he let them control the camera so they could move the camera any way they wanted.

People got really good at being able to tell what was going on.

No, they were sitting in this dental chair.

And that's exactly it.

In 1969, the technology was really clunky and heavy and got hot and whatever, and there was no way to make it portable in a meaningful way.

But as time has gone on, we've been able to do that now.

And so Paul Bakirida's research – he passed away some years ago, but his research has continued –

with something called the brain port, which is, again, for blind people.

So with the brain port, the way this works is you're wearing this little camera on your head on glasses, and you've got this little electrical grid on your tongue.

And so whatever the camera is seeing, you feel that on your tongue.

It feels like pop rocks.