William H. Dobelle - Literature and Popular Media

Literature and Popular Media

• Robert Frenay called Dobelle's success "the first meaningful demonstration of artificial vision" in his 2006 work Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things.
• Andy Clark mentions the "Dobelle Eye" in Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (Pg. 124, Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Dobelle is discussed in Ramez Naam's critically acclaimed More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Published Aug. 2010).
• Ross Heaven and Simon Buxton discuss Dobelle and his success with patient Jens Naumann in their 2005 book Darkness Visible: Awakening Spiritual Light through Darkness Meditation.
• W. Andrew Robinson references Dobelle along with others from Johns Hopkins University in The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young.
• A description of Dobelle's artificial eye provided on page 169 of William Lyon's Matters of the Mind (Published in 2001).
• Dobelle's methods are explained in the Handbook of Neuroprosthetic Methods (Biomedical Engineering) edited by Warren E. Finn and Peter G. LoPresti.
• Dobelle's successes are discussed in Brian Clegg's Upgrade Me: Our Amazing Journey to Human 2.0 (Pages 228-230, Published in 2008).
• His research is mentioned in The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain by Robert Pepperell.
• Some aspects of Dr. Dobelle's methods are challenged in The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future, by Joanne Morra and Journal of Visual Culture editor Marquard Smith (Published: The MIT Press, December 2005).
• Dobelle is briefly discussed in Victor D. Chase's Shattered Nerves: How Science Is Solving Modern Medicine's Most Perplexing Problem (Pages 200-201, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
• Dobelle is profiled in Simon Ings' A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision.
• In Donald G. Oakley's In Search of the Self, the award-winning former newspaper columnist explains how he was personally impacted by an exchange of letters between himself and Dr. Dobelle (Chapter 6). The novel chronicles Oakley's journey to deepen his understanding of the burgeoning field known as consciousness studies, as well as explores the evolution of society's understanding of the brain.
• Neurologist Richard Restak explores how Dobelle's design has shaped the future of artificial vision in The New Brain: How the Modern Age is Rewiring Your Mind (Rodale Books, 2004)
• Dobelle is profiled in Patrick Yearly's They Were Giants 2006 alongside leaders and pioneers in various other fields.
• Dobelle's early research and final accomplishments in the field of artificial vision are extensively examined throughout the textbook Visual Prosthetics: Physiology, Bioengineering, Rehabilitation (edited by Gislin Dagnelie).
• Dobelle is profiled by Hugh Darrow in the popular video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
• In Susanne D. Coates' Neural Interfacing: Forging the Human Machine Connection (Synthesis Lectures on Biomedical Engineering), she claims "ith the passing of Dr. Dobelle in 2004, 30 years of work developing the "Dobelle Artificial Vision System" came to a halt. There are a few groups who continue to experiment with cortical vision implants but no system like Dobelle's is presently available" (40).
• Profiled in several editions of The Guinness Book of World Records under the heading First Artificial Eye.