WEB CHUTNEY

Rob Spence, a Toronto filmmaker has turned himself into a real-life version of the bionic hero, after having his glass eyeball replaced with a camera.

Rob Spence lost his sight in one eye at the age of nine. He was shooting a pile of cow dung, when he held the gun incorrectly against his eye which left him legally blind in one eye.

But now at the age of 43, he finally decided to remove is infected eye ball with a camera.

“Literally everybody [said] it as a joke — people doing the surgery say, ‘Oh, you should get an eye camera.’ The idea is so out-there in pop culture and science fiction” he told the New York Post.

Mr Spence, who calls himself the Eyeborg, was interviewed in the new Showtime true-life series called Dark Net.

“The two reactions are, ‘Wow, that’s so cool’ — and, after a few moments’ reflection, ‘but that’s so creepy,’ ” Spence says. “I’ve actually started wondering, do we want to have constant video of our lives? It’s just another data set. And I don’t know the answer, but I think no, we don’t want that. But it’s coming anyway.”

“When the eye increases in temperature, which it does when I put it in the eye socket, the frequency of the video transmission increases slightly . . . [so we] can’t find the video signal,” he explains.

For now, Spence can get about one to three minutes of shooting time before the eye-cam overheat. The eye camera is equipped with a micro radio-frequency transmitter.

The camera is not connected to the optic nerve so Mr Spence can’t see out of it either. The camera can also be switched on and off with a single tap.

“[Like] asking somebody what . . . they think about love, but really look in their eyes,” he says. “If you’re looking at somebody or especially get into eye contact a little bit, then it can get awkward, but interesting, and go a little further that way.”