Structure of the Optical Nerves ??

[Hawley K. Rising III]

In message <42kme5$hgr at mserv1.dl.ac.uk> - Eugene Leitl 
<ui22204 at sunmail.lrz-muenchen.de> writes:
>
>> : Hi,
>> 
>> : I have studied Electronics.
>> 
>> : A friend of mine is blind on one eye. Isn't it possible
>> : To connect light sensors (or a complete optical camera chip)
>> : to the optical nerve in the eye ?
>
>The problem is: if the retina's gone, you have to mimick the
>its function with a circuit/algorithm (I totally ignore interacing
>difficulties here). The information compression factor is 126:1, a lot 
>of processing horsepower (well beyond any current/near future 
>supercomputer according to Moravec. And he's too optimistic, imo). 

Why is this information compression, and why is it beyond a supercomputer?
I've seen no information which indicates that it goes 126:1 *retaining* all
the information, only that its 126:1.

Hawley Rising
rising at a.crl.com