A few years back he had airport security physically pull out wires out of him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/circuits/14MANN...
(apparently "a few years back" is 10 years ago. Yikes.)
Edit: a link to an old (1997) article about his glasses:
Until someone can provide a good reason why this would be chronically implanted into him, I think this all smells like hype to me.
And why no pictures of the guy trying to grab his goggles off his face? Surely there would be a snapshot somewhere of that?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/airport-securi...
From reading the New York Times article, it doesn't sound like Mann had any "implants" "forcibly removed". It sounds like they tore electrodes off his body. In other words, they pulled tape off his skin, and it caused bleeding. Unpleasant, sure, but it's not like they strapped him down and used a drill to extract chips from his brain. More like they pulled off a Band-Aid too fast.
The reason that he ended up in a wheelchair was that since he no longer had his cyborg navigation gear, he supposedly got confused while walking around the airport and hit his head on a pile of fire extinguishers. I don't even know where to start with that one.
And another comment, which may explain the doctor's note:
Years and years ago, when the earth was new, I was an undergrad at MIT and then-Media-Lab-graduate-student Mann spoke in a class I was taking. At the time, I believe he was trying to recruit people to do heavy-duty graphics work (i.e. when he moves his head side to side, his camera is taking discrete pictures of a room/building/whatever at different angles. He was working on algorithms to put them all together and make them coherent). Anyhow, the point is, I distinctly remember him saying that he got nauseous when he removed his visor. The reason was very simple. He spent all of his waking life (outside of the shower) in a 2D world. His body was so used to it, that living in 3D took some serious getting used to, and he would feel sick. My guess is that this is what happened. Ever feel like your eyes need some adjusting after staring at a 2D object (such as a movie theatre screen) for hours at a time? Now image doing that 24/7 for years and trying to re-adjust to the real world.
There was an experiment[1] that had participants wear vision-inverting glasses for a while. Eventually they started seeing everything right-side up through the glasses. In fact, their vision was upside down after they removed the glasses!! Although they re-adjusted after a little while, it'd certainly explain Mann's temporary disorientation and the subsequent need for a doctor's note.
Also, it'd be weird to conduct such experiments on yourself and not expect weird stuff like this to happen to you from time to time, especially when visiting foreign countries.
[1] George M. Stratton. Some preliminary experiments on vision. Psychological Review, 1896.
>As to the relation of the visual field to the observer, the feeling that the field was upside down remained in general throughout the experiment.
>On removing the glasses on the third day, there was no peculiar experience. Normal vision was restored instantaneously and without any disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects.
"Determined to find results, Stratton wore the telescoping glasses for eight days straight. By day four, his vision was upright (not inverted). However on day five, images appeared upright until he concentrated on them; then they became inverted again. By having to concentrate on his vision to turn it upside down again, especially when he knew images were hitting his retinas in the opposite orientation as normal, Stratton deduced his brain had reprocessed his vision and adapted to the changes in vision."
So perceptual adaptation is real, it just takes like a week to really kick in. For someone who had been wearing these glasses for years, I'm sure the effects would be much more intense.
EDIT: The paper that the follow up results were in might actually be "Stratton, G. (1897). Upright vision and the retinal image. Psychological Review, 4, 182-187"
I admit I'm not used to citing academic papers, I heard about this experiment back in high school anth/soc/psych so I just did my best to find a semi-credible reference.
I think because of the "polar bear in a blizzard" problem: you don't actually see anything informative.
"And here, ladies and gentleman, is a blurry hand covering up most of the camera's view! I promise it's someone trying to rip my glasses off!"
I don't get the point you are attempting to make. Are you doubting that he has in fact done this to himself?