The optic nerve doesn't carry individual pixel information. There are 100 million rods and cones, and only 1 million axons traveling up the optic nerve.

These axons make up the optic nerve behind the eye. The problems with cutting this nerve and connecting another look insurmountable.

1. the optic nerve axons are long extensions of ganglion cells, but the cell bodies are in the retina. You can't cut these axons and expect them to grow back because the part you cut off will die and the ganglion cells could not figure out the precise path from point A in the retina to point A-prime in the base of the brain. CNS tissue doesn't regenerate very well.

2. the transmitted image isn't a pixel map, but more a collection of motion and orientation vectors your brain assembles and learns to associate with, then recognize as, your mother's face. Learning at this level is a skill we lose in the first few years of childhood. Adult amblyopia is very hard to treat.

Given that we're cracking the code, given that there IS a pixel-type pattern of locations we can map in the visual cortex, it's more practical to project vision onto a mesh network of microelectrodes that make direct contact at the surface of the brain. Cybervision will happen before we can transplant/reconnect central nervous system tissue.

The skill necessary to "re-grow" vision will also enable monsters among us to create their own monsters.