I am absolutely fascinated by eyewear that is designed to augment our most perfect natural abilities to visually process the world around us. I have much less than perfect natural vision abilities. Some of my most stressful dreams have something to do with driving a speeding car without my glasses. I fantasize about waking up some day without needing to put corrective lenses on. I’m horribly envious of 20/20 vision. And thus, when frolicking through science journals, I am helplessly captivated by contacts and glasses that do even more than ‘fix’ vision.
For instance, over on NewScientist (back in 2011 – hello GReader starred list) there are glasses that read the body language and expression of the person you are interacting with and give you clues about the best way to proceed in your conversation. And then on BBC News, animal trials are wrapping up for contacts that stream emails and text messages directly over our vision of the world around us. I imagine a blending of our physical and online existences. I imagine not knowing which is which until the glasses are off. It makes me think of the anime Dennō Coil. It’s a really good anime. I have to watch it through again. And lest you think my mind is not just a repetitive circle, I am going to dig up some posts from the old Bean on exactly the same topic. After the…
Works referenced:
Adee, Sally (2011) “Specs that see right through you.” NewScientist. issue 2819. Online.
Old Bean:
20 May 2008 14:52 EDT | Posted by LeEMS
Electronic face masks and animated prophecy
A frog design concept mask could allow us to customize the reality we would see and smell to our own liking (via Boing Boing.) People also wearing masks could see avatar projections of what we want to look like, and people not wearing the masks would get to see a creepy reptilian looking face cover. Now, I can’t quite explain how I’m so excited about this–I can’t even walk down the street with headphones in because I would rather have a handle on what’s really going on. But this electronic concept mask is like something that walked right out of a great anime that I’ve seen. Denno Coil is set in a world long after the use of electronic reality interface glasses has been embraced by the public. Instead of overlaying reality with a better looking skin, however, the glasses in Denno Coil add more to what’s already there. Your neoPet follows you around in the Denno Coil world and computer viruses make you sick. Perhaps the key to creating a fully interactive virtual reality will be to combine it with our interactions with reality first. And then eventually we will happily not know which is which.