Byte Me by Marv Dealy
Bionic Eyesight in Your Future
Just when you thought you’ve heard everything, along come some pretty smart folks who say that, with some tiny circuitry and LEDs, they can make contact lenses that will make bionic eyesight available at a store near you.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the Terminator movies had sort of bionic eyesight that showed him the world with data superimposed over the view, enhancing his understanding of what he was looking at, such as whether the clothes someone was wearing would fit him.
A professor and his students have succeeded in making contact lenses that, while they won’t immediately provide the eyesight of a hawk, hint at things to come, such as a running subtitle in your field of vision that translates the foreign language you’re hearing into a language you understand or puts a large arrow in front of you telling you which way to turn at the upcoming intersection.
In an article at the IEEE.org website, Babak Parviz writes of other potential uses such as monitoring a person’s health. For example, a contact lens might be constructed that monitored glucose levels so diabetics could keep track of their blood-sugar levels without having to prick a finger and measure as is done today.
Since a contact lens in the wearer’s eye remains in contact with body fluids for extended periods of time, Parviz wonders if, outfitted with a wireless transmitter, the lens couldn’t relay accurate information to doctors and nurses in an instant, without having to wait for test results which we all know can take time, and be either inconclusive or incorrect.
Parviz goes on to talk about how the problem of focusing the image so that the user could actually focus on it, considering we have trouble focusing on anything within about 10 centimeters of the surface of our eye. He says, “All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place. We’ve tested our first few prototypes on animals, proving that the platform can be safe. What we need to do now is show all the subsystems working together, shrink some of the components even more, and extend the RF power harvesting to higher efficiencies and to distances greater than the few centimeters we have now. We also need to build a companion device that would do all the necessary computing or image processing to truly prove that the system can form images on demand. We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision.
“The true promise of this research is not just the actual system we end up making, whether it’s a display, a biosensor, or both. We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as we’re concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see, and beyond.” (read Parviz’s very long article at tinyurl.com/l4ukfy)
Browser wars on again? I’m not ready to say that we’re heading back to the “good old days” of Netscape dominating the Internet browser market, but recent reports are that Microsoft’s Internet Exploder market share has dropped to about two thirds of the market, down almost nine percent in the last twelve months. In second place is Mozilla’s Firefox, with a bit less than one quarter of the market. Apple’s Safari is a distant third, with about five percent of the market, while Opera and Google’s Chrome each have fewer than three percent of the market.
These measurements are from a company called Net Applications, and were taken prior to the release of Windows 7 from Microsoft, or Apple’s Snow Leopard. Additionally, the flood of netbooks recently hitting the market with Windows XP installed may not be fully reflected in these numbers.
Come the end of the upcoming holiday shopping rush, what with lots of new Windows 7 equipped computers moving off the shelves, Google pushing more Chrome browsers with their new distribution strategy (Chrome will be standard on Sonys now), and Apple’s new Snow Leopard making its way onto more computers, we may see even more surprises in the first part of 2010.
Ten habits of superstitious computer users – Jaime Henriquez’s blog at TechRepublic.com has a great list of superstitions related to computers. He says “For some users, the computer is unfathomable – leading them to make bizarre assumptions about technology and the effect of their own actions.” (tinyurl.com/lwmal9)
Henriquez starts with the user that refuses to reboot his computer, saying that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. He goes on to talk about computer users with excessive fear of upgrades, mindless repetition of commands (if it doesn’t print the first time, just keep pressing Ctrl+P), and assuming the computer is always right. He says of the later “This user fails to recognize that the modern computer is more like television than the Delphic oracle. Even the most credulous people recognize that not everything they see on television is true, but some users think the computer is different. ‘Why did you click on that pop-up?’ ‘It said I had a virus and that I had to.’”
Henriquez also discusses the computer user who really believes the computer is possessed, or that the computer sees all and knows all, or the computer has a personality and hates them, or that it’s all magic and memorizing the exact right phrase will make the computer always work correctly.
Next time you start beating your head on the desk because your computer isn’t doing what you think it should, don’t take it so hard. You probably didn’t break it – there’s a lot of stuff tucked away in that little box, and a lot of ways for things to go wrong; don’t be so quick to blame yourself.
Email questions to Marv at: marv.dealy@throck.com.
Marv Dealy founded Throckmorten Enterprises in San Francisco in 1988 and moved the company to Big Oak Flat in 1996. Open Monday through Friday, 9-ish to 5-ish (209-962-7308. The company provides technical support for HP’s webinars, professional website design, computer repairs, and has recently begun providing wireless ISP services. The company also publishes the Yosemite Gazette.
PHOTO: In recent trials, rabbits wore lenses containing metal circuit structures for 20 minutes at a time with no adverse effects. Photo credit: University of Washington.
