We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Contact lenses that double up as computer screens Another for the Ain’t Capitalism Great collection:
Thanks to the advent of smart phone technologies, many of us already carry the internet with us everywhere we go. But now, scientists have created the world’s first wirelessly powered, computerized contact lens with an integrated LED display. That’s right – the same access to information afforded us by the technology in our pockets could soon come to us via devices that rest directly on our corneas.
Here.
By wearing a pair of such lenses, you could presumably receive stuff in 3D.
Inevitably, a lot more work will be needed to turn this dream into a reality. But, you know, … wow!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Vernor Vinge strikes again! He wrote a novel where people also interacted with their computers by their contact lenses! The title had ‘rainbow’ in it. And he set it about ten years from now, so we might all be ‘wearing’ them by then….
(Mr. Vinge wrote some interesting books about the expansion of computing power, and power available to the average person, in the 1980es. He first put me onto the idea of the Singularity- which hasn’t occured. Still, they were interesting books.)
Eric Drexler and I had heated discussions on the date… I used to think he was wrong and thought it might be the second half of this century; I later came around to his position of a date of 2030-2050. I think we are on track for somewhere around Ray Kurzweil’s pick of 2045.
I had a thought about this once: apparently the eye is constantly moving in tiny jigs that make the image pan over the retina, which is apparently required lest the image stop being registered. Would computer-screen contacts undermine that effect, since presumably the image on the screen would move with the eye?
Dale, you might know this- can we yet make a neutron from a proton and an electron? I ask, because if we can do this, then we’ll be able to fabricate any element we want by harvesting sunlight and plasma in Space!
I’ve suggested previously that we could refuel ships by cooling plasma back into hydrogen gas that could be sold to spaceships. If we could manufacture neutrons, and find a way to control them, then humans will solve all problems of scarcity!
Something to think about, at least.
The great thing about Capitalism is that it will force this invention to provide a full display and be comfortable on the eye while doing so, or die in the marketplace, just as did many a past invention that seemed a “cool” idea at the time but was not worthwhile in practice.
I wore contact lenses daily for many years (and still often use them). I would MUCH rather be able to get my heads-up display via regular glasses, which I can put on or take off as I please, while wearing contacts or not. If they can make a real display small enough to fit into contact lenses, they can certainly make an excellent display within spectacle lenses that you can also see through to keep an eye on the real-world beyond your nose. Versions of such a product (the spectacles-mounted heads-up display) have existed for several years, but by now they should be compact, high-def with stereo sound temples, completely wireless (bluetooth, perhaps) and very inexpensive. So why aren’t we all not wearing them, yet?
I worry about what might happen to the eye during a lightning strike or EMP event.
tom, we’ll only sell them to blind people! No need to worry about eye-movements then.
Imagine the ‘fun’ if your screens crash! “Is it night already?”
Seems we are entering the Baroque Economy.
Some cute but impractical.
The novel is Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, and it is very good.
I imagine the image would have move in the opposite direction to your eye in order to appear stable. And I wonder about focusing. The one in the link has one pixel, so there are still plenty of problems to solve.
The Charles Stross novel Accelerando describes a similar interface using head-up-display glasses. This seems technically a lot easier — in fact a prototype should be possible *today*, which makes me wonder if anyone has done it. Ah yes, they have. Almost.
Fashion might be a minor hurdle…but only a minor one.
Just wait until you get ads for ED medicine in Swahili showing up in your peripheral vision.
OTOH, a personal HUD wouldn’t be bad. Lots of uses there.
I suspect that the reason we haven’t seen much progress on the glasses is because they are of somewhat limited utility. Contact lenses with a similar function may face the same issue.
But I am the same person who thinks that ipads (but not smartphones) are just a fad anyway so YMMV
Richard every notebook should be a tablet with an option for a keyboard. A tablet have the landscape/portrait screen option that notebooks lack and that is a big advantage for them. So i think that is where we are heading.
luckylucky: You may be right. Tablets just seem to be an answer to a question nobody was asking to my mind (Other than “What’s the next cool tech thing I can blow some money on”). They have been tried in the past and except for a few niche applications have not gained ground and I don’t believe that’s just because “the technology just isn’t there yet”.
I travel quite a bit and everything that I’ve seen done with an Ipad, I can do perfectly well with my smartphone which also fits nicely into my pants pocket. All I need to do is hold the screen a little closer. For serious work, I dig into my rucksack and pull out my Thinkpad, Maybe the Ipad might be handy for people who would tend to go for large print books.
Which is not to say I hate Ipads or that I’m saying that anyone’s perceived reasons for having them are incorrect, it’s just how I see things.
WRT the singularity, whilst that is a cool sounding idea, I think it behooves us to recall predictions of disastrous unsustainable exponential population growth and how that has failed to materialise and how that might inform our understanding of such a purported process.
I agree on tablets…I went through a phase of wanting one, until I realised that I would never be able to afford one that can do all the things my phone can do (contract subsidized, you see) and also that I really, really missed a proper mouse. My first smartphone had a trackpad as well as touch screen and that was lovely but I haven’t seen one since. In the end I got around to making my wife’s old laptop work properly (freezes with Ubuntu, stable on Fedora) which cost me approximately £0.
But, head-up contacts? That I would pay for. All those augmented reality applications that require you to look like an idiot walking around with your phone in front on your face suddenly become very very practical. and I already wear contact lenses so it’s win-win.
It is very nice.Very effective blog post. thank you for sharing!