Cutting Edge Technology is my thing and nothing pleases me more than hearing stories about new means of interfacing with your reality. Especially when evidence surfaces that suggests that Jamaica may have no choice but to adopt. This as products imported from abroad may already be bringing it anyway, such as the 3D Motion Capture Technology now a standard part of the Microsoft Xbox 360 as pointed out by fellow blogger Kelroy in Microsoft Kinect – fastest-selling consumer electronics device.
So recent development as it relates to successful testing of Contact lenses on rabbits that can connect to a smartphone and provide a virtual HUD (Heads up Display) overlay on your world are anything to go by, the idea of a wearable computer as I have it just got personal. In essence, AR (Augmented Reality)…albeit like 3D Glasses, I look like a complete dork [Americans and their colourful English!] and no one in their right mind would be caught wearing them in public!
This latest development was published in New Scientist and is based on the research of Babak Praviz of the University of Washington in Seattle. Speaking of this breakthrough, Babak Praviz spoke these words of achievement, quote: “We have demonstrated the operation of a contact lens display powered by a remote radio-frequency transmitter in free space and on a live rabbit. This verifies that antennas, radio chips, control circuitry, and micrometer-scale light sources can be integrated into a contact lens and operated on live eyes.”
Most interesting to me personally, as my series of articles on the Geezam Blog have been a fascination of wordplay with various means of making interface with computers more Natural and a lot like talking to interacting with other humans. My last article Siri and Kinect: Heralds of a coming world free of Remote Controls I pointed out that fact that Microsoft’s Kinect and Apple’s Siri need to meet up, standardize and give us a reason to be seen talking to our refrigerators, Television sets and making what may appear to be obscene gestures at them when they don’t want to obey our every whim and fancy.
I know I’d love that, albeit conversing with Siri on an Apple iPhone 4S, one of its major pluses as noted in my article Apple iPhone 4S Post Mortem – Siri Voice Assistant and iMessage Rock does look creepy, if not strangely neurotic. Still, computers becoming miniaturized thanks to pressure a la the ruminations in a speech by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs prognostication of a “Post-PC Era” are also a herald of Cutting Edge technology coming to Jamaica in a more rapid pace than the two year break we normally have.
Evidence of this miniaturization can be seen in the FX Technology’s Cotton Candy USB Stick Computer as recorded in my report titled FX Tech debuts Cotton Candy – Sweet Android Gingerbread USB Stick Mini PC, which by the way, reduced the Television Set to merely being a screen. This was also the premise of the Raspberry Pi Mini USB Stick computer, albeit aimed more at giving access to computing as opposed to commercial gain as noted in my ruminations in $25 Raspberry Pi Mini USB PC and the $22 Aakash Tablet – Computer Adoption on a Budget. But no word of the wearable computer had surface to fire my imagination on the same level as the Dick Tracy his wristwatch computer.
Save of course for a bit of a dalliance with the idea in the guise of the Apple iPod Nano Watch and the Phospor Reveal wristwatch in Apple iPod Nano vs Phosphor Reveal – Bling Bling, Playa. Not to mention the Open Architecture and Google Android powered (and hence Open Source!!) wristwatches as possible in WIMM Open Architecture Intelligent Wristwatch Platform – Android’s Tomorrow Never Dies.
So these revelations of research into making contact lenses that can directly connect to your smartphone via a Bluetooth connection fill me with much hope. This is how Augmented Reality should be deployed: AR (Augmented Reality) that is wearable, not in a clunky smartphone! If this the pace of research is anything to go by, like Microsoft Kinect and Apple’s Siri, Jamaicans who wear contact lenses and happen to have what I would pass as a smartphone i.e. Apple iPhones or touchscreen phones powered by Google Android OS may be the first to be seen making air gestures to interface with their smartphones.
As this tech may be made standard with most contact lens maker who are still looking for an extra gimmick to get persons to trade in glasses and adopt contact lenses. So Jamaicans have no choice but to follow the White Rabbit and see how far the Rabbit Hole Goes with wearable AR.