SynapticNulship

The Sept. 2010 issue of Scientific American is all about The End (at first I thought it meant SciAm’s end). In a provocative article “Good Riddance: Human Creations the World Would Be Better Off Without,” SciAm writers roast some technologies they don’t like.

The End.

The comments for that article express some displeasure, e.g. (Telrunya at 04:36 PM on 08/23/10):

Sa sinks to a new low with malthusian luddite philosophy.

It doesn’t help that they have a paywall for that article either. I read the print version while I drank coffee at the Harvard Co-op, so it was free for me.

However, the article is not at all luddite. The selections may be arbitrary, but there is value in pointing out that technologies that are chosen or popular are not necessarily the best or safest. Upcoming alternatives are provided.

For instance, the article doesn’t try to convince us that space travel is bad, in fact quite the opposite–the point they attempted to make was that the space shuttle is not a vehicle that can take us to the moon or another planet, and ideally its retirement will help the fervor to make new spacecraft.

Why Get Rid of Human Drivers?

Although not an invention, SciAm mentions “human drivers” as something we would be better off without. I agree with them partially.

Typical human driver...

According to WolframAlpha, there are 1.189 million deaths worldwide per year due to road traffic accidents (as of 2002).

However, those deaths are not just because the drivers are humans. Partially the problem might be the infrastructure–the design of the roads, the environment, and the very concept of roads and vehicles.

Why I Think We Can’t Get Rid of Human Drivers

First of all, it’s far more than a technology, it’s a part of our culture. To get rid of human drivers is not just to ban human-operated vehicles, it’s to ban a freedom that we have.

Freedom!

There’s also the social issues such as status. If humans didn’t care about freedom or status we could just switch to trains completely. But that’s not going to happen.

Status(?)

The best compromise, which could be enabled by technology, is that most if not all vehicles have an automatic driver mode.

Science fiction has shown this user experience from time to time–the car drives itself on the freeway, or when the person is busy. But on old fashioned local roads, or for fun, the user enables manual driver mode.

We have made great strides in technology in the past few decades for autonomous cars. It would, of course, be much easier if we could change the roads to be machine friendly.

Image credits: Dark Roasted Blend and Plan59.

Crosspost with my other blog, In the Eye of the Brainstorm

The great drama of the next few decades will unfold under the crossed stars of the analog and the digital.

—Steven Johnson, Interface Culture

Credit: urbanartcore.eu, CC by-nc-sa 2.0

Credit: Brian Despain

Credit: E. Benyaminso via A Journey Round My Skull, CC by- 2.0

Credit: J (mtonic.com), CC by- 2.0

Credit: J (mtonic.com), CC by- 2.0

Credit: Roberto Rizzato, CC by-nc 2.0

Credit: ARE MOKKELBOST

I took a nap yesterday after being desperately overtired. I immediately started dreaming of some landscapes and/or objects which appeared in polygon format, like triangle meshes on a computer. At the time I thought how odd that was but that’s all I can remember. This experience is the opposite of my normal dreaming, in that I remember the beginning instead of the end of the dream(s).

triangle mesh with wireframes (Credit: d_effekt, CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic)

triangle meshes (Credit: toxi, CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic)

What ever happened to head-mounted displays?

In the 1980s and 1990s, head-mounted displays (HMDs) were sexy (well, almost sexy).  They were part of the clunky-but-promising virtual reality world.  In this ancient video from 1992 you can see some examples of gloves and HMDs, which were the pieces of hardware that the public most associated with virtual reality.

But as the 3D rendering software got better in the 1990s, and video card improvement accelerated, people were ok with just 2D projections of 3D on the same old monitors.  The monitors did get better but the culture didn’t lean towards head mounted displays, despite that some games had support for stereoscopic hardware (where the left eye display is slightly different than right eye display).  Nintendo even tried that market and failed.

In the 1990s I had hoped to make a stereoscopic HMD with Sega Gamegear LCDs, but I never got around to it and, like many, forgot about HMDs.  Then in 2005 I discovered that HMD technology was still alive and improving.

For the past 5 or so years, the availability of new microdisplays—such as organic LEDs—has made possible lightweight, thin, and low-power HMDs.

eMagin Z800 3DVisor (binocular HMD with gyro sensors)

Companies take those microdisplays and package them with compact optics and computer interfaces.

Myvu Sports Viewer (no longer made?)

MyVu Viewer used in surgery

Most of these HMDs have standard interfaces for video (such as VGA, iPhone, Zune, etc.) and USB control/input, and are powered off of the USB connection.

Vuzix Wrap 920

MyVu Crystal

HMDs are typically a cornerstone of wearable computers.  But the wearable computers that have been culturally integrated are cell phones, music players, etc., all of which have their own screen.  You can attach HMDs to iPhones, Zunes, etc. (as shown in some of these photos), but to my knowledge that is not popular and may never be.  However, wearable HMDs are becoming more popular for military and industrial use.

Vuzix TacEye (used with a Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle)

Liteye LE-450A

The question is, will HMDs ever grow popular for commercial consumers?  Will we get a killer app for them?  Or will personal video technology have to wait until more invasive interfaces are perfected, such as displays directly on contact lenses?

Whatever the case, interfaces will have to compete with the massive appeal and usage of “heads down” displays such as cell phones.  Devices like iPhones, Droids, Galaxies, etc. can even be used for rudimentary types of augmented reality.  Perhaps display devices that enable better augmented reality will be the next ones to take over.  Already at least one company has an HMD with cameras specifically for augmented reality (it’s “coming soon”):

Vuzix Wrap 920AR