An end to glasses?


Glasses are, without a doubt, an important technological enhancer of our senses, though rather than enhance, what they do might more accurately be described as correcting nature. Glasses are sort of like handicapping in a sports event - they bring each of us up to a starting point of equal footing (should that be "sighting"?). Glasses that permitted us Superman-style X-ray vision would be a real enhancement. And as much as I might not feel that I need them today, memory enhancing glasses, might well me in demand a few years from now. Technological retro that I am, I'm content to bump into someone and honestly say that I don't remember who he or she is, rather than having to be hooked up to a machine (no matter how small) that scans the face of the person coming toward me, runs that scan through a list of all the people I know or have met, and then whispers in my ear who that person is, doing all this before we pass each other in a corridor.

But it appears that we're fast approaching the stage at which the historically important technological achievement of glasses (the first magnifying glass dates approximately from the year 1000) will become another of those hard to grasp descriptions of what life was like during our own childhood - like what it was like to live without a television, or a cellular. After all, who's going to need glasses if with the aid of a simple laser operation we can have our vision repaired for life?



Go to: Really a part of me.