Hacking our senses
Jawbone had an announcement at CES 2008 telling you to trade in your old bluetooth headset for one of theirs at the booth. This got me to thinking about what the next step is. I think active noise canceling will become more common. What would be even cooler I think is a cochlear implant. This would be functionally equivalent to an audio jack direct to your ear. I think the jawbone name comes partially from the idea of sub-vocalization microphones. Use the mike pickup from the implant, assuming it is still external or could be made so, and you have all the input/output you need for conversation. I could envision hooking this to a bluetooth transceiver for phone calls, but what would be far more interesting is a digital assistant interface. You could have access to a constant stream of information without those around you being aware of it. Consider a small computer hooked up to this as well as an unobtrusive video camera. Add a little face recognition and you could be prompted with the name of the person (or object) you are currently looking at. Perhaps, you could turn up the information level to get additional details. Cochlear implants are relatively new (only about 50 years old), but have advanced rapidly.
I like the idea of “enhancements” to my senses as well. A recent article describes other things that could be added. Most of these would only get more sophisticated and smaller/less noticeable as time goes on. I was very intrigued with having a magnetic sense. I’m curious what other hacks to our senses science can come up with.
[...] hack the senses, by enhancing something already there. This dovetails with my earlier thoughts on hacking the senses. I’m still leery of getting Lasik surgery, but I want better living through technology. [...]