[ExI] [Tech] Goggles, or Projectors?

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Wed Jan 2 23:58:49 UTC 2008


A few weeks ago I read Charlie Stross's latest book, _Halting State_.
In my opinion the story itself wasn't as stimulating as some of his
previous work, but the mention of "Python 3000" hooked me into buying
it, and I found that my investment of money and time spent reading was
rewarding with a thoughtful projection of technology and society circa
2018.

A common feature of that world was the wear of goggles for augmented
reality by nearly everyone nearly all the time.  Now, I would be among
the first to augment my geek self with such goggles as soon as
price/performance comes into range, but I wonder whether that picture
will actually emerge.

[By the way, has anyone else noticed how hard it is to type "goggles"
without getting "googles"?]

Rather than wearing goggles, I wonder whether we may find much broader
preference for very small video projectors displaying high-resolution
images on any suitable surface and maybe compact scrollable screens as
the target for a scanning laser built into the front edge of portable
keyboards?

With reasonably advanced optics, sensors and computation, requirements
for planarity, incidence angle and even stability of the display
surface could be relaxed using dynamic compensation in the scanner.

Given the inherent discomfort of goggles, and worse, the interpersonal
isolation entailed by covering the eyes and part of the face, I
suspect the personal scanning laser projector may predominate.

Comments?

BTW, with suitably detailed public discussion of such technological
concepts, do we reduce the possibility of such technology being
restricted with narrowly controlled IP rights?

- Jef



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