Smart goggles, smart idea

In yet another step toward a “Jetsons”-type future, Japanese researchers recently invented computerized goggles that can help you identify objects, remember where you last placed them, or give you information about the things you view. Although still in the developmental phase, the goggles represent a milestone in merging normal human function with our most advanced technology in a conspicuous way. \nThe researchers, however, have come across no small amount of mixed reactions. Beyond the shock and awe, many think that they go too far, that they’re unnecessary and may even dehumanize us. \nYou’d think history’s lessons would be better received. For as long as there has been technological innovation, there has been apprehension. On humanity’s great progression of scientific advancement, it is sadly commonplace that some people choose arbitrary points of technological perfection. Anything further, they claim, is too much. When our parents first got cell phones, not a few people saw them as preposterous. Who, they wondered aloud, would possibly need to be able to call anyone, anywhere, at any time? Perhaps in 20 years people will wonder how we survived so long without computerized goggles, and marvel that anyone managed to live without a constant feed of information in their vision. \nBut fear of invention and progress is a dangerous quality for a society to have, even if it only exists in a minority. There’s something in the reluctance to expand our capabilities that speaks to fear of our own potential, of the expectation that technology will enable us to achieve devious ends previously unfulfilled only because we didn’t know how. \nWe need to constantly push the envelope in science for many reasons, not the least of which is because it arms us to deal with problems that come our way. Science is, at its core, about improving quality of life through expanding our potential to do whatever we want. In a nation defined by entrepreneurship and invention, it is disappointing that so many people have forgotten. \nOne might even posit that technology can never dehumanize us because the way that people use technology is inherently a function of our nature. If technology allows us to do something we couldn’t do before, it enables us to therefore be more human. People always point to the past as mankind’s zenith of pure existence, but the one constant throughout human history (recorded or otherwise) has been the drive to get indoors, get away from the capriciousness of nature and, now, see the world with the assistance of a computer. \nNow that’s human nature. And if these goggles can give us information about the world, find our keys, recognize faces or even serve as a replacement for our memories (which often fail, thereby creating misery), they should be developed and utilized to the fullest extent. Technology serves first and foremost to enable us to do what we want to do. That’s been mankind’s chief goal since creation. And what could be more human than that?