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Our eyes, sight: close enough to magic. It creates an experience, that in people without synesthesia, cannot be encapsulated within another experience. Elves know and sense, they have names for things, they don’t get told the names of things by something else. There have been people in on earth who read their environment well, who can reliably predict rain from wind and feel. We perhaps, someday, will be able to create new experiences, senses, that cannot be encapsulated within our current senses, we might be able to expand our current senses (vision in all directions, new colours, new audible frequencies, quieter sounds, et cetera). What that isn’t is looking at a display or listening to a speaker. I use computers every day. My phone, pedestrian crossing signals, guitar pedals, food, books, the web. Art, work, recreation. I just don’t think these glasses amount to augmented reality but a distraction from reality. We can learn to, and I have to an extent, identify our environment and surroundings. The Pokédex is a fun novelty but knowing how to name a creature or a rock or a person based on what we perceive rather than someone or something else telling us what it perceives is simply a higher state of existence and a richer internal world. And yeah, internalising another language is inherently better than using Google translate. These glasses ain’t it. |