Megan Garber contemplates some new technology:
However strange (and, okay, kind of creepy) it might seem to have the phrases "personal computer" and "knowing glance" in the same sentence, the alternative — personal devices that aren't as fully personal as they could be — is worse. Because, as resistant as we can be, culturally, to new technologies (the telephone will erode our privacy! The moving picture will destroy sociability!), we tend to come around to prefer intimacy over distance in the devices that help us navigate the world.
Eye control – and, in fact, voice control (and, in fact, gestural control like the Kinect) – appeal in theory because they're the logical extension of that intimacy. They suggest what might happen when we bypass the middlemachine — the keyboard, the mouse, the touchscreen — and communicate with our computers through the parts of ourselves that, poetry and experience tell us, are the most honest and obvious manifestations of Who We Are.
(Video via Jose Vilches)
The Dish 