An (Augmented) View of a Future in "Sight"

Literature, TV, and movies have always had among them cautionary tales of science and technology gone wild; whether it is the technology itself that takes on intelligence, or through the nefarious deeds of covert elite forces using technology to enslave the rest of humanity.

Some researchers believe that the vast majority of these works have been a coordinated method of predictive programming that has been deliberately introduced to ensure that we are softened up for a reality that would at first seem inconceivable, but when later mirrored in the real world becomes easily accepted as the obvious evolution of an advanced society.

The following short sci-fi film is not making any great leaps when it demonstrates a future of augmented reality through the (contact) lens of a computer app-driven interface.

Augmented reality apps for the iPhone have been around for years, and continue to grow in popularity. Nor does the film below make an unbelievable jump in assuming that this future reality could be driven by a game-like incentive system; we can see that this is already an addictive pastime for countless millions of Facebook gamers through Zynga.

The systems are in place, but as yet have been available only through external devices. All that has been needed to create an all-encompassing new reality is to integrate information into the first-person everyday human experiential view.

The actual principles behind a first-person, human-computer interface system have been around for many decades – it can be seen in combat zones around the world through the military Heads Up Display system (HUD).

These principles, which began pre-WWII for fighter pilots, are now finding their way into the consumer market in video games, vehicles, and through info eyeglasses like Google X, which is supposed to be out by year’s end. Contact lenses are the next logical step, and in fact are already in development by the Department of Defense through a system called iOptik – and projected to be available to consumers in 2014.

As with nearly all computer interface and intelligence-driven systems, it is important to realize that these have generally been funded and implemented from the start by the military-industrial complex, and are likely to have been in existence for at least decades before trickling down to the consumer level.

With government now openly embracing a Minority Report-like future of pre-crime high-tech surveillance systems, combined with an insatiable imperial hubris that continues to devalue human life, all wrapped in a shroud of elite misanthropic thought known as Transhumanism, perhaps this should be the greatest cautionary note of all when we imagine our future.