Another sign of engineering and biology and computer technology merging into the singularity.
Scientists are develop new ideas about how to augment human abilities. A scientist at the MIT Media Lab is working on specs that visually read your facial emotions. It has great potential for people with Asperger's (a syndrome that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive behavior).
It brings to mind a couple of interesting questions.
First there is the promise of augmenting your knowledge. In the future will we have bootstrapping of social functions? Are you awkward? Socially unaware? Want to find out if that girl at the bar is into you? Try these glasses.
There is also a downside, if the technology really does improve to the point where we start trusting it, what happens with false positives? What happens when the glasses say we are lying when we are not? We don't allow lie detectors in court for a reason.
Anyway that tech seems a bit far away but the link is here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128191.600-specs-that-see-right-through-you.html?full=true
If you are interested in reading more about aspergers/autism, or learning a perspective about what it's like to develop social abilities from deductive reasoning: check out WrongPlanet.net here.
Interested in reading more about the singularity?
