Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and Leon is getting larger. You've been threatening to do
Speaker 1: that for a while, I haven't you, Yes, I have.
Speaker 1: So today's episode comes to us courtesy of a little
Speaker 1: listener mail. Let's listen to. Mail comes from John, and
Speaker 1: John says, how are you guys? I hope this email
Speaker 1: goes through. I didn't see a contact email on your
Speaker 1: web page, but I always hear you announced it at
Speaker 1: the end of your podcasts. It got through. John. First
Speaker 1: of all, I love listening to your podcast. You guys
Speaker 1: are great and the subjects you discussed are also. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. My question is in regards to
Speaker 1: Google maps traffic overlay. I usually check it before I
Speaker 1: leave from work in case I have to take an
Speaker 1: alternate route due to a traffic problem. I'm wondering how
Speaker 1: Google can display how the relative speed is of a
Speaker 1: particular stretch of highway or road. Do they use cameras?
Speaker 1: Do they measure cell towers handing off phones? Do they
Speaker 1: rely on people calling in? Google seems to have a
Speaker 1: lot of public information gathered in one place, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how they got their real time traffic data.
Speaker 1: If you've already done an article or podcast on this
Speaker 1: that I've missed, just please direct me in the right direction.
Speaker 1: It'd be great to hear an answer on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Of course, I am really interested in the answer, So
Speaker 1: any way you can help would be appreciated. Keep up
Speaker 1: the great work, John. Thanks John, you want to You
Speaker 1: want to know the fascinating thing about that, John, is
Speaker 1: they're getting it from you. Yes. Um, Actually, if you're
Speaker 1: using a any kind of if you're using any kind
Speaker 1: of cell phone that happens to have a GPS receiver
Speaker 1: in it and also is using Google Maps with the
Speaker 1: my location option turned on, you are contributing to the
Speaker 1: information that Google is using to generate those traffic overlays.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty cool. Well, it depends on how you
Speaker 1: look at it. You might be afraid, uh for example,
Speaker 1: that hey, wait a minute, so I have Google uh
Speaker 1: Maps for mobile turned on on my phone. I thought
Speaker 1: I was just checking out the traffic. You mean they're
Speaker 1: taking information from me? Uh. Google actually would would say
Speaker 1: not to worry too much about that, because they are
Speaker 1: they're not really taking any identifiable information from you. However
Speaker 1: they are, um, they are also taking pains to mix
Speaker 1: it in with other information, uh, taken from other customers.
Speaker 1: So don't worry so much. You're you're not being peaked upon,
Speaker 1: and they weren't aren't following you on your way to work? Right, UM,
Speaker 1: probably let's give an overview of exactly what's going on
Speaker 1: here so that we can kind of discuss where the
Speaker 1: concerns come in and uh and how Google has decided
Speaker 1: to try and meet those concerns. Because you you raise
Speaker 1: a really good point, Pillette, I mean that there is
Speaker 1: a privacy issue here. What if you're not driving to work,
Speaker 1: What if you're driving to say, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: you're driving to the hospital and you don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: people to know that you have to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: You know, it's none of their business, it's your business.
Speaker 1: And the thought of well, does this mean that there's
Speaker 1: some technology tracking my every move and that if someone
Speaker 1: were clever enough they could figure this out. Um, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. So generally, what's going on is
Speaker 1: when you're using these these devices, the GPS receiver is
Speaker 1: what is is identifying your location. Um. Now, they can
Speaker 1: use cell towers to try and approximate your location, but
Speaker 1: that's usually within about all. It's not really that accurate,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's several dozen meters at the at
Speaker 1: the at best when you're talking about just cell towers,
Speaker 1: you know, whereas GPS you're talking about a few hundred
Speaker 1: feet max um. So cell towers not that great when
Speaker 1: you're looking at trying to to figure out the traffic
Speaker 1: patterns of a particular area, because if if it's narrow enough,
Speaker 1: theoretically you wouldn't be able to narrow it down to
Speaker 1: a specific street, right Like especially the cities laid on
Speaker 1: a grid. You might be like, well North South travel
Speaker 1: seems to be going pretty well, but we aren't really
Speaker 1: sure which North South street this guy's on. GPS hower
Speaker 1: gives you a much more specific location. So what happens
Speaker 1: is you've got the GPS system identifying where you are,
Speaker 1: and then uh, your phone is contacting the self cell
Speaker 1: towers up on a pretty regular basis. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, this wouldn't work if you didn't have a phone,
Speaker 1: if you had just a GPS receiver, you'd kind of
Speaker 1: be out of luck because a typical GPS receiver, just
Speaker 1: a plain old receiver, is a receiver. It's not a transceiver.
Speaker 1: It's not sending information back to the satellites. So Google
Speaker 1: gets the information. Uh, the GPS information is going to
Speaker 1: your phone, and your phone is contacting the cell towers,
Speaker 1: and that's how Google's figuring out where you are, right.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is it sees think of your car,
Speaker 1: is just that little dot if you turn on the
Speaker 1: my location you know you know I'm talking about. But
Speaker 1: if you if you don't have it, here's what looks like.
Speaker 1: You open up Google Maps, you turn on your my
Speaker 1: location and then you get a little blue dot that
Speaker 1: indicates your specific location on the map. As you move around,
Speaker 1: the little dot moves around. Well, what happens is Google
Speaker 1: will track how fast you're moving along a particular route
Speaker 1: and extrapolate from that how traffic must be moving. So
Speaker 1: this is not really useful unless Google is able to
Speaker 1: do it with lots and lots of users, right, because,
Speaker 1: for example, you could be walking down the street and
Speaker 1: everybody else is moving quickly, so Google is saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: apparently traffic is flowing normally and this other person is
Speaker 1: doing something else, So you would you would be an
Speaker 1: anomaly in that case because all the other traffic moving
Speaker 1: down the street is moving much more quickly than you are.
Speaker 1: Or maybe your your car's broken down and you're pushing
Speaker 1: it down the street, right. Yeah, so Google could could
Speaker 1: ignore you in that case. But if you were the
Speaker 1: only person in the area who happened to be you
Speaker 1: seeing this, then Google's conclusion would be, Wow, traffic on
Speaker 1: this street has crawled to a to almost a standstill.
Speaker 1: Look at how slowly they're moving. So obviously, these sort
Speaker 1: of systems are really only useful if lots of people
Speaker 1: are already participating. Um, you can't just kind of go
Speaker 1: right out of the gate with accurate travel information. You
Speaker 1: really do need lots of different participants. So Google will
Speaker 1: look at the big picture and the traffic overlay just
Speaker 1: gives you an indication of how fast traffic is moving
Speaker 1: along any individual streets. Google is not the only company
Speaker 1: to take this approach. In fact, there was another company
Speaker 1: that uh that some people in the tech industry were
Speaker 1: really really excited about that. Were they were producing GPS
Speaker 1: units that, uh, that seemed really innovative and use this
Speaker 1: kind of feature where customers who use that that GPS
Speaker 1: unit were contributing to the overall information about the city's traffic. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was actually one of those people because I saw
Speaker 1: the company technology at c e S two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was really I was thinking how cool
Speaker 1: it was that they had a way to, uh to
Speaker 1: identify the businesses around where you were and give you
Speaker 1: an idea of what was going on because uh, the
Speaker 1: information from the GPS receiver was blended with Internet and
Speaker 1: you could see you got sort of a um um
Speaker 1: augmented reality effect. Really right, So, and I assume we're
Speaker 1: talking about the same company. Let's make sure dash excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: why oh my gosh, oh my gosh, listeners, you just
Speaker 1: got to hear a renaissance festival slip up, I said, excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: oh man, I've already been working there for a few weeks,
Speaker 1: just in case you guys were wondering, and it is
Speaker 1: starting to seep into my normal speech, So feel free
Speaker 1: to write in and and chastise me for doing a
Speaker 1: festivalism because I can't believe I did that. All right, anyway,
Speaker 1: blooper real um the so so. Yeah, these two systems
Speaker 1: work very similarly. You've got a centralized uh computing system
Speaker 1: that is colating all this data and then sending it
Speaker 1: back to the to the individual units. For the individual
Speaker 1: units themselves are what is contributing to the data. It's
Speaker 1: this kind of interesting circular system. And um, again, let's
Speaker 1: talk about why you need a lot of people. It's
Speaker 1: not just for the accuracy. It's also for privacy. Yes,
Speaker 1: because imagine that Google institutes this and there's only one
Speaker 1: person out there who happens to have the phone that
Speaker 1: does this. All right, I mean, this is obviously just
Speaker 1: a ridiculous example, But let's say that Let's say that
Speaker 1: Palette is the only person in the world, or at
Speaker 1: least the only person in Atlanta, let's say, who has
Speaker 1: one of these phones and Google has already turned on
Speaker 1: the system. That would mean that the system would become
Speaker 1: not a traffic system, but a hey, where the heck
Speaker 1: is Palette now system? I'm the one, in case you
Speaker 1: were wondering, I'm the one wearing the red and white
Speaker 1: striped shirt and the toboggan. Right, he's also carrying a cane. Um.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the yeah, that that's why you need lots
Speaker 1: and lots of people, because if you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it actually is possible to figure out, oh,
Speaker 1: this has to be you know so and so because
Speaker 1: he lives in that part of town and look where's
Speaker 1: he going? Oh my gosh. Well, another thing Google does
Speaker 1: to try and minimize any chance that people would be
Speaker 1: able to identify a specific individual based upon traffic patterns
Speaker 1: is they will erase the origin and destination of any trip, right,
Speaker 1: so that what they're looking at is they're just trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the the speed of traffic along any
Speaker 1: particular route. They're not interested in the starting point or
Speaker 1: the finishing point, which is kind of interesting. So that's
Speaker 1: that's Google's approach. They're saying, all right, well, we understand
Speaker 1: your your privacy concerns, which is weird for Google. They
Speaker 1: don't always seem to be really that concerned. Um, you
Speaker 1: can ask people who had to you know, protest street
Speaker 1: View for example, or buzz That's another really good example
Speaker 1: about how Google sometimes seems to overlook the i'vous issue,
Speaker 1: But yeah, they really did think about it this time,
Speaker 1: and as Poulette was talking about earlier, they also try
Speaker 1: to mix your data and with the data of other
Speaker 1: users so that there is no you know, in visualization
Speaker 1: in there um. So that's that's I mean, really that's
Speaker 1: the basics. It's it's really just data collection and then
Speaker 1: incorporation into the maps application. You know, there may be
Speaker 1: another reason why Google erases the destination and the trip,
Speaker 1: because really it's all about the journey anyway you want it,
Speaker 1: the way you need it, anyway you want it so well,
Speaker 1: and also another reason why you would want it to
Speaker 1: be private, not just because of where you're coming from
Speaker 1: and where you're going to, which is you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: like let's say that you don't happen to know that
Speaker 1: Jonathan likes on a Friday night to go to the
Speaker 1: local gentleman's establishment and watch uh dancers. Jonathan doesn't. This
Speaker 1: is just an example. But if but let's say that
Speaker 1: you let's say that he did want to do that, well,
Speaker 1: that would mean that Jonathan would probably not want you
Speaker 1: to know that by looking at Google Maps. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not the only thing. The only other reason you might
Speaker 1: not want this information to be uh identifiable to you.
Speaker 1: You might not want people to be able to tell
Speaker 1: that you're, um, I don't know, speeding down a main
Speaker 1: drag at a breakneck pace. Yeah, you might not want
Speaker 1: folks to say, hey, I noticed on Google Maps last
Speaker 1: night that you were drag racing down main street. Um.
Speaker 1: That would also be a reason why you'd want it
Speaker 1: to be privatized, so that both the the destination and
Speaker 1: the speed would be kind of hidden from other people.
Speaker 1: Right right, Jonathan, we noticed that you had the company
Speaker 1: car out last night and you were speeding. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would have been really awkward, seeing as how I don't drive.
Speaker 1: Just probably Actually, I'm sure I would end up in
Speaker 1: a pond somewhere, possibly a pool somebody of water. The
Speaker 1: pond would be good for you, I think, so. Um wow,
Speaker 1: how many how many movie references are we going to
Speaker 1: make in this podcast? At least one more? Yeah? Probably so. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things to um that I hadn't
Speaker 1: realized until I had started doing some research on on
Speaker 1: the the traffic feature on Google site is that um,
Speaker 1: Google is also keeping and this is also a bit
Speaker 1: of a privacy concern, But I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: that this is more so than anything else. Um, the
Speaker 1: Google is keeping track of historical traffic information. So if
Speaker 1: you are planning a trip, um, you know, say next Thursday,
Speaker 1: to go to the airport, and you want to know
Speaker 1: how traffic is on a Thursday morning going to the
Speaker 1: airport between say eight thirty and ten o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: you can look on Google and try to get a
Speaker 1: prediction of how traffic will be in the future. It's
Speaker 1: gonna clearly be over the roads because we'll all be
Speaker 1: driving flying cars. Yes, I'm not gonna say it. I
Speaker 1: came really close to making the other movie reference myself,
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna leave it up. Okay, where we're going,
Speaker 1: we don't need roads. I told you we were having
Speaker 1: that was that was the obvious one there. But no,
Speaker 1: I think that's a very useful feature because, uh it
Speaker 1: just seems like, um, you know, you could easily plan
Speaker 1: a trip that way. Something time sensitive like that, especially,
Speaker 1: it's going to uh benefit from having that information. So, um,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you're not concerned about the privacy
Speaker 1: feature thing, um, you know, there are lots of people
Speaker 1: who are going to be concerned about regardless of what
Speaker 1: the company tells you. UM. You know, then then it
Speaker 1: can be useful to have that information and contribute to
Speaker 1: everyone else's overall UH knowledge of traffic patterns over you know,
Speaker 1: the recent past few minutes, you know, as far as
Speaker 1: traffic is concerned, but also in the as in the
Speaker 1: in terms of a historical sense. But you know, Google
Speaker 1: is not the only one who does this. No, No,
Speaker 1: Like we said, Dash does it as well, and UM
Speaker 1: and some system incorporate other elements as well, not just
Speaker 1: not just the user traffic or user experience, but they'll
Speaker 1: incorporate things like if UH they might have a report
Speaker 1: about a big event that's going on downtown and will
Speaker 1: automatically factor that in when routing your trips so that
Speaker 1: way you don't end up going through a street that's
Speaker 1: been closed off for that day, or even some might
Speaker 1: even incorporate weather reports. The more advanced you get, the
Speaker 1: more information they'll they'll bring into UH to factor these
Speaker 1: things in before you go on a trip, which is
Speaker 1: really kind of cool. UM. A lot of them use
Speaker 1: a system completely different from Dash and Google, which is
Speaker 1: one of the things. A lot of them the GPS
Speaker 1: receivers that are not phones they're just the just the
Speaker 1: GPS receiver. They'll also have a second receiver in there
Speaker 1: besides the GPS signal to to accept traffic message channel signals. Now,
Speaker 1: the traffic message channel is UH. That's a way of
Speaker 1: of sending traffic, real time traffic information out, usually over
Speaker 1: an FM signal, but you can also do it over
Speaker 1: satellite UM and you send that out to subscribers to
Speaker 1: your service. So various companies have their own specific frequencies
Speaker 1: like tom Tom has its own frequency in various cities,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And the UH what will happen
Speaker 1: is it'll the company will send the real time traffic
Speaker 1: information out and so your GPS will update automatically. UH.
Speaker 1: And this way, if let's say there's a big wreck
Speaker 1: on one of the highways, it'll come back with that
Speaker 1: information and give you the chance to reroute, you know,
Speaker 1: in the middle of a trip. UM. There are some
Speaker 1: problems with this technology and that a lot of the
Speaker 1: companies that use it, UH, they kind of have their
Speaker 1: system laid out on a grid, and so because that's
Speaker 1: just the way the maps are, so when they have
Speaker 1: to mark down where an incident occurs, but because it's
Speaker 1: a grid, it's not. It's not terribly precise. It's not
Speaker 1: like you can put a thumbtack exactly where the incidant happened.
Speaker 1: You you get an approximation. Sometimes that approximation is wrong
Speaker 1: because let's say that there's an incident that's at an intersection,
Speaker 1: and it may mean that one road leading into the
Speaker 1: intersection is affected, but the other three aren't. Well, if
Speaker 1: the the grid isn't exactly placed at the intersection in
Speaker 1: the proper way, it may show up as affecting the
Speaker 1: wrong road. So your route may say, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: can completely go this way, there's no problem here, it's unaffected,
Speaker 1: when in reality, that's exactly where the problem is. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not as precise as it needs to be. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not foolproof in other words. Right, Meanwhile, you're cursing
Speaker 1: because you got stuck in traffic somewhere right. You wanted
Speaker 1: to turn left and the roads completely closed, and you
Speaker 1: thought the roads the right was going to be closed.
Speaker 1: But it's fine. Yeah, that's very irritating. Um. Going back
Speaker 1: to something that you had said earlier talking about incorporating
Speaker 1: weather and different events. Of course, a system like that,
Speaker 1: it involves human interaction. UM, it's not completely completely computerized. UM.
Speaker 1: Traffic Cast is one of those companies that does that.
Speaker 1: And they UM they actually are the company that provides
Speaker 1: Yahoo with its UM service. That's that you can see
Speaker 1: on the Yahoo Maps website. UM. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that UH that has improved about traffic information in general,
Speaker 1: I think is that both systems, both Google and the
Speaker 1: traffic cast system used on Yahoo and other sites UH,
Speaker 1: is that they're starting to show information for arterial streets
Speaker 1: as well, not just the major highways. UM. And it's
Speaker 1: done traffic casts and traffic casts system is done in
Speaker 1: a is handled partially you know, through human interaction, UM,
Speaker 1: partially through other kinds of sensors, like for example, they
Speaker 1: have the they use the remote Traffic microwave sensor, which
Speaker 1: tells whether or not you're making burritos in your car.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry, that was my wrong notes No
Speaker 1: it Uh I was really disappointed. Uh No, not so much.
Speaker 1: Uh No. It's a traffic sensor that uses microwave signals
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on. It can actually go
Speaker 1: across several lanes of traffic UH to identify, UM the
Speaker 1: number of vehicles and their speed. Um, either you know
Speaker 1: from the side or from the front, and uh it can.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, you can monitor up to
Speaker 1: eight lanes according to the information UM from traffic casts website.
Speaker 1: But um, you know it can it can get an
Speaker 1: idea of how fast you're moving. Now that's those are stationary.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work the same way as having the the
Speaker 1: the GPS system, uh through the maps functioning your phone. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get an idea over the same thing. So
Speaker 1: they have to have it. They use a number of
Speaker 1: collection methods, including including using GPS, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of neat too that they are able to do that.
Speaker 1: And they're also in contact with the local governments who
Speaker 1: have cameras and other systems set up so that they
Speaker 1: can at monitor traffic. So in general, I would say
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to get an idea of what
Speaker 1: your commute is going to be like before you leave
Speaker 1: than it was just a few years ago. I mean,
Speaker 1: because it seems to have come a long way in
Speaker 1: a very short period of time. Right, They've they've got
Speaker 1: a much more comprehensive list of data collection sensors and
Speaker 1: and and methods. It's beyond just the users, which that's
Speaker 1: a good good thing. I mean, I remember when when
Speaker 1: I first started getting into the working world and I
Speaker 1: was looking at at traffic reports things like that. Really
Speaker 1: the only the only information you had where it came
Speaker 1: from cameras that were placed along certain highways and you
Speaker 1: can get a live look at what the traffic was like,
Speaker 1: and you would get an approximation of the traffic. It
Speaker 1: would you know, show up green, yellow or red. It
Speaker 1: was all like the main highways. It was none of
Speaker 1: the service streets and uh. And this is this is
Speaker 1: much more useful for most people, I would think, because
Speaker 1: it gives you a better glimpse of what traffics light
Speaker 1: throughout the entire neighborhood. Yeah, or you know, then then
Speaker 1: you got the other option, which is the traditional, uh
Speaker 1: traffic copter five over the main thoroughfare. Yeah. Was that
Speaker 1: an episode of w k RP. Anyway, he started pounding
Speaker 1: his own chest because the cop chopper was was on
Speaker 1: the Fritzi. I'm sorry, I had a traffic copter was
Speaker 1: I had had the Flight of val Cree playing and
Speaker 1: the Charlie don't surf there's another one for you. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, well, the I think that I mean that
Speaker 1: pretty much wraps up all the information I have because
Speaker 1: this this topic is fairly cut and dry, especially for
Speaker 1: a stuff topic it is. But um, but it was
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating to me once I started looking at
Speaker 1: the other ways that they measured traffic and explained some
Speaker 1: of those weird beige boxes that they have on the
Speaker 1: polls along the side of the road, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd always wondered what some of those are. And I
Speaker 1: know that there are other things too that they use, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like air pollution detect ors and things like
Speaker 1: that that that that you'll see you on there. But um,
Speaker 1: some of the boxes, uh, the next time you go
Speaker 1: for a drive, some of the boxes that you see
Speaker 1: with a little solar collector next to him maybe using
Speaker 1: microwaves to uh check your car's speed and position out
Speaker 1: to help the traffic people identify whether the roads are
Speaker 1: clear or not. Yeah. Yeah, it's an it's neat stuff.
Speaker 1: And I really do like the idea of crowdsourcing your
Speaker 1: traffic information because I mean, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's gonna, assuming the enough people are using it, that's
Speaker 1: gonna give you probably the most accurate, big, big picture
Speaker 1: view of what traffics like going you know how it's
Speaker 1: going in the city, and um, I mean again, it
Speaker 1: will depend entirely on whether people feel comfortable participating or not. Well,
Speaker 1: I totally get that. I guess that that pretty much
Speaker 1: wraps that up. Will go on to our second round
Speaker 1: of listener mail. This listener mail comes from Jaden, and
Speaker 1: Jaden says, Hey, Chris John, I just listened to your
Speaker 1: Cyborg episode and wanted to tell you about something I read.
Speaker 1: I read about a girl with some sort of degenerative
Speaker 1: eye condition. She got a mechanical eye implanted where a
Speaker 1: normal I would go. It had a camera and connected
Speaker 1: to her optic nerve. It was pretty cool. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say that I love the podcast and to
Speaker 1: keep them coming. I hope you could maybe tell me
Speaker 1: about space shuttle tech or do a podcast on it.
Speaker 1: And I'm only thirteen and love tech, so I want
Speaker 1: to know everything about it. Please let me know. Thanks again, Jaden, Well, Jane.
Speaker 1: We do have the space shuttle technology on our list
Speaker 1: o topics, so it is on the list for us
Speaker 1: to tackle, along with about a hundred and fifty other topics,
Speaker 1: but we are determined to hit them all eventually. And
Speaker 1: as for the the cyber cybernetic eye, I've heard of
Speaker 1: an artist who wanted to have a camera implanted in
Speaker 1: a prosthetic eye. She is missing an eye, and she
Speaker 1: thought it would be an interesting way to capture images
Speaker 1: from her point of view about as literally as as possible,
Speaker 1: and even programming it in such a way where she
Speaker 1: could control the method of capturing images by certain blinks.
Speaker 1: If you blink twice and then something, it's it's capturing
Speaker 1: still images instead of video, that kind of thing. She
Speaker 1: had put out a call for engineers to try and
Speaker 1: help her with this, but from the last I had checked,
Speaker 1: it still has not become a completed project. And also
Speaker 1: this was not connecting to her optic nerve at all.
Speaker 1: It was merely to capture images and then you would
Speaker 1: then upload the images to a computer. And there's also
Speaker 1: a filmmaker who's trying to do something similar where he
Speaker 1: wants to have a camera implanted in his eye socket
Speaker 1: so that he could shoot a film um from his
Speaker 1: own point of view, the same sort of thing, though
Speaker 1: again not connecting to his brain in any way, just
Speaker 1: connecting to an outside source or an outside a recording
Speaker 1: device and then um his brain would eventually get around
Speaker 1: to seeing it when you watch the playback. So interesting ideas.
Speaker 1: Not not really cybernetic in the sense that it's not
Speaker 1: enhancing their own abilities. It's really it's really just a
Speaker 1: new way to hold a camera. If you really want
Speaker 1: to think about it. Yeah, that's true. That's still kind
Speaker 1: of cool and also scary. Come with me if you
Speaker 1: want to live. All right, Well, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion of text stuff. If you have any questions, comments
Speaker 1: you have that, uh, some topics you would like to
Speaker 1: suggest and have us add to the list o topics
Speaker 1: right us. Our email address is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk
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