Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, when I'm doubtful,
Speaker 1: I tend to believe my own eyes. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today the eyes have it because
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about your eyeballs, one
Speaker 1: of our favorite things. Yes, two of them in some cases,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna be talking about delicious. Yes, you know
Speaker 1: that everybody. Everybody has a favorite stack, right. Uh. So
Speaker 1: we're actually gonna be talking about contact lenses specifically here
Speaker 1: because there's been a little bit of information in the
Speaker 1: news about some high tech contact lenses. We kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to explore that and talk about some of the
Speaker 1: different approaches to contact lenses of the future. And um,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of different, uh perspectives on this.
Speaker 1: I guess that's sort of a pun, one of them
Speaker 1: being under Google's version and then some other versions as well.
Speaker 1: And uh, it ties into some other things that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in past episodes. Oh yeah, we talked all
Speaker 1: the time on the show about wearable health monitors. And
Speaker 1: also about augmented reality and contact lenses could potentially provide
Speaker 1: new new intros into both of those. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: really uh, I mean potentially it could be incredible technology
Speaker 1: for large populations. Yeah. I mean if you thought people
Speaker 1: were obsessed with their phones, wait till they don't even
Speaker 1: have to hold it in their hands. You say that,
Speaker 1: but I remember everyone giving me funny looks when I
Speaker 1: was sporting the Google Glass. But that's because you were
Speaker 1: sporting the Google Glass. It was a big thing that
Speaker 1: people could see your face. I was rocking the Google glass. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you were. You were rocking it extremely hard and you
Speaker 1: look so cool. Everybody was like, who is that? Man?
Speaker 1: Makes me said that I had to give those back. Uh.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Google's approach to contact lenses, because
Speaker 1: it is different from their approach to Google Glass. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of the big differences that is that Google Glass.
Speaker 1: You might say it was essentially an augmented reality. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Would you say augmented really? Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: say I'd say it was a very early implementation of
Speaker 1: some augmented reality is really more like a second screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: put a screen in my eyeball. Yeah, but here my
Speaker 1: eyeball is the case. Maybe, but I think you could
Speaker 1: see what they were going for. It was it was
Speaker 1: trending toward augmented reality, yes, definitely. So the principle of
Speaker 1: augmented reality is different than virtual reality. Just for those
Speaker 1: of you who don't know, augmented reality is that you're
Speaker 1: basically perceiving reality as it is, but with some things
Speaker 1: added or modified, some sort of over lay on top
Speaker 1: of it. Now, with Google's contact lenses, at least in
Speaker 1: the the short term, the near term, they don't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with augmented reality at all. Uh. Instead,
Speaker 1: it just happens to be a thing that goes on
Speaker 1: your eyeballs, yes, yeah, and it happens to be provided
Speaker 1: by Google. So, but this was something that was publicly
Speaker 1: announced on January six, two thousand and fourteen. There had
Speaker 1: been some rumors that Google was working on something that
Speaker 1: had to do with contact lenses before this announcement, but
Speaker 1: it was made public on their blog. Google employees Brian
Speaker 1: Otis and Babak Parvis jointly published a blog post. They
Speaker 1: were the or still are I assume the co project
Speaker 1: leaders on this, uh, and they worked in Google's X division. Now,
Speaker 1: the Google X division is no longer a division within Google.
Speaker 1: It's actually they're not, well, no, there's still they're still
Speaker 1: associated with Google. It's just that now you have a
Speaker 1: new parent company called Alphabet. Google is one of the subsidiaries.
Speaker 1: Under Alphabet, Google X is a second subsidiary. The idea
Speaker 1: being that now Google X can continue to do research
Speaker 1: and development but not have to answer to the other
Speaker 1: company of Google in order to do so. Like if
Speaker 1: if Big Google does poorly, it doesn't affect Google X.
Speaker 1: In other words, so, but so if they're working on
Speaker 1: futuristic contact lenses and they're not expressly or primarily for
Speaker 1: augmented reality, you know, not for making people's tender profiles
Speaker 1: pop up when you look at their faces, what exactly
Speaker 1: are they for? Something that's really cool? And it goes
Speaker 1: back to what Lauren was saying with the sort of
Speaker 1: the health monitoring systems that we've been looking at in
Speaker 1: the past, in fact has a lot to do with that.
Speaker 1: The contact lenses incorporate sensors and circuitry and microprocessors in
Speaker 1: order to monitor something about either the person who's wearing
Speaker 1: it or the environment that person is in, and then
Speaker 1: send that information to an actual device that would do
Speaker 1: the processing part, like the real data crunching part, that
Speaker 1: would then display information either to that person or to
Speaker 1: someone else that uh like an expert, like for example,
Speaker 1: with health it might be to that person's doctor. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea being that it could create a very early
Speaker 1: warning system in a lot of cases, um and really
Speaker 1: monitor at a uh precise level a person's health from
Speaker 1: moment to moment, give real time updates. It's a really
Speaker 1: cool idea. UM. Now, the main purpose they talked about
Speaker 1: in that blog post was to help people who suffer
Speaker 1: from diabetes, because obviously, diabetes it's a it's a huge problem,
Speaker 1: particularly here in the United States, and it's a problem
Speaker 1: that can lead to very serious health complicate ations down
Speaker 1: the line if you aren't treating it properly. Sure, and
Speaker 1: it can, especially in people with type one diabetes, lead
Speaker 1: to extremely serious consequences moment to moment when their blood
Speaker 1: sugar spikes or drops exactly right, So you want to
Speaker 1: be able to monitor your glucose levels, and and normally
Speaker 1: the way you would do that is you'd have to
Speaker 1: take a blood sample and it's pretty obtrusive. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: And they said, you know this, this is it's something
Speaker 1: that plagues people who suffer from diabetes. It can become
Speaker 1: a disincentive to keep up with your glucose levels, which
Speaker 1: could lead to disastrous results. So what they wanted to
Speaker 1: do was develop a sensor that could detect glucose levels
Speaker 1: in your tears as opposed to your blood stream. Sure
Speaker 1: and uh, and that's not just when people with diabetes
Speaker 1: are like listening to a lot of Morrissey, you always
Speaker 1: have tears in your eyes. They're called basal tears. It's
Speaker 1: and and those are a substance that that have glucose
Speaker 1: and a representative amount of your blood glucose level in
Speaker 1: them at all times. Right. And one of the criticisms
Speaker 1: that I've heard directed at this approach is that the
Speaker 1: level of glucost present in your tears is different from
Speaker 1: that that is present in your blood. So there's some
Speaker 1: some people who question how accurate this contact lens can be, Like,
Speaker 1: how how much does your glucose level have to change?
Speaker 1: How dramatic must have changed me before the sensor picks
Speaker 1: it up. That's obviously something that will be worked out
Speaker 1: if and when this moves on to a testing phase.
Speaker 1: With the f d A and we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a second as well. But beyond UH checking your
Speaker 1: glucost levels, it can do other things, um, but I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a seconds. Google, in order to
Speaker 1: do this as partnered with another company called Novartis UH,
Speaker 1: and they gave a very conservative prediction that the contact
Speaker 1: lenses would be available sometime around the year two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: Now you say that's conservative, what why do you think
Speaker 1: it might be sooner than that. I think I think
Speaker 1: the technology will be ready before that. And that's based
Speaker 1: upon just the fact that not too long ago Google
Speaker 1: had an internal UH document talking about what would be
Speaker 1: interesting ways to package these contact lenses. If you're thinking
Speaker 1: about packaging, you're probably getting to a point where the
Speaker 1: technology itself is pretty close to being ready. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: then again, you could think about that era of Hollywood
Speaker 1: where they had a poster before they had a script
Speaker 1: for a movie. You know what, you are entirely correct
Speaker 1: that is that is absolutely a possibility. And whether the
Speaker 1: technology is ready or not. As we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show before, it's really a quite laborious process getting
Speaker 1: something approved for medical use in a human population, and
Speaker 1: and we are thankful for that laborious process. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: yaya laborious because it means that you are more likely
Speaker 1: to have something that has real efficacy as opposed to
Speaker 1: a placebo or something that you know is telling you, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to alert you in the case of a
Speaker 1: medical emergency, and if it doesn't work, then real people
Speaker 1: suffer because of that. I wonder if it would be
Speaker 1: easier for them to get it on the market faster
Speaker 1: if they just they marketed it as an extremely crappy
Speaker 1: augmented reality device that just happens to have a bug
Speaker 1: that measures your glucose welly. And we've seen cases of
Speaker 1: of where a drug that was intended for one use
Speaker 1: ends up being finding incredible success marketed for another use.
Speaker 1: But I I suspect that wouldn't happen. Although they could say, hey,
Speaker 1: these are contact lenses that are like a thermometer. I
Speaker 1: can tell you your body temperature and if you are
Speaker 1: having a fever or if your body temperature drops. Because
Speaker 1: that's something else they could do. They could incorporate a
Speaker 1: sensor that's a very basic thermometer. It's actually a circuitry
Speaker 1: component that changes shape with the temperature. You know, it'll
Speaker 1: expand or contract depending on the temperature particular levels, basically
Speaker 1: like like at a at a certain um at certain temperatures,
Speaker 1: that will basically phase change kind of. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a resistor inside the inside the circuit. So when
Speaker 1: the resistor expands, its resistance changes, and by measuring the
Speaker 1: change in resistance you can determine what the butture is,
Speaker 1: which is really clever, so you could market it as
Speaker 1: this is a very interesting thermometer that you wear on
Speaker 1: your eye. Also, they'll tell you if it'll tell you
Speaker 1: if your glucoast level drops. Uh, but I mean you
Speaker 1: get it. All depends on what kind of sensors are incorporated.
Speaker 1: They don't go so far as to say all of
Speaker 1: this is going to be in a single pair of
Speaker 1: contact lenses. It may very well be that these are
Speaker 1: specific types of contact lenses, some of which may never
Speaker 1: come to market. Yeah. Now, this is a very impressive
Speaker 1: and daunting engineering project to get something as tiny as
Speaker 1: a contact lens to do, to do something like this
Speaker 1: and to stand alone right right because because you don't
Speaker 1: want to hook up a coax cable to your eyeball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to have a or or
Speaker 1: a in a power extension cord going to your eyes
Speaker 1: plug my eyes. Yeah, I actually kind of want that,
Speaker 1: but that might just be the cyberpunkin. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: more of a shadow run kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're rolling our dark elves who need to go
Speaker 1: and what is hacking called that game? I forget anyway? So, uh,
Speaker 1: at any rate, the the the way that this works, well,
Speaker 1: first people were guessing that was going to run off
Speaker 1: r f I D, that was gonna run off radio frequency.
Speaker 1: Actually not not r F I D in general, but
Speaker 1: radio frequencies in particular. You would put in an r
Speaker 1: F I D antenna as part of the circuitry. Here's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about radio frequencies. You can actually harvest
Speaker 1: electricity using an antenna, you know, to pick up radio waves.
Speaker 1: This is abundantly clear. If you ever pick up a
Speaker 1: very basic radio kit which tends to have a crystal
Speaker 1: and and some wire that acts as in antenna, and
Speaker 1: then you hook up another into a speaker's or headphones.
Speaker 1: You don't need a battery. You can actually put the
Speaker 1: headphones on and here radio transmissions. Assuming that one your
Speaker 1: antenna is long enough and to that you're close enough
Speaker 1: to the transmission source. And uh, that's why. You know,
Speaker 1: while you can harvest electricity in this way, it's not
Speaker 1: the way we distribute electricity. It's not the way we
Speaker 1: we Uh, you know, I have a power grid set
Speaker 1: up on this because it's incredibly inefficient. Like if you
Speaker 1: wanted to broadcast electricity, you would have to have incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful radio broadcasts. You need to be close to that
Speaker 1: broadcast source, and everyone would have to have these enormous
Speaker 1: antennas to pick up radio waves. Yeah, and it would
Speaker 1: be decreasingly effective the more walls you were behind. Picturing
Speaker 1: us needing to have a transmitter like in this podcast room,
Speaker 1: just like well nine by nine podcast room. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like filling up a drinking glass with a lawn sprinkler, right,
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's not just that it's inefficient in
Speaker 1: that matter, it's it's also that you're you're just losing
Speaker 1: so much power, you know, you're it's you're not conserving
Speaker 1: energy at all. It's it makes no sense to go
Speaker 1: that way. But for something as small as a contact lens,
Speaker 1: if your device that you're using to communicate back and
Speaker 1: forth between the contact lens. UH is able to emit
Speaker 1: radio frequencies. It could presumably be a method to power
Speaker 1: this stuff, and in fact, that's what everyone thought it
Speaker 1: was going to do back in the day. If you
Speaker 1: go at least at the time of the recording of this,
Speaker 1: if you go to the Wikipedia page for this, it's
Speaker 1: still held Wikipedia believes. I say that as if Wikipedia
Speaker 1: is a sentient entity. It's still Wikipedia. I fear you.
Speaker 1: It's still the way that the Wikipedia entry says, Uh,
Speaker 1: the contact lenses will get power. However, according to a
Speaker 1: patent that was filed back in July, that's not the case.
Speaker 1: The patent. One of the inventors cited in the pattern
Speaker 1: was Bob Otis, the the co project leader UM and
Speaker 1: they instead looked at using let me guess, radio isotope
Speaker 1: thermoelectric generator. No, No, excellent guess, however, h onboard fusion reactor,
Speaker 1: a flux capacitor. No, it was none of the things.
Speaker 1: It was instead of light, just pure light. So the
Speaker 1: idea of being that you would have a photo receptor
Speaker 1: that could convert light into electricity, very like a solar
Speaker 1: panel in your eyes sort of. Although it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to be light from the sun. It could be,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily have to be and UH. The
Speaker 1: idea being that the little photo receptor would not just
Speaker 1: bring in light to generate power, but also would feed
Speaker 1: that data to the microprocessor. And if the light coming
Speaker 1: into your eyes is modulated so that it can hold
Speaker 1: data like those smart light bulbs that we talked about
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. Yeah, or like um, really,
Speaker 1: if you think about it's like a very advanced version
Speaker 1: of a Morse code lamp that by flashing the lamp
Speaker 1: on and off, you're sending a coded signal. Just make
Speaker 1: that way faster. In the signals are just a series
Speaker 1: of zeros and once so so fast that you cannot,
Speaker 1: in fact tell the difference from your brain. Right, and
Speaker 1: it might even be at a frequency that you can't see. Right.
Speaker 1: It could be infrared light, so you wouldn't even see
Speaker 1: it in that case. UM. And in this way, your
Speaker 1: your contact lenses will be able to communicate to another
Speaker 1: UH system. So we mentioned the idea of using these
Speaker 1: contact lenses to monitor your glucose levels. What would happen
Speaker 1: is that your contact lenses would be getting data from
Speaker 1: your tears about how much glucose is in your your
Speaker 1: system and send that information to the microprocessor, which would
Speaker 1: then send a command to some sort of emitter. It
Speaker 1: would either be something as small as a very tiny
Speaker 1: LED light. In other words, your eyes will be shooting
Speaker 1: light out of them, not necessarily like you can see. Again,
Speaker 1: it could be infrared. What you're saying is that this
Speaker 1: isn't going to turn everyone into cyclops. No, only a
Speaker 1: few fortunate people. We'll get the kind where you can
Speaker 1: see like red light coming out of their eyes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that happening. Is that what the X
Speaker 1: and Google X stands after all this time? X men,
Speaker 1: it's the X factor. I'm not gonna say one way
Speaker 1: or the other. Um. All I can say is that
Speaker 1: I know a guy who works for Google, and he
Speaker 1: gets real quiet when I ask him these questions. But
Speaker 1: he also finds me intensely irritating. So the But the
Speaker 1: the other way that it could work as as opposed
Speaker 1: to having an LED light, it could have a reflector
Speaker 1: inside the contact lenses, and this would be like holding
Speaker 1: up a mirror to signal someone by reflecting sunlight toward them. Again,
Speaker 1: kind of like in Morse code, but much faster, another
Speaker 1: modulated lights source, so that you could send data back
Speaker 1: and forth. They even go so far as to say
Speaker 1: that if you wanted to get really fancy with this,
Speaker 1: you could have photo receptors that are capable of picking
Speaker 1: up different colors of light, and each color of light
Speaker 1: could represent a different data stream. Yeah, think about that, Like,
Speaker 1: you could end up having the ability to accept multiple
Speaker 1: levels of information through your eyes. I mean, we do
Speaker 1: that way, but I mean the contact lenses could. But
Speaker 1: all of this would just be so that your contact
Speaker 1: lenses could send that data back to another device. Because,
Speaker 1: as we've already mentioned this, this particular implementation that's described
Speaker 1: in the patent doesn't have any kind of display built
Speaker 1: into the contact lens, so you wouldn't see, like, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't come up with a warning in your vision saying, hey,
Speaker 1: your glucose levels are too high or too low. Instead,
Speaker 1: it would send that information to some other companion device,
Speaker 1: which would then either alert you or a caregiver or whatever,
Speaker 1: like basically like send a text yeah and be like hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jonathan needs a cookie or whatever it may be. So, no,
Speaker 1: you don't have direct communication from the contact lens itself,
Speaker 1: but it is monitoring your your activity or um not
Speaker 1: so much your activity, but you're just whatever the sensor
Speaker 1: is designed to do, whether it's BOI, yeah, and what
Speaker 1: are okay? So we talked about temperature, we talked about
Speaker 1: glucose levels, what other things could it be looking for
Speaker 1: other other sort of chemicals that are in your body,
Speaker 1: that are present in your tears. Technically, any sensor that
Speaker 1: could detect those could be incorporated into these, uh these
Speaker 1: contact lenses as long as they could be miniaturized to
Speaker 1: that degree. So but beyond that we're talking we I
Speaker 1: mentioned that these could also detect things that are in
Speaker 1: your environment, not just the stuff that's inside your body,
Speaker 1: but the stuff you come in contact with. So you
Speaker 1: could have sensors that pick up on things like hazardous
Speaker 1: materials that let's say that's a dangerous gas that you
Speaker 1: would otherwise be unable to detect on your own, or
Speaker 1: about like warning there are bees in your eyes that
Speaker 1: probably probably they're not going to go that far. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get. Now, allergens they do look for, but
Speaker 1: that's different than bees. When you're allergic to bees, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the well, we'll have a to pres Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not like you're all Nicolas caging and
Speaker 1: and I'm aware of Yeah, no, it's but when I
Speaker 1: wonder if like bed ender is a thing, well, I
Speaker 1: mean if be dander's essentially pollen, so oh actually yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: In that case, it would be like, Joe, there's bees
Speaker 1: in your eyes again. Well, I guess it would be
Speaker 1: Siri telling you, right, we need to Not Siri, it
Speaker 1: would be Google. Yeah, yeah, we need to have a
Speaker 1: talk about your your your life and your choices and
Speaker 1: be like go take a zero tech. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: soundingly like a terrible Sandman comic to me right now.
Speaker 1: And honestly, it's just bees in the eyes. Well they can.
Speaker 1: They could have sensors for allergens. So let's say that
Speaker 1: you are really allergic to certain types of pollen. You
Speaker 1: could have sensors that are incorporated into your contact lenses
Speaker 1: that could alert you if you were coming into an
Speaker 1: area that has a lot of it, which could tell
Speaker 1: you to one either get away or maybe you need
Speaker 1: to pop an anti histamine so that you don't move out. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In Atlanta would just say just don't even bother going outside.
Speaker 1: Just stay inside from the months of like March through July. Um,
Speaker 1: then it could. But again, other hazards of stuff like
Speaker 1: say carbon monoxide, you could have sensors that pick up
Speaker 1: on that and alert you to that presence. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: you could have lots of other stuff. You can have,
Speaker 1: you know, the temperature, the heat sensor, letting you know
Speaker 1: if someone is having like a fever spike or their
Speaker 1: body temperature drops. Uh Suddenly, that's a really useful ability.
Speaker 1: But there are some other ones that are a little
Speaker 1: less medical in nature and possibly more commercial and or troubling.
Speaker 1: Like Google has said that one of the things this
Speaker 1: could do is be a way of um authenticating someone's
Speaker 1: identity or ascertaining that identity. So maybe not just authentication,
Speaker 1: but identifying a person. Uh so so sort of like
Speaker 1: a sort of like a smart chip in a credit card. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's just in your eyeball, I guess. I assume
Speaker 1: it would also be based on your body chemistry. That
Speaker 1: would uh, you know, alert people that yes, this is
Speaker 1: in fact that person. It seems a little seems a
Speaker 1: little or welly into me. Not on aste. I say
Speaker 1: that blood alcohol content is zero point eight, must be Jonathan, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's me. I'm the one I drink so much I'm dead.
Speaker 1: Actually if I well, oddly enough, I think I'm meant
Speaker 1: to say point zero. You know, pointy was like insane.
Speaker 1: It's like point I'm on alcohol. Uh, I'm fun at parties.
Speaker 1: So at any rate, the yeah, it's a little troubling.
Speaker 1: But the patent doesn't go into great detail about how
Speaker 1: it would actually do this. I don't know if any
Speaker 1: of you guys out there have read patents. I know
Speaker 1: that my my coworkers here have read through patents before.
Speaker 1: Pattens are meant to give you an overview of how
Speaker 1: a certain technology uh is supposed to work, and in return,
Speaker 1: you get protection for your approach to that technology for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. But but the information is
Speaker 1: publicly there are also can sort of practical and commercial
Speaker 1: concerns at play in the creation of patent. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: behooves you to not say too much, because as soon
Speaker 1: as you say something, it can I mean like like,
Speaker 1: for example, I think that the makers of w D
Speaker 1: forty have never patented their their recipe basically because they
Speaker 1: don't want anyone else to copy here. Right, So, if
Speaker 1: you're able to keep your your trade secret secret, it
Speaker 1: might be better not to patent it. But even if
Speaker 1: you do patent it, there's nothing about. You can be
Speaker 1: a little vague with your language, which sometimes means that
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, I see what it's supposed to do,
Speaker 1: but I still don't see exactly how it does that thing.
Speaker 1: Another example of that is this idea of pairing the
Speaker 1: the contact lenses with other outside products. They specifically talked about.
Speaker 1: They use the term merchandise item. So I was just
Speaker 1: imagining going through a store and looking at stuff on
Speaker 1: a shelf, and uh, it's somehow is able to the
Speaker 1: contact lens is able to recognize a product some way.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the way the lights reflecting off the product.
Speaker 1: Maybe the packaging has another little r f I D
Speaker 1: transmitter thing and it or something that's it could be
Speaker 1: an r F I D antenna instead of a light sensor.
Speaker 1: In that case, well wait, what could couldn't this um, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not. I mean, depending on what
Speaker 1: the capabilities of it are. Couldn't it also just respond
Speaker 1: to a visual code like a bar code or like
Speaker 1: a QR code. Yeah, except that, what do you build
Speaker 1: into the contact lens that can see the code? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean unless it's unless you're scanning something so that
Speaker 1: the code changes from dark to light to dark to
Speaker 1: light to dark to light. For your photo receptor, you'd
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of camera like device incorporated
Speaker 1: into the contact lens. That it was complicated. I would
Speaker 1: guess the future trending pathway of this kind of technology
Speaker 1: would be towards some kind of photosensitive camera type technology
Speaker 1: in it, right, I suppose. So, I just don't know
Speaker 1: of one that's miniaturized to that degree. Certainly not but
Speaker 1: but but at any rate, So, so you're so you're
Speaker 1: looking at a merchandise item, Um, what why would they
Speaker 1: care about? They compare it with things like coupons, so
Speaker 1: that Google makes money with these contact lenses by essentially
Speaker 1: selling ads, except you're not getting hit by advertisements so
Speaker 1: much as you're getting the opportunity. And I use that
Speaker 1: with air quotes to use electronic coupons for various products
Speaker 1: you come in contact with. Again, they don't go into
Speaker 1: detail about how this would actually be, how this would
Speaker 1: be incorporated, but they mentioned the possibility of it, uh,
Speaker 1: which I understand. I understand. I'm not a fan of
Speaker 1: that idea at all. I don't like the idea. Man,
Speaker 1: I think it's beautiful and it's and it's discordian. Uh
Speaker 1: just absolute future. Hell, that's wonderful. It's been a few
Speaker 1: years since I've had to put contact lenses in because
Speaker 1: I got lazy eye surgery, so I don't need contact
Speaker 1: lenses anymore. I just think back to when I was
Speaker 1: first putting them in and how much of a trial
Speaker 1: it was to try and get contact lenses on my eyes,
Speaker 1: and I think, would I go through that trouble for advertising?
Speaker 1: Like like that to me is like, well, that's I
Speaker 1: don't know that. Yeah, I don't know the coupons matter
Speaker 1: that much to me. I mean, would we go with
Speaker 1: a subsidized kindle type? Yeah? Yeah, That's exactly what I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: is that if you, if you're smart, contacts are cheaper. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get the discount contacts if if it allows you
Speaker 1: to you know, if you're if you're browsing through the
Speaker 1: supermarket and you and you look at a certain brand
Speaker 1: of crackers for for long enough, you get a text
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, I see that you're interested in these
Speaker 1: chicken crackers. Chicken crackers, and I'll finally be able to
Speaker 1: afford rits. Yeah, chicken crackers, chicken chicken chicken biscuits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've never seen chicken crackers. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Chicken chicken flavored crackers. Yeah, these things, these are things
Speaker 1: that exist. I have eaten them. For the record, podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: shoe is horrified right now, more perplexed. Made with real
Speaker 1: chicken feathers. They also make shrimpy chips. It's more of
Speaker 1: a it's more of an Asian thing. But yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're like Korean little like like shrimpy cracker puffs. They
Speaker 1: they do taste vaguely ocean like. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of them. I have a I can't buy them because
Speaker 1: eat a lot of them. Would it be ethical to
Speaker 1: design a contact lens that causes piercing, stabbing pain in
Speaker 1: the eyeballs if you don't buy what it recommends? I
Speaker 1: think you've answered your question already, because whenever you have
Speaker 1: the question would it be ethical too? And it's followed
Speaker 1: by the phrase stabbing pain, the answer is pretty much
Speaker 1: always going to be no, unless it's prevents stabbing pain,
Speaker 1: in which case the answer is probably yes. Uh. Well.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I want to mention is
Speaker 1: that almost all of the the coverage I see for
Speaker 1: these contact lenses brings up the possibility that maybe one
Speaker 1: day it will incorporate some sort of display technology, so
Speaker 1: you would get that that augmented overlay in your vision.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the obvious thing when you say when
Speaker 1: you say Google is working on smart contact lenses, everybody
Speaker 1: immediately assumes what they're talking about is some kind of
Speaker 1: augmented reality thing, right, And the patent does not go
Speaker 1: into any detail on that side at all. Uh. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that Google is not thinking about it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they aren't working on the technology. It's
Speaker 1: just not described within that particular patent. Uh. It also,
Speaker 1: to me, would suggest that they would have to look
Speaker 1: into some other form of generating power for the contact
Speaker 1: lenses beyond harvesting light energy. I don't think light energy
Speaker 1: would be I don't think there's any way you could
Speaker 1: build photo receptors that are efficient enough to convert enough
Speaker 1: of the light into energy electricity to power any kind
Speaker 1: of display, even keeping in mind it's a very small
Speaker 1: display because it's right over your eyes. I don't know
Speaker 1: that you could do that just with light alone. You
Speaker 1: might need some other power source. Maybe r if I
Speaker 1: D or maybe something else plug your eyes in. But
Speaker 1: we've got we've got other discussions about contact lenses that
Speaker 1: are more in that augmented reality realm as well. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A study that was published in January in the American
Speaker 1: Chemical Society's journal Applied Materials and Interfaces describes a proof
Speaker 1: of concept material that could be used to coat contact lenses,
Speaker 1: potentially turning them into wearable screens. Awesome. So this wasn't
Speaker 1: so much about the contact lenses themselves, but rather a
Speaker 1: different material that you would have to find some way
Speaker 1: to bind to a contact lens exactly. Yeah. The stuff
Speaker 1: is highly conductive and also hydrophilic, which in practice means
Speaker 1: that it won't electrocute you. Yeah, and in biomedical terms,
Speaker 1: avoiding electrocution is what is considered a good thing, especially
Speaker 1: with the eyeballs. Yeah, it's it's it's it's basically a
Speaker 1: clear film um that's a potential circuit. So so the study,
Speaker 1: the study is called Hydrophilic Organic electrodes on flexible hydro
Speaker 1: Gel's if you happen to want to check it out,
Speaker 1: and the research was led by the University of South
Speaker 1: Australia's Future Industries institute, which is a thing that exists
Speaker 1: which is really exciting to me, in collaboration with other
Speaker 1: materials tech researchers from around the world and also a
Speaker 1: UK contact materials manufacturer called Contumac Limited. I love the
Speaker 1: idea of a future industries institute, like you could just
Speaker 1: come up with any industry that doesn't exist right now
Speaker 1: and say one day at well, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a future industry. My virtual reality dog grooming. It's so
Speaker 1: so is this stuff on the market right now or
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they were working with a contact
Speaker 1: materials manufacturer, No, not at all. It's it's totally not
Speaker 1: ready for the proverbial prime time. Yet they've they've they've
Speaker 1: created this stuff and they've proven that it could be
Speaker 1: used to coat the type of hydrogel polymer that is
Speaker 1: commonly used for for contact less Yes, the next step
Speaker 1: is creating a technique that will get it too stick
Speaker 1: to contacts. Also important. Um you know, then make sure
Speaker 1: that it lasts and appreciably long time despite the rigors
Speaker 1: of being in constant contact with fluids, which is what
Speaker 1: makes nearly everything in the universe breakdown. Uh. Then work
Speaker 1: on manufacturing processes that will make it mass producible and
Speaker 1: simultaneously developed compatible technologies to power the material and allow
Speaker 1: it to be used to monitor biosigns as in the
Speaker 1: Google context, or to create a kind of display that
Speaker 1: you can look at with your ays. Well, it's cool
Speaker 1: that they're looking at this material science approach. I think
Speaker 1: that's really neat. I mean it's very different from the
Speaker 1: approach that Google is doing, where they're looking at incorporating circuitry, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of around the pupil of the eye, right, so
Speaker 1: you know you don't see it because it's it's around
Speaker 1: the part works. Yeah, but this is a slightly different
Speaker 1: approach where it could be incorporated direct, especially if you
Speaker 1: can create transparent circuitry. Uh, it's all overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of your eye, but you you just see right through
Speaker 1: it unless they activated as a display. So we talked
Speaker 1: about that that those looking into different ways of powering it.
Speaker 1: You came up you saw something that was really cool
Speaker 1: that you know, it's not relying on light, it's not
Speaker 1: relying on on radio frequencies, it's relying on something else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This this comes from one of the lead researchers of
Speaker 1: of of the study that I was looking at and
Speaker 1: he mentioned in an interview I believe with Mashable something
Speaker 1: like that that this could be combined with technology that
Speaker 1: allows us to power electronics through human tears. So again,
Speaker 1: since we've already established that there are always tears in
Speaker 1: the eyes, I was going to make a joke about
Speaker 1: seeing sad movies and then you can finally power your electronics.
Speaker 1: But obviously that that ship sailed a long time ago.
Speaker 1: This is really an interesting idea because you've got your
Speaker 1: renewable resource right there as the user, and it's tears,
Speaker 1: and it's tears, but it's it's the tears that are
Speaker 1: always in your eyes. It's now that you're just like
Speaker 1: you have to carry a picture of a little, a
Speaker 1: little sad kitty cat and look at that, and you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, now I can use my admitted reality contact
Speaker 1: lenses again. Time to recharge. You gotta watch the end
Speaker 1: of Homeward Bound. Hanging in there, kitty, just keep hanging
Speaker 1: in there. Just let me put on bou on rug
Speaker 1: for a minute. I really need to send a text
Speaker 1: that definitely makes me cry, but not for the reasons
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Okay, that's an argument for another day.
Speaker 1: Uh No, no, so, so researchers are pursuing en somatic
Speaker 1: biofuel cells a k a. E f c s and
Speaker 1: these work basically like other fuel cells. We we discussed
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of fuel cell technology in an episode
Speaker 1: back in January called our fuel Cells the Future, UM,
Speaker 1: and that was a long time ago. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: do an update episode on that and and you guys,
Speaker 1: if you have not listened to it, you can go
Speaker 1: back and and for for a full take on how
Speaker 1: that technology works. But but very basically, UM, how fuel cell.
Speaker 1: How fuel cells work is that you get two substances
Speaker 1: together to create an oxidation reaction, thus freeing electrons. Right,
Speaker 1: if you can figure out a way to make those
Speaker 1: electrons flow from the oxidation site that the cells anode
Speaker 1: to the cells cathode, you've got a current. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very similar to a battery. So of course, a battery
Speaker 1: generates electricity through an electrochemical reaction that produces an excess
Speaker 1: of electrons. The classic fuel cell that everyone hears about
Speaker 1: is hydrogen fuel cell, where you have hydrogen on one
Speaker 1: side of UM an electrolyte catalyst that blocks electrons from
Speaker 1: going through UH, and you have oxygen on the other side,
Speaker 1: the hydrogen and oxygen want to get together. So what
Speaker 1: you get our electrons dumped out through a kind of
Speaker 1: a back channel. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms get together,
Speaker 1: and then the electrons go through the channel, doing some
Speaker 1: work along the way, and rejoined to create water. Which
Speaker 1: is why in your classic hydrogen based fuel cell the
Speaker 1: output you get you get electricity, you get heat, and
Speaker 1: you get water vapor. Uh. That's not the case of
Speaker 1: every single fuel cell. Obviously there are other chemicals, but
Speaker 1: that's the basic idea, and it is different from a battery.
Speaker 1: But in both cases, you're generating electricity through a chemical process, right,
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the chemicals that's commonly
Speaker 1: used in most fuel cells is some kind of metal
Speaker 1: to help kick off that oxidation process. It's going to
Speaker 1: free up those electrons. But e f c s use
Speaker 1: stuff the current that commonly occur in living organisms, like glucose,
Speaker 1: which we have already covered totally occurs in your tears
Speaker 1: all the time. Um also stuff like lactate and exorbate.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's much better than having to rely on something
Speaker 1: like platinum, which is what a lot of fuel cells use.
Speaker 1: It's also incredibly expensive. Oh sure, something like nickel that's
Speaker 1: a little bit toxic to human people. So that would
Speaker 1: not be great, right, I want to put that in
Speaker 1: your eyes? No? No? Um so. So back in a
Speaker 1: team out of the University of Utah published their research
Speaker 1: involving a prototype contact lens that, when they said it
Speaker 1: in a bath of artificial tears, put out a little
Speaker 1: bit more than a micro watt of power consistently for
Speaker 1: about three hours. And if you're wondering, what's about a
Speaker 1: microwat of power, it's about enough to make an led
Speaker 1: flash occasionally. Uh so, not not quite ready, not quite
Speaker 1: ready for your eyeballs yet, right, and in order to
Speaker 1: do anything appreciable other than make your eyes flash occasionally, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just see would be cool just twinkle maybe as
Speaker 1: the twinkles and not internal, right, like you're just getting
Speaker 1: getting twinkles, Like like you're just walking down the street
Speaker 1: and you suddenly have this blinding light filling up your
Speaker 1: vision for just a second, and you're, like my experience
Speaker 1: seeing a visitation, especially of the eyes. If the contact
Speaker 1: lenses weren't synchronized in any way, that would be really distracting.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, obviously there's a lot more work to
Speaker 1: be done here, not just with the perfecting the technology,
Speaker 1: but then going through that whole testing phase as well
Speaker 1: in actual use cases. Right. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I think that, And I'd love to do an
Speaker 1: episode also on on on e f C s in general,
Speaker 1: because they've been tested a whole bunch in in in
Speaker 1: blood and sweat kind of applications for blood, sweat and tears,
Speaker 1: you guys, Yeah, for for other powering electronics sort of purposes.
Speaker 1: And it's a it's a lot more complex than the
Speaker 1: classic way of getting electricity out of the human body,
Speaker 1: which is piece of electric cells which which transfer motion
Speaker 1: of some kind into energy, uh you know, from macro
Speaker 1: energy from from the steps that you're taking or the
Speaker 1: Fossey dance moves that you're performing, to the micro movements
Speaker 1: of your of your heart or your lungs or something,
Speaker 1: or even the flow of your blood. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: classic example of one of those materials would be courts,
Speaker 1: where you uh, kinetic energy will be converted into electrical
Speaker 1: output and vice versa. Actually, if you put electricity through
Speaker 1: it vibrates the courts crystal, which is why watches rely
Speaker 1: so many watches rely on courts crystals. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit, you know, to kind of wrap
Speaker 1: this up about what we think the future is of this.
Speaker 1: Is this going to be the future of augmented reality
Speaker 1: and potentially even virtual reality if you could completely replace
Speaker 1: someone's vision with a virtual overlay, which may never happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could definitely understand why that would be
Speaker 1: a bad idea. In some cases, you don't want to
Speaker 1: obscure someone's vision when they're trying to make their way
Speaker 1: through a physical environment. Uh, Personally, I think because we
Speaker 1: know for a fact these contact lenses are not going
Speaker 1: to be ready for use for at least a few
Speaker 1: more years, potentially as far out as a decade, but
Speaker 1: not to the magical twenty to forty years that we
Speaker 1: often cite on this show, that it's not going to
Speaker 1: be the near term future of a R. A R
Speaker 1: I think for the next couple of years will focus
Speaker 1: mainly on headsets, like like the hollow lens are other
Speaker 1: comparable pieces of hardware and not something that you would
Speaker 1: wear around all the time, but rather something that you
Speaker 1: specifically put on your face for for a practical application
Speaker 1: and then take off. Like I don't think that that
Speaker 1: any iteration of Google Glass is going to come back
Speaker 1: anytime really soon. Yeah. I know that they keep working
Speaker 1: on it, but I agree. I don't think unless they
Speaker 1: make it so that's it looks like sunglasses and it
Speaker 1: has a compelling use, I don't see Google Glass coming
Speaker 1: back in a way that makes a real impact on
Speaker 1: the market. Now, what about something more like the hollow lens.
Speaker 1: I think hollow lens will have. Well, hollow lens is
Speaker 1: being being promoted as something that works in conjunction with
Speaker 1: your computer, and it's meant to be something that you
Speaker 1: use near the computer. Microsoft is being very savvy in
Speaker 1: that they're looking at what Google did and saying, there
Speaker 1: are some things we want to avoid. We want to
Speaker 1: avoid that situation where you encounter a social stigma because
Speaker 1: someone's wearing a piece of technology on their face out
Speaker 1: in public, and that is unusual. So it invites lots
Speaker 1: of issues like ridicule or being uncomfortable around that person
Speaker 1: because you're afraid that they are recording video of everything
Speaker 1: they see around them, or maybe even streaming it live.
Speaker 1: Now that we have apps that make that incredibly easy
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. The hollow lens instead is supposed to
Speaker 1: be used within your home or office, so that that's
Speaker 1: one big difference. Another is that, like Lauren was saying,
Speaker 1: it's really meant for those those specific tasks you want
Speaker 1: to do, and when you're done with it, you take
Speaker 1: the headset off, whether that's playing a game or maybe
Speaker 1: watching a movie. Because one of the really cool things
Speaker 1: I like about the hollow lens is this idea that
Speaker 1: you can designate a space in your physical surroundings to
Speaker 1: turn it into essentially a a flat screen television, and
Speaker 1: then when you look away, the TV stays where you
Speaker 1: put it, and when you look back, you know it's
Speaker 1: still there. That's kind of a cool thing, Like I
Speaker 1: can imagine that being a way of you upgrade your
Speaker 1: software on your whole lens. You don't have to go
Speaker 1: out and buy a new TV. That's kind of a
Speaker 1: cool idea. Uh. The thing that really excites me about
Speaker 1: all this is that this means we're going to seek
Speaker 1: further development of augmented reality, assuming that it gets support
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, and then by the time these contact
Speaker 1: lenses are ready for purchase, there will already be a
Speaker 1: firm infrastructure in place to support a R. So that
Speaker 1: means that uh, they won't. You don't have to wait
Speaker 1: for the content to be there for the technology to
Speaker 1: make sense, right that that these things would be happening
Speaker 1: fish fish tailing and development so that they they're both
Speaker 1: are dovetailing rather so that they Yeah, fish tailing is
Speaker 1: a separation, UM. But yeah, yeah, and even even if
Speaker 1: that never comes about, then the health applications alone are
Speaker 1: really incredible. Definitely, So even if we never see these
Speaker 1: contact lenses as displays, the idea of them being able
Speaker 1: to monitor very closely these kind of various conditions could
Speaker 1: be a huge benefit to two thousands of people. And
Speaker 1: you know, I know that the taking that burden away
Speaker 1: where someone doesn't have that, you know, that sense of
Speaker 1: resignation that they have to draw more blood so that
Speaker 1: they can test themselves again because you know, they aren't
Speaker 1: sure what their glucose levels are. Taking that away so
Speaker 1: that they are still being monitored safely and can get
Speaker 1: the treatment they need to manage their condition, to me,
Speaker 1: is a phenomenal story, and uh, it's definitely one that
Speaker 1: I'm interested in following. So we will keep our eyes
Speaker 1: on the contact lenses as opposed to the other way around,
Speaker 1: UM and make sure that we follow this development because
Speaker 1: I think, uh, you know, it's it has amazing potential.
Speaker 1: It may take again several years for it to make
Speaker 1: its way through the FDA for approval, uh, but I
Speaker 1: think it'll have a really positive impact. So it's very
Speaker 1: exciting stuff. And uh, guys, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of Forward Thinking, maybe there's some technology
Speaker 1: or or maybe some story and science that you would
Speaker 1: love us to cover. Maybe there's just a question you
Speaker 1: have about a previous episode, or you have a comment
Speaker 1: you would like to make. Send it into us. Our
Speaker 1: email addresses fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: At Twitter we are FW thinking. You can search fw
Speaker 1: thinking over at Facebook and our our little account will
Speaker 1: pop right up. You can just leave us a message there.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty safe to say we're gonna do
Speaker 1: a follow up about gravitational waves because there might have
Speaker 1: been some news you may have heard about it recently.
Speaker 1: It just that news broke the day that we were
Speaker 1: going into the studio to record, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: have enough time to really research that before we do
Speaker 1: a whole podcast on it. But I have a feeling
Speaker 1: a lot of you out there are going to suggest
Speaker 1: that because some of you have done it already on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But thanks because that's awesome and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again. Really sick for more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, I'll visit forward thinking dot Com,
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