Idea for Google Glass

I'm very myopic (near-sighted) and I've been wearing glasses since the fourth grade. It's gotten so that I can hardly function without my glasses. Then, when I was around 35, I developed presbyopia (Greek presbys or elder/old man + ops or eyes = old man's eyes), a progressive condition where the eye's lenses have reduced ability to focus on near objects even when wearing corrective lenses. The solution here is to wear bifocals, which essentially split your vision into two, allowing you to clearly see both far and near objects. I don't like the feel of bifocals because of the line separating the two lenses. Progressive lenses, which don't have a visible line, are expensive so I opted for two glasses: one for far vision and another for near vision. As you can imagine, it's not really that much better than bifocals or progressive lenses.

Tonight, I saw a picture of a man wearing Google Glass. It's a called a wearable computer because you wear it like eyeglasses and it has a small screen where a picture or video is projected just in front of your eye. It functions much like a smartphone so you can access the internet, take pictures or videos, send or read emails, and call someone.

Looking at the picture of Sergey Brin—one of the founders of Google—wearing the Glass (that is what they call it), it struck me that it might be possible to use the same technique to help people with the same condition that I have.

Here's the idea:

Modify the device so that it can be used over both eyes. An increase in the screen's size would probably be better also. The built-in camera (those two black dots to the side) will take videos of the front of the wearer, focus, and project it on the screen. The Glass can be programmed to automatically adjust the focus for either far or near vision. This means you'll only need one pair of glasses and it doesn't have be to bifocals. It's as if you're wearing high-tech, self-focusing glasses.

(Sorry Sergey, I had to modify one of your pictures to make an illustration. I took the left half of your picture, duplicated it, reversed it, and joined them together. It's not perfect but it does the job of illustrating the idea.) (",)

I don't know if it's an original idea but it's something I think I would buy—depending on how much it costs.  (",)