Charmed Technology - Pressroom

USA Today: "Today's Cyborgs Get an Eyeful"
by Janet Kornblum July 1 , 2001

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Thad Starner is lying flat on his back on his office couch, staring at the ceiling. Don't bother him. He's working.

If you were to walk in on him, you might not know that - at first. But a closer look would reveal the signs: The fingers of his left hand are gliding over a funny little one-handed keyboard called a Twiddler. His glasses aren't just ordinary help-you-see glasses; attached to them is an actual monitor, about the size of a Chiclet.

Starner's view through the "MicroOptical" display, as his particular brand is called, is that of a computer-screen display. He can see words, pictures - whatever you might see on a computer screen.

Starner, assistant professor of computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is as close as anyone comes these days to being a cyborg, short for cybernetic organism. He's not exactly like the Borg of Star Trek fame - humanoids who get assimilated into a giant collective and are controlled through mechanical implants. But those few individuals who consider themselves to be real-life cyborgs are not that far off.

They tend to continuously wear their equipment - sewn into clothing, hidden in eyeglasses - sometimes conspicuously. And they use machines to seamlessly integrate cyberspace into daily life.

Call them the extremely wired. While the rest of us are just getting used to a world where we carry cell phones, pagers and personal digital assistants, the cyborgs - mostly academic types - have been experimenting for years with a kind of life that allows them to be connected all the time.

"It's like there's no difference between cyberspace and the real world," says Steve Mann, a cyborg pioneer who, at 38, has been making and wearing computers for 20 years.

While cyborgs are talking to you, they also may be answering e-mail, looking up information on the Internet or altering the view of their environments. For instance, Mann, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, regularly alters his environment by superimposing different scenes, such as a garden, through the eye device he wears. The EyeTap device causes rays of eyeward-bound light to be replaced by rays of synthetic light having the same characteristics, Mann explains.

The result? Mann can essentially broadcast a picture of a garden to his eye, so he sees a garden where others simply see what is there. (But no need to worry - he'd still see an oncoming car.)

Mann's device also allows him to take pictures of his environment so that when he's at the grocery store, for example, his wife can use a remote device (like a computer) to see what Mann sees. She can actually circle the peach that she wants him to buy. "She can 'scribble' on my retina," Mann explains. "It's a very personal form of interaction."

Wearable computer users also can link themselves in a sort of collective. So they might be "talking" to each other without speaking while across the room - or across the country. Most compulsively take notes so they can refer to them the next time they talk to you.

Wearable computer users may seem like geniuses, able to pull information seemingly from the air. For instance, Starner, an Atlanta resident and a co-founder of wearable computer company Charmed Technology, based in Santa Monica, Calif., says he's been able to use his wearable computer to pull up data on the go so he can customize his pitches to venture capitalists when he's trying to get money for Charmed.

"You can't do that with a laptop or a PC. They're too intrusive." But, with a wearable PC, he can pretty much look you in the eye and take notes at the same time. "If I take notes, you won't even notice it."

Today, you might not even know you're talking to a wearable computer user - an elite cadre of academics, many of whom got their start at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and students. It's difficult to estimate just how many are running around these days. It largely depends on whom you ask and how they happen to define a borg, from people who use simple devices to alter their environments to the other extreme, at which it's virtually impossible for an outsider to detect where the machine ends and the man begins. But it's safe to say there are dozens - maybe even hundreds - of them.

And people who consider themselves cyborgs are quick to point out that a lot of us regular folks are dancing on the edges, if not tumbling to the center, of borgdom. Wearable computers are being deployed everywhere from the military to the assembly line.

Thousands of people depend on electronic pacemakers and cochlear implants, among other computerized health equipment. And an increasing number consider the addition of cell phones, pagers and PDAs part of daily dress.