Ever wish you could change the color of your eyes to really make your peepers pop?? Oh wait…you can. Color contact lenses. Argh. No matter who the manufacturer is, the hues are still super-fake looking, even after so many years. Staring deep into someone’s really oddly opaque blue eyes is a slight bit disturbing. So I’ve heard. Or when they float around on your brown irises because let’s face it, it’s not a one size fits all product, and you look like an alien with one half-green eye and one half-brown eye. That doesn’t look strange at all.
I’ve been there and I’ve never lost the itch, even though my past experiences were borderline disastrous. So I’ve given this some hard thought.
Wouldn’t it be cool if I had smart CONTACT LENSES to adjust the color of my eyes??? Obviously they would be made of a special material and powered to transmit data to an app (of course, because everything these days has to be controlled by an app to be cool or purposeful). The app would enable the user to determine exactly which shade to color the eyes. Maybe green with a hint of brown around the pupil or certain variations of blue or hazel…possibilities, possibilities.
But why stop there? Let’s really give these suckers an authentic look for the users. The lenses could measure physiological data, transmit it to the app and then make changes to the selected color based on mood, for example. It makes everything look and feel…well, more real. You now have bright blue eyes but you’re getting angry so the lenses detect changes in your body that adjust the shade. Perhaps they darken? They’d be reflective of your mood. In addition, if your pupil dilates, the iris would read that data and shrink.
Google is already on it…kind of. They’ve created the smart contact lens, although they have a much more altruistic goal. Their lenses were created as a way to measure glucose levels for diabetics and then send data wirelessly to a nearby device.
Google’s smart contact lenses for diabetics: Another step towards the Google-powered cyborg
The big challenge to this innovation is the power source. In the case of Google’s invention, a tiny antenna is embedded in the lens but because it’s so small, it needs to be close to the power source, a challenge Google will ultimately overcome, I’m certain.
And then Colarity will be next. =)