Instagram, And The Evolution Of Our Eyes
Back in April of this year, Facebook bought Instagram for <you know you’ve all done the voice in your head> One Billion Dollars. There have been reasons bandied about as to why they’d go and do something like that, but I bet I have one they haven’t thought of.
I think it now could be part of an evolutionary step for humanity. At least for our eyes.
Right now, we have a large spectrum of eyesight, [Everything regarding humans should be measured on a spectrum. Maybe it’ll eventually be called the Human Genome Spectrum (HGS), once we have all the answers.] ranging from people that can’t see anything, to people that can see blurry things at best, to people that can see with the aid of machinery or laser correction surgery, to people that have the “perfect” human vision [Optimal HGS?] of 20/20, to people that can see better than that straight out of the birth canal gate. That’s generally the range, I imagine, or at least, a range with enough options to include most people.
Lately, they’ve been getting closer to effective retinal implants, which means we’re not far away from retinal implants for everyone. What could we put in them? Anything that the current Project Glass project from Google is trying to do, and anything that your mobile phone can do, smashed together with a heads-up display, projected at will “inside your eyes”, like Terminator-vision, for lack of a better common reference. I’m assuming a microphone implanted near the jawbone, and enough eyeball circuitry to include the camera from your phone coupled with the anatomical precision of your iris and pupil. Now, add the aforementioned retinal implants, along with cochlear implants, and you can pipe sound from your BrainCell (that’s what i’m calling this cellphone in your head, catchy, no? ;P ) directly into your ears, from the inside. Now the entire ecosystem is self-contained in your body; you can overlay anything on top of what you’d normally see, and hear anything you’d normally hear from the internet, or from a telephone call, or your MP3 player, etc. right inside your head. I’m certainly not the first person to think of this setup, but it might be the first time you’ve visualized these concepts together.
Still with me? This is where Instagram comes in. It’s a popular app, made much more popular by Facebook’s high-profile purchase, so many more people are signing up daily; about 80 million so far, looks like. That’s a lot of people learning about filters, and how light and color affect the way we see things. Not everyone is going to read Gurney’s Color and Light, but they have to learn about filters, and the properties of light somehow because eventually, we’re going to be able to apply any filter to what we see, in real-time, anytime we want.
It’s going to be an important mini-singularity. People will be able to apply tinting in too-bright situations, or just contract their improved iris/pupil; lessen or increase contrast; switch to black-and-white, or even different light spectrums, like infrared, or ultraviolet, all in real-time, as the situation arises. They’re also going to need tech support personnel for these people, which eventually might include everyone on the planet, if indeed it all makes for better humans.
People are willing to put botulinum toxin in them, or endure other body mutilating methods (may be NSFW) almost entirely for cosmetic reasons (replacing a cancer-ridden breast with a prosthesis is not the same as getting 48-DDDs.) People won’t think twice about having better, more convenient technology implanted in them; they may not even have time to decide, that’s how scary exponential growth can be.
Imagine: Your kids could always have a path home available to them if they get lost, or a child locator/finder, built in and always-on, safely with science. Our powers of analysis could increase exponentially, since there would be no delay in seeing what we need to see, and getting the answers we need immediately. Finally, noise pollution would drop dramatically.
Eventually, it’s not even close to being outside the realm of possibility, to imagine having something as powerful as an electron microscope housed in our eyes, though it might seem fantastical right now, without some frame of reference. Following are some points that might help.
Oh, disclaimer: I am not a scientist, and I don’t consider praying to be an effective use of my time.
Food For Thought
The first electronic “PC”, Eniac, was 1800 square feet, and is easily 1000 times less powerful than the cellphone you carry in your pocket right now.
Since Eniac was activated on February, 1946, through to the writing of this document, it has been 66.4 years, approximately.
Moore’s Law generally states that the basic measure of an integrated circuit’s computing power (the transistor count) doubles every 18 to 24 months. It’s a very general, yet fair assessment. It’s a law thought to carry through to until at least 2015.
The Intel 4004 is not the world’s first integrated circuit, but it was the first commercially available microprocessor. The 4004 was released in 1971, about 40 years ago; let’s say ~20 iterations of Moore’s Law, as specifically applied to self-contained CPUs and their evolution.
Metcalfe’s Law says that the value of a network (in this case, networked people) increases proportionally to the square of the number of devices connected to it (n²). The following are examples of some large networks currently in existence, so that you can work out and compare their respective values.
- There’s about 7 billion internet users worldwide.
- There have been about 400 million Android devices activated so far.
- There have been 67 million iPads sold as of April 2012.
- There are currently approx. 80 million Instagram users.
Exponential growth is a tricky subject. This TED video explains how many times you need to fold a piece of paper to get to the moon (Spoiler alert: 45, but you need to watch the video to understand why, if you don’t already have this imagery in your head. It’ll make the future easier on you.)
Exponential growth or advancement can be applied to every scientific field individually, but what about science’s network, or rather, all individual, specialized scientific fields, and how they’re connected to each other? Does its Metcalfe Value (for lack of knowing whether that’s a term or not) increase exponentially as well? Does the internet’s?
Sure, Photoshop has been around for years, but I’ve been answering computer questions for at least 20 years: most people don’t know how to use Photoshop, and most people won’t pay that price tag, or invest the time to learn about a complex piece of software, just to add filters to their photos. Maybe they would now, with the monthly subscription model, but it still doesn’t compare to Instagram’s accessibility, simplicity, specificity, and now, popularity. Instagram also has a Metcalfe Value, and as such, could be viewed as a very powerful network – dare I say it again? – indeed.
Instagram shows people how to look at life from different imaginative angles, and our imagination as a species is what gets stuff to land on Mars when we feel like it. Any program that increases people’s propensity to photograph phenomenal phenomena, and lets them combine their careful creations cleverly before contributing them to communal connected communities, deserves a deliberate distinction for doing its deed to help develop dolts like (d)u(h)s.
Facebook stock may not gain from the purchase of Instagram, but we will as a society. It won’t be the last photo-sharing app people ever use, but it’s what everyone’s using right now.
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