Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it’s a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he’s considering replacing is not a working one — it’s a prosthetic eye he’s worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

“If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?” he asks.

Spence, who calls himself the “eyeborg guy,” will not be restoring his vision. The camera won’t connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a “little brother,” someone who’s watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision.

If successful, Spence will become one of a growing number of lifecasters. From early webcam pioneer Jennifer Kaye Ringley, who created JenniCam, to Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, to commercial lifecasting ventures Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, many people use video and internet technology to record and broadcast every moment of their waking lives. But Spence is taking lifecasting a step further, with a bionic eye camera that is actually embedded in his body.

“The eyes are like no other part of the body,” says Spence. “It’s what you look into when you fall in love with somebody and [influences] whether you trust someone or not. Now with a video camera in there, it will change how people see and perceive me.”

It’s an interesting and innovative idea, says Yonggang Huang, a professor in the departments of civil and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. Huang, along with University of Illinois professor John Rogers has developed a web of micro-sensors to enable eye-shaped cameras. Huang is not involved in Spence’s project.

“It’s very clever,” says Huang of Spence’s quest. “It is not a true eye but it provides the way for people to record images in life as they see [them] and store [them].”

Spence lost his right eye at 13 while playing with his grandfather’s gun on a visit to Ireland. “I wanted to shoot a pile of cowshit,” he says. “I wasn’t holding the gun properly and it backfired, causing a lot of trauma to the eye.”

This short video by Rob Spence shows the operation in which surgeons removed his sightless eye.

Warning: Graphic imagery may be unsettling to many viewers.

After the accident, he returned to Belleville, a small town two hours east of Toronto, where he grew up. Spence became technically blind in the eye, and over the years, his vision deteriorated completely. Three years ago he had his eye removed and a prosthetic one inserted. Ever the filmmaker, he even made a movie out of his surgery. But it wasn’t an easy decision.

“When you completely lose an eye it is a difficult thing to let go of,” he says. “The eye has an emotional attachment. It is a window to your soul.”

Spence wore an eye patch for a while, which he says looked cool. But once he started thinking about having a camera in his eye, Spence got in touch with Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto. Mann is one of the experts in the world of wearable computing and cyborgs — organisms that blend natural and artificial systems.

“There are a lot of challenges in this,” says Mann, “from actually building a camera system that works, to sending and receiving images, to getting the correct shape of the camera.”

Even in the age of miniaturization, getting a wireless video camera into a prosthetic eye isn’t easy. The shape of the prosthetic is the biggest limitation: In Spence’s case, it’s 9-mm thick, 30-mm long and 28-mm high.

While that might seem like plenty of room in an age when digital cameras are squeezed into unimaginably slim and compact phones, it actually isn’t. The average area available inside a prosthetic eye for an imaging sensor is only about 8 square mm, explains Phil Bowen, an ocularist who is working with Spence.  Also, a digital camera has many more components than the visible lens and the sensor behind it, including the power supply and image-processing circuitry. Getting a completely self-contained camera module to fit into the tiny hollow of a prosthetic eye is a significant engineering challenge.

That’s where Professors Huang and Rogers’ research could come in handy. Three months ago, the duo published a paper that showed how a new sensor built out of a flexible mesh of wire-connected pixels could replace the traditional flat imaging chip as the light sensor for a camera. The mesh is made from many of the same materials as a standard digital-camera sensor, but it has the ability to conform to convoluted, irregular surfaces — like the back of a synthetic eyeball.

“Our cameras might more naturally integrate with a prosthetic eye, due to their hemispherical shapes,” says Rogers. “One might also argue that they can provide a more human-like perception of the world.”

Then there’s the question of how the prosthetic eyeball (the outer shell for the camera) will be made. The eyeball chassis has to close shut and be watertight.

Traditional prosthetic eyes are single pieces made with polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA), a flexible polymer that is also used in dentures. To fit a camera in, Bowen redesigned the prosthetic eye into two pieces that could snap shut.

But with a camera inside there’s something new to worry about. The modified prosthetic eye will be heavier than traditional ones and that could affect the eye socket, says Bowen. “The weight might stretch out the lower lid,” he says, potentially disfiguring the face.

Assuming the size, weight and water-tightness issues can be solved, Spence has a vague idea of how he thinks it can work. A camera module will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage. To boost the signal, he says he can wear another transmitter on his belt. A receiver attached to a hard drive in a backpack could capture that information and then send it to another device that uploads everything to a web site in real time.

If it sounds rather cumbersome and complicated, it is. Spence and his team are still working to find the right answers.

He hasn’t been able to get the bigger camera companies to work with him. “Part of problem is if you cold call somebody it sounds like there is a maniac on the other end of the phone,” he says. “This whole idea confuses and overwhelms most people.”

“Right now I am begging, borrowing and stealing camera modules from different cameras to make a stage one prototype,” says Spence.

Spence is not the only one attempting to implant a video camera in his eye socket — artist Tanya Vlach is working on a similar project — but if he’s successful he will be more than just another cyborg. The documentary film he’s making about his efforts, plus the experience of living with a video camera in his eye, could help build greater awareness about the culture of surveillance in our society today, he says.

“No one is going to ban surveillance cameras,” says Spence. “It’s more about being aware of it. It’s about giving a shit in the first place.”

Having a bionic eye doesn’t mean Spence will be recording all the time, he says. Unlike lifecaster Justin Kan, Spence is not promising to broadcast all of his life’s moments. (Even Kan reneged on his promise within a few short months, as soon as a romantic opportunity presented itself.)

Spence is willing to turn off his camera in spaces such as gyms, theaters or private events. But he will be making many of those decisions on the spur, every day. “I wouldn’t behave that differently than someone with a cellphone today,” he says.

Even though his project is still in its early stages, Spence says many people have already told him they wouldn’t be comfortable being filmed.

“People are more scared of a center-left documentary maker with an eye than the 400 ways they are filmed every day at the school, the subway, the mall,” he says.

He hopes he will help  get people thinking about privacy, how surveillance cameras and the footage they record are being used and accessed.

“Sometimes I run a little experiment,” he says. “I tell people around me, ‘Did you know there are 11,000 new video cameras being installed in our country every day?’ Then I will exaggerate and say there are 50,000 new video cameras going in everyday,” says Spence. “Most of the times I get the same answer: ‘That’s interesting. Now what’s for lunch?’ or ‘The weather is nice today.’

“I wonder what those people will say when they are staring back into the video camera in my eye?”

[via Wired] by Priya Ganapati

Photos: Steve Mann

WIRED Magazine put together a great comparative of Obama and McCain’s policies that are important to their readers – here’s the wrap-up.

Topic Covered:

1. Broadband
2. H1B issues
3. Investment in green tech
4. Net neutrality
5. Spectrum

Broadband

The Issue: The United States is becoming a tortoise in a world of hares. One of the world’s most Wired nations a decade ago, we now lag behind most of our peers. In France, broadband access is half the price and four times as fast. The main cause for the debacle is a lack of competition in telecommunications. Most communities have, at best, one cable choice and one DSL choice. This situation came about through the mass consolidation of the industry, and through the non-enforcement and then repudiation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which mandated that entrenched telecom companies lease their lines into people’s homes to smaller companies.

McCain’s Position: As argued here and here, McCain has consistently been on the wrong side of this issue. As Senate Commerce Chair, he supported the mass consolidation in the industry. He also consistently voted the wrong way on whether entrenched competitors should be forced to lease their lines. The one point in his favor is his support of the Community Broadband Bill which would help cities offer wireless Internet, even when the local companies try to crush them.

Obama’s Position: Obama wasn’t around for the major votes on this issue. And while he is advised by all the right people, he hasn’t come out with a specific plan to open up the industry. His big proposal is to take money currently used to subsidize rural phone use and, instead, use it to subsidize rural broadband use. This could be helpful. But if the markets aren’t made competitive beforehand, it could also end up as little more than another subsidy to the same giant companies that have served us so poorly.

Grades:
McCain: D
Obama: B

H1B Visas

The Issue: Many people skilled in technology around the world want to work in the United States, but it’s tough to get in if you don’t have a family member already living here. One good way to increase American productivity would be to increase the quota of skilled workers allowed under our H1B visa program. Opponents counter with mostly bogus concerns about spies and job loss for Americans.

McCain’s Position: Though his immigration policies shifted during the Republican primary, he has been a long proponent of allowing in more high-skilled technology workers. Here’s his plan: “John McCain will expand the number of H-1B visas to allow our companies to keep top-notch talent –- often trained in our graduate schools -– in the United States. The Department of Labor should be allowed to set visa levels appropriate for market conditions. Hiring skilled foreign workers to fill critical shortages benefits not only innovative companies, but also our economy. For every foreign worker hired, corporations generally hire five to ten additional American workers.”

Obama’s Position: Obama supports a temporary increase in skilled immigrants allowed here under H1B visas. But he doesn’t mention the issue in his technology plan. And, in interviews, he has hemmed and hawed about highly skilled immigrants taking jobs from Americans. In an interview with Michael Arrington, he said, that the country can “go a long way toward meeting industry’s need for skilled workers with Americans. Until we have achieved that, I will support a temporary increase in the H-1B visa program as a stopgap measure until we can reform our immigration system comprehensively.

Grades:
McCain: B+
Obama: C

Green Tech

The Issue: Technology is the best, and only way, to get us out of our environmental mess. Government’s best bet at solving this problem isn’t to pick and fund specific winners. Instead, it should try to create as fertile a marketplace as possible, while ending subsidies to dirty technologies. Five-dollar gas, after all, is good for clean tech.

McCain’s Position: McCain talks loudly about green technology, but he carries a small stick. He wants to invest $2 billion annually for research into clean coal, and he wants to offer a $300 million prize for developing an advanced battery technology. Like Wired, he does strongly support nuclear power.

Obama’s Position: Obama’s stick is bigger. He calls for an investment of $150 billion over the next decade in clean energy. He wants to extend tax credits for clean energy producers, and he has proposed an annual 410 billion investment in a Clean Techhnology Venture Capital Fund. Like McCain, he favors a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Unlike McCain, his supporters don’t chant “drill, baby drill” at his rallies — suggesting that he’ll be less likely to extend the subsidies to oil companies that have played such a big role in limiting green tech. It no surprise that the green guys love him.

Grades:
McCain: B
Obama: A

Net Neutrality

The Issue: The question here is whether the telecom companies can pick and choose what they send over their pipes. Without a regulation mandating that the pipes remain open, Verizon, for example, could decide to start messing with your Vonage or your Bittorrent.

McCain’s Position: According to his technology plan “John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like ‘net neutrality.’” He does however support the notion that technology companies should voluntarily proclaim their support for “freedom of access to content.”

Obama’s Position: Here’s the first specific point in his technology plan: “A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.”

Grades:
McCain: D
Obama: A

Spectrum

The Issue: Spectrum is the technological equivalent of the roads over which our technology travels. Right now, clunky companies that use oxcarts own many of the widest highways. Meanwhile, tiny alleys—like the 802.11 band—are used for rampant innovation, like everything that uses WiFi. Soon the government is going to have a choice over whether (and how) to auction off extremely valuable, and fast, spectrum: the unused bits in between broadcast TV channels one and 52. Google and other most other tech companies believe that the spectrum could be the basis for a future of super-fast wireless communication. The broadcast companies naturally want to keep it in their top drawer. Joel Osteen is terrified that his sermons won’t come through cleanly if the spectrum is auctioned off.

McCain’s Position: McCain has, sensibly, long opposed giving away the airwaves. “They used to rob trains in the Old West. Now we rob spectrum,” he once said. He initially helped push through the last big spectrum auction, and he takes a strong, positive stand in his platform: declaring that we should “auction off inefficiently-used wireless spectrum to companies that will instead use the spectrum to provide high-speed Internet service options to millions of Americans.” The bad news is that he hasn’t said anything good on spectrum since the beginning of the primaries. He didn’t push for rules that would mandate competition over the last batch of spectrum auctioned off. He is also worryingly close to (and almost always sides with) the telecom industry, which is packed with spectrum offenders.

Obama’s Position: Obama has stated vaguely that we should review our spectrum policies and look for opportunities to open more up. But he has been reluctant to take a stand on the white spaces, perhaps because he fears a fight with the National Association of Broadcasters. He did, however, take a very good position in his interview with Arrington, declaring his support for all the right goals and then specifically criticizing the most recent auction. “We must make sure the nation’s airwaves are licensed to maximize their public benefit. Auctions have most recently been conducted without sufficient incentives to encourage full use and competition.” Perhaps partly because of this — and partly because he seems generally more tech savvy — employees of the companies that want to open up and use the white spaces massively favor him.

Grades:
McCain: B
Obama: B

[via WIRED] by Nicholas Thompson