Since the 1970s Steve Mann has been inventing, designing, building, and wearing computer systems for the creation of electronically mediated environments. Among the interesting discoveries found in long-term adaptation to computer-mediated reality was a new way of seeing. Because of the constant view of the world from a photographic perspective, the EyeTap became a way of blurring the boundary between cyberspace and the real world, and of appreciating the range of light and shade in everyday life. Throughout the early 1980s, this led Mann toward a new kind of visual art based on seeing how everyday scenes and objects responded to light.

Dr. Mann is driven by a personal desire to explore new ways of seeing, but through the use of computation rather than optics. For the past 25 years he has been wearing computerized reality mediators every day, all day. This has provided insight into some of the issues that would not normally have been discovered in a controlled lab setting. These issues include not only the long-term effects of such devices, but also some sociological and humanistic factors such as how others react to such devices.

For example, the adverse reaction by others had initially given rise to the author's desire to build (and the author's success at building) reality mediators that do not have an unusual appearance, as in the Late 1990s. The earlier designs are now mainly used for teaching purposes, but have also been shown at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Museum of American History, in Washington D.C., and the Science Museum in the U.K.. The drive to miniaturization led Mann to create, in 1995, devices having a completely normal appearance.

Mann's wearable computer reality mediators have evolved from headsets of the 1970s, to eyeglasses with optics outside the glasses in the 1980s, to eyeglasses with the optics built inside the glasses in the 1990s to eyeglasses with mediation zones built into the frames, lens edges, or the cut lines of bifocal lenses in the year 2000 (e.g. exit pupil and associated optics concealed by the transition regions). In one such design, the computational element of the eyeglasses is incorporated into the eyeglass frames.

The long-term adaptation to seeing through the device provides a unique opportunity to capture, process, store, and recall visual memories. Unlike a mere wearable camera, the EyeTap, because it becomes a manner of seeing, captures exactly what the bearer does see. This results in a new kind of EyeTap cinematographic vision, which involves long-term adaptation to the new way of seeing.

One aspect of the new way of seeing involves learning to see in image-stabilized coordinates, in which a new kind of photographic vision emerges. This gives rise to computer mediated reality as a new way of seeing: longterm adaptation to stabilized image coordinates results in a unique photographic vision of the world.

Presently, Mann is working with his graduate student, Chris Aimone, as well as with other students, on further research into seeing aids and computer vision systems. Mann has built numerous electric eyeglasses prototypes, all of them real working systems that function as seeing aids, visual memory aids, and wearable camera phones (helping us stay connected with our loved ones, helping us remember our lives, and helping improve our safety).

Aimone and Mann have succeeded in designing an injection molded EyeTap suitable for mass production. This was based on an earlier prototype first made in aluminum.

Using the eyetap as an electric seeing aid, (i.e., wearing it continuously) as one would wear traditional optical eyeglasses, makes lifelong video capture possible. Since many eyetap devices also record EEG (from the occipital lobe) and interface to other sensors (like ECG), the eyetap provides, in addition to other physiological sensors, a lifelong visual record called a CyborgLog. Such a log file is useful for health monitoring or personal safety, giving rise to the notion of "inverse surveillance" (sousveillance--while surveiller means "to watch from above," sousveiller means "to watch from below"). The general idea is a kind of expansion from the "community watch" neighborhood concept, but features the ability of common people to report on the activities of those "above" them, in positions of civil or military authority and power.

Note that the eyetap is not a display, although the eyetap does typically contain a computer-controlled laser light source that can synthesize new material in the eye (e.g. change a billboard in view of the wearer into a personal display such as email message). James Fung has greatly advanced the actual research to the use of an eyetap to display data (using the Reality Window Manager), which runs at around 100 frames per second (more than 3 times faster than NTSC video) for replacement of billboards with Xwindows. Using RWM, it is actually therefore possible to use an eyetap as a display, although the original intent of the eyetap was for use as electric eyeglasses.

The EyeTap principle can also be applied to other forms of electromagnetic energy such as heat; called a Thermal EyeTap. More generally, EyeTaps can transcode light across various spectral bands, as well as capture, process, and mediate visual experiences into a form most suited to the unique visual capabilities of each individual wearer. Because the device intercepts rays of light that are colinear with rays passing through the exact center of the eye, when you look a glogger right in the eye, you see what looks like a lens or similar optical assembly that appears to be mounted right in their eye socket. In fact, the iris of the glass lens is mapped exactly to the iris of the eye, which is also the same point that all the rays of laser light pass through on their way to the retina. Optometrist Mel Rapp, of Rapp Optical, is also working on fitting EyeTaps to specific individuals.

For pictures and complete text look in the online encyclopedia wikipedia.org.

Dr. Steven Mann is an artist, a "photographer", and a social critic. He has used Eyetap as a photographic and artistic medium, and he has staged "street theater" events around Eyetap capabilities. He has used Eyetap as a head-mounted live feed "reporter unit", sending real time images of dramatic events directly back to the internet. He has allowed thousands of cyber surfers to "log into" his own vision using Eyetap. He has used the system as a "Seeing Eye Person" network, allowing cyborgs to look out of each other's eyes, and he has prototyped such networks for use by visually impaired individuals.