Being Steve Mann
The practice of everyday cyborg living
The eyes had me. But first, some backstory.
Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer isn’t your traditional page-turner, but it’s compelling nonetheless. The author is Dr. Steve Mann, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto. Mann wears many hats: academic, electronics whiz, Luddite, self-styled "Reflectionist," privacy advocate, culture-jammer... oh yeah, he’s also a cyborg.
Mann calls his invention WearComp, and Cyborg outlines its evolution from a series of bulky headsets and Ghostbusters-styled backpacks to its current incarnation: basically a micro-hot-rodded pair of Ray Bans. ("Even when fully rigged," he notes, "one can still play an acceptable game of squash.") Using EyeTap technology, WearComp imprints laser images directly onto the user’s retinas. Since the user is actually "seeing" via a series of miniature cameras, he or she can literally record their entire day. (Mann recalls how one of his grad students, wired to the gills with WearComp, successfully settled a dispute with an airline clerk by replaying an earlier conversation!) As if that isn’t crazy enough, WearComp also allows users to run basic computer applications (e-mail, word-processing, et al) while walking around, basically relegating "reality" to the role of fancy computer wallpaper. Or something like that.
Referencing a Ph.D. reading list’s worth of big guns (Innis, McLuhan, Foucault, Morse, de Certeau), Mann describes his ongoing fieldwork involving vital issues of privacy and solitude. Much time is devoted to what a Wired writer once termed "glass ceiling domes of wine-dark opacity," those impenetrable plastic covers which conceal surveillance cameras in public spaces. (It turns out security guards don’t take kindly to wiseacre cyborgs trying to film their cameras.)
The book is heady and creepy. It’s also surprisingly personal, and Mann puts a human face on cyborgs that is by turns touching (as in his recollection of a brilliant friend’s suicide) and funny (as when a naked Mann learns hard lessons about smart-cards in a Stuttgart spa). If he is, as the New York Times dubbed him, "the world’s most popular cyborg," Steve Mann is also its most cuddly. Eccentric as all get-out, sure. But a real likable fellow. A nice guy.
In short, the kind of cyborg who might let me try on his magic goggles.
Like I said, the eyes had me. As fascinating a read as Cyborg is, it left me with a burning question mark: exactly what is it like to wear WearComp? What do Steve Mann’s eyes actually see?
Mann agreed to meet me in an abandoned Dundas Street restaurant a few blocks from his University of Toronto office. He was in the middle of constructing an interactive installation, and the room looked it: boxes of motion sensors stacked willy-nilly, electrical cables snaking across the scuffed concrete floor, a PC precariously balanced on a makeshift table. It was hard to believe the space would soon become a faux decontamination chamber, in which visitors willingly strip bare and parade in front of "photometric stero body scanners."
"We’re going to paint this all white, of course," said Mann, gesturing at the gaudy yellow-blue-and-mauve decor. The joint was freezing, but Mann was sensibly bundled up in a yellow hoodie, a red tuque pulled down to the top of his black WearComp wraparounds. He looked like a ski-bum crossed with Lou Reed circa the first VU album. And, yes, he was a real nice guy.
We sat in ridiculously overstuffed chairs and I peppered him with warm-up softballs. We talked about Cyberman, Peter Lynch’s recent documentary about Mann. We talked about Cyborg. We talked about his other new book, Intelligent Image Processing, which takes a far more technical approach to WearComp. (Mann is currently using it as a textbook in one of his engineering courses.) Then I asked Big Question #1.
Q: "What do you see in those glasses?"
A: "When people ask me what I see, I always say ‘The future.’"
Long, awkward pause.
Q: "But what are you seeing right now?"
A: "Well, in the book I talk about filtering out cigarette advertising."
Long pause. I try another approach.
Q: "Yes, but what, specifically, does that mean? What’s that look like? Uh, like, is there e-mail?"
A: "Oh, there’s always e-mail."
In Cyborg, Mann writes that people often find him "detached and lost," some going so far as to wonder if he’s "mentally handicapped." I understood that evaluation – I mean, really, really understood it – and told him as much. After another long pause, he laughed. Whew.
Q: "So what’s going on in those glasses at this very moment?"
A: "Well, I have different glasses for different uses."
Q: "Such as...?"
A: "I have one pair that detect heat. I can see where people have been in a room, see the heat of their footprints."
Q: "Are those the glasses you’re wearing right now?"
A: "No."
That’s when I figured there was nothing left to lose. So I popped Big Question #2: Q: "Can I try on your glasses? Pretty please?"
At first he dodged the request by mumbling something about "mediated reality." As I persisted, he gave more concrete caveats ("If the lasers aren’t lined up with your eye, you won’t see anything"), but wouldn’t actually say no.
Finally, he gave in. He rose from the chair and crossed the room to the PC, the uneven gait of his ataxic spacewalk filling me with anticipation. Mann pecked at the keyboard, bringing up the Cyberman soundtrack as mood music. Finally, after much micro-fiddling on a pair of backup WearComp sunglasses, he said I could take a peek. I wasn’t allowed to actually put the things on my head, but beggars can’t be choosers. I leaned in for my first foray into mediated reality.
I, too, have seen the future. And it smells like foam rubber. |
