If someone's far-sighted, as many people above the age of forty are, they might be able to see the street perfectly well, but have trouble reading a GPS screen that's only fourty cm away from their face.

And speaking as one of the people whose vision defect can't be corrected by glasses, but only by uncomfortable contact lenses, there'd be immense value to me in a computer I can use without lenses - especially since reading on a screen is basically the only thing I need the damn things for while I'm at home. For someone whose work is mostly computer-based, you might be able to get away with taking your lenses out for the entire day and only wear them for the drive to work and back.

> they might be able to see the street perfectly well, but have trouble reading a GPS screen that's only fourty cm away from their face

So they would also not be able to see their speedometer, or their fuel guage...

This is a technological solution looking for problems that are far more conveniently solved by conventional means.

A GPS screen is not a simple dial. Reading small text on a computer you interact with in your car is quite different from determining the orientation of a glowing pointer.

There's nothing convenient about corrective lenses, especially if you are far-sighted or need bifocals and are driving. This is also why the portion of the video that mentioned the GPS also mentioned the speedometer.

However, until it is universally installed in cars and easily adjusted for your personal needs when moving from car to car, I doubt many people will be throwing away their bi/tri-focals in favor of lenses for distance only.

By conventional means, do you mean reading glasses? Observing people needing/using them, to me it seems like a hassle and definitely not a solution that most are satisfied with.

The video mentions both the GPS and speedometer as potential targets for this technology. Giving it some thought and being close to the age where I might benefit from this, it isn't such a bad idea after all.

Obviously I can't speak for other bespectacled folk, but I wouldn't call them a huge hassle. I put them on in the morning, and take them off at night. Once in a while I clean them. That's about the extent of my interaction with them.

(Although I'm short-sighted, so the arguments above don't apply to me anyway.)

While I've seen my dad struggle with reading glasses (and now bifocals) after not needing to correct his vision for the first 40+ years of his life, I've had mostly the same experience you describe for the last 20 years (thanks to inheriting my vision problems from my mom's side). However, in the last couple of years I've started taking my glasses off if I am reading for long periods of time, because my distance vision is getting bad enough that the correction is making the closer text slightly more difficult to read than it is without the lenses. Eventually, this might also lead to needing bifocals myself, despite the fact that I have no problems reading very small text within arms-length without glasses.

Essentially, I'm getting close to doing the opposite of what most people do with reading glasses. For now, I do most minor reading tasks and my work with my glasses on, but for lengthy reading I take them off. Over time, I'm sure, I'll end up taking them off (or looking below my glasses) for almost every reading task, and eventually for work as well.

In the end, though, I don't think the technology will be likely to really solve the issue for me, except to correct a few displays for my corrected vision. I have to pin most of my hopes, at the moment, on improvements in surgery and eventually being able to afford the surgery.

You're in for some future fun, then. I'm "Mr. Magoo" myopic, but in my late 40s the presbyopia fairy dropped in for an extended visit (and still hasn't indicated any desire to go home). So I have different needs for distance vision, for "conversational distance", for monitor distance and for the reading of tiny things, and there are gaps into which things may fall a well. Depending upon which field of range you're talking about (and which eye) I require correction somewhere between +3 and -6 dioptres. It is definitely a hassle, and quite unlike my carefree four-eyed youth.

Same for me with regular glasses but reading glasses for far-sightedness is another issue as you can't put them on temporarily while driving.

This would be great for computer work.

Many people have vision problems where the eye can't easily focus on a variety of distances. So if you have glasses, they're set up to make focusing on one distance easy, but things closer or farther (if that distance is not "infinity") is more difficult. I have progressive bifocals to get some amount of varying correction with distance, but this is thrown off for computers since they take up more of your field of vision than a book. (I also find looking at my phone through the bottom of my glasses to be pretty awkward, even though I've had bifocals since elementary school.)

One solution is an extra pair of glasses for computer work, but this is annoying because you can't get up and go to the bathroom without changing glasses. If the computer monitor were set to add the extra correction between my normal prescription and the intermediate distance prescription, my life would be much better. (Same for my phone.)

Right now, I can pretty much focus without using anything more than my distance prescription, but as I get older, this will become more and more difficult. So I'm pretty excited about this; less eyestrain is always good.

Also, the ability to tweak the correction in software is great. Where I have my monitor isn't quite what the optometrist was expecting when I had my computer glasses made, so I have to change positions to use them. With control in software, I could just adjust some config file somewhere when I rearrange my desk.

You'll find out when you hit your forties and you're trying to decide whether you need glasses or just slightly longer arms.

Charity school with 25 tablets, shared among 500 poverty-stricken children in a third world country. If the correction can be adjusted in software and this can be made cheaply, it's a no-brainer application. The video indicates that it can indeed be made cheaply and adjusted in software.

Sounds much simpler than trying to ensure a continuous supply of glasses for 500 energetic kids

Not necessarily, see this guy for example: https://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liqui...

Although I'm skeptical that third world countries will have access to high tech vision correcting tablets but not eyeglasses.

I've been nearsighted for a long time and wear glasses. Recently I developed presbyopia, and now cellphone screens look blurry unless I remove my glasses. Most of the time my vision with glasses is fine, until I want to look at my phone. A screen that looked sharp to my ancient eyes with my glasses would be wonderful. First world solutions!

If you're nearsighted, maybe you could use this in combination with glasses to project near displays to look like they're farther away. This would eliminate the need to focus on near objects when you're reading or computing.

There are already tablets for the kitchen, for blind people, and so on. I think the "tablets for old people" niche could be a pretty big one, and all of them could feature such displays.

Yes I was also questioning the benefits of a less blurry GPS if I am about to plow into oncoming traffic.