Long Term Vision for Eyewear

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts Hi, I'm Xing Singh, and I'm Simon Jack, and together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring how some of the world's richest people made their fortunes . And we're back for a new season with a brand new lineup of billionaires. Yeah, global pop icon Beyonce. Hollywood movie director Steven Spielberg. Football superstar Christiana Renalo, anyone? And as ever, we're asking you to decide whether they're good, bad or just another billionaire. That's good, bad, billionaire. Listen first and BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Greg Furt and welcome to Dome, the show that explores future wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives. Each episode I sit down with entrepreneurs and experts to discuss where the businesses of today may be tomorrow. This time we're looking at the future of IWAR, asking whether smart glass es with built in video cameras might see past previous failures to become widely accepted, and whether you might soon be wearing smart contact lenses that can not only display messages but monitor your eye health too . Joining me today with a twenty twenty vision of the future. It's our fountain of foresight. Futurist Tracy follows. Hi, Greg. How was that for an intro? Awesome. I say twenty twenty but of, course no one can know for sure what the future holds. What we're looking to do here on DOE as always is to explore the science and the tech that's currently on the frontier and then try to project into the future which is what you specialise in I wear today. You can always be seen sporting a fantastic pair of specs . They're very big, square lenses, thick frames, very fashionable. I feel they're part of your look. They're almost a fashion accessory as well as their medical use. Well, I think you're right. I mean, lots of glasses, spectacles have moved from medical use to like an identity statement, I suppose. We're going to be joined later by the Vice President of Wearables at Meta, who are currently selling internet connected glasses , AKA smart glasses . But before we turn our eyes to the future, I want to welcome two experts to outline the current ocular offerings. With us in the studio is the head of optometry at the University of Manchester, Professor Philip Morgan. Welcome Philip. Yeah, hi, Greg, nice to be with you. Thanks for coming. And joining us online is an optometrist and assistant professor in International Eye Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Head of Global programme development at Peak Vision, Priya Morgaria. Welcome, Priya. Hi . Philip, do we have statistics for the proportion of the UK population who currently wear glasses or contact lenses? We do. Yes. Something like two thirds of us wear spectacles, which gets us to around forty million people in the UK. Smaller numbers in contact lenses, of course, maybe around ten percent of adults, which is something of the order of five million people . So they're both widely used. Wow, and I'm presuming the older you get, the more likely you are to need them. It's certainly true that the more likely you are to need them. So if we think about spectacles, for example, once we get to over fifty , about ninety percent of people wear glasses because of the ocular changes with age. Contact lenses, technically the need would still be there, but in fact in practice, most contact lens wearers are younger in their twenties , thirties and forties They then tend to shift into glasses? They tend to shift the needs and challenges for contact lenses in that fifty plus group when people becoming presbyptic when they're losing their natural ability to focus close to more challenging with contact lenses. So we see the numbers aware as perhaps drop off at that age group and going to spectacles which is the same actually because there are some really great multifocal contact lens options. Priya, as an optometrist as someone who provides vision testing and eye care for patients , what have been the key recent developments in eyewear that we can go and pick up on the high street? I mean, firstly, I'd like to say that glasses are about a seven hundred year old invention . So they've been around for a long time, but it's what we've been doing with the lenses that has changed. And so that's things like progressive lenses . So okay , very focus . And these allow people to see at three different distances. So in the distance, that intermediate sort of your computer, your phone, and so much more closer you' rereading. But that's just one pair of glasses. So we need to look through the right part to do the right task and the sides sometimes can feel a little bit swimmy, like a bit of distortion . However, modern very vague lenses have come so much further than sort of early on and typically the more you spend on them, the better they will be. Another type of lens invention has been photochromic lenses, the ones that change from clear to dark when you go out into the sun and then back again. Have you tried them, Tracy? I haven't know. I don't know why I associate them with an older generation. Maybe because my mom and dad had them and you know my mum would put on the glasses and turn around and suddenly she'd turned into Anna Winter . It's like wow . I don't know. Is it a generational thing? I'm not sure. Is it prior? And also how much of it have they improved over the years? Oh, Tracy, I feel terrible right now. I got those glosses when I was about five years old living in East Africa . But you're right. People do associate them with, you know, sort of the older generation. However, there's now a lot more choice around them. There's a lot more different colours, so not just the kind of dark brown and dark a grey. That transition time has improved a lot. It used to take ages and ages for them to change from dark to clear. And they perform a lot better in cars now as well. The other versions didn't darken in cars , so they have come a long, long way . Well, the most responsive glasses that I could find say they take twenty five seconds now to change from clear to sunglasses dark , and then they say less than two minutes to fade back to clear. Phillip, do you think almost instant trans itions could be possible in the future? I think that is possible. I mean, essentially the current generation lenses we have, we're waiting for a chemical reaction to sort of happen within the lens. So it does take a number of seconds, although actually much quicker in the colds. So you could envisage liquid crystal based photochromic lenses, which would change essentially instantaneously. There's some complexity to that.' Wed need power to the lens. But we are moving to an era where we have batteries and electric power within spectacle frames. And so I could envisage that that would be possible . The principal use of glasses and contact lenses are, of course, to help people correct their long or their short sightedness. Tracy, are you long or are you short sighted? I'm long sighted, which you should expect from futurist. Yes, that's lovely . So that means you can see things that are a long way away well, but not things that are close. Priya, remind us briefly how spectacles or contact lenses resolve long or short sightedness. What they do is they change where the light focuses inside the eye, so it lands in the right place. And Philip, I was reading that we're heading towards a future where many more people around the world are likely to end up developing serious eye conditions and potentially losing their sight , and apparently this is to do with current rates of short sightedness myopia in children. Tell us more Greg, I spent a lot of time last year in East Asia and the explosion of myopia that we've seen there over the past twenty or thirty years is a massive topic of conversation. We're now running at rates of in the big urban centers in East Asia. We're running at close to one hundred percent of children are myopic. I think data for Japan get it around ninety percent of fourteen year old girls are short sighted and that's the same across China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea. So it's an incredible, incredible thing that we're seeing at this time. Do we know what's causing it ? It's some combination of intense inside modern living. That's one part of it. And there's something about the genetics, it would seem of people of East Asian ethn icity that is causing their eyes in particular to change to the modern environment where we're spending a lot of time indoors children in particular and doing a lot of intensive ne,ar work much l,ess outdoors and this is having this impact in causing the eyes to grow big and become myopic. So it's a combination of environmental but also genetic factors , so could we expect to see something similar in the UK soon? We are starting to see the levels of myopia pick up in the UK in Europe and I guess in the West more generally. We do seem to be a generation behind what we're seeing in East Asia. They're the forerunners of all this, but I think we're very much heading in the same direction here in the UK as well. People might not think that this is a big deal because you just give the kids glasses and that's going to sort their vision. But there are other potential concerns here aren't there? There are indeed. So yes, certainly being myopic is an inconvenience, you know, you can wear spectacles or contact lens to see clearly in the distance . But what we're seeing with myopic eyes is essentially toye that d'ens too big . And when we're born, we're born with sort of a limited amount of tissue that over time as we age sort of spreads across the back of the eye, the retina, for example . And the idea is once we get to about six or eight, that stop s and we have about the right amount of tissue for a healthy normal eye. In children who are becoming short sighted, the eye keeps growing and the limited fixed amount of tissue that we have effectively spreads too thin across the inside of the eye. And that leads over time with age to things like retinal detachment , but in fact also an increase in all sorts of eye diseases glaucoma, cataract, age related macular degeneration. These are all problems associated with big eyes with myopic eyes. And some of those are sight threatening. So myopia is not just a matter of inconvenience, but it's also a matter of long term eye health. And there are significant consequences of that both to the individuals concerned, but actually society more generally, of course. Is there anything that can be done to stop it? Good news that there is. The first thing to do is encourage our kids to get outside to play outside. There's evidence that that at least delays the start of myopia. Although beyond that maybe doesn't change the progression after that, but if it can start later in life that's a good thing . Next up there are now a number of treatments that we have available to us that actually will slow down the progression of myopia to slow down this eye growth. And that's really important. The current technologies we have, both with contact lenses and spectacles actually approximately hal ves the rate of eye growth. So this is good news. So the children in spectacles or cont act lenses and this is something we're really interested at the moment in my group at the University of Manchester , those kids will end up with a lower prescription, but also an eye that is smaller in size than otherwise it would have been. And the interesting fact is that the risks that I talked about earlier retinal detachment, these other things actually think this is an exponential rel ationship. So in fact, relatively small reductions in eye growth actually has huge benefits in the likelihood of getting some of these disease problems. So the current main use of glasses and contact lenses is, I guess we'd say medical, right? To help correct long or short sightedness. However, could the future of eyewear be all about using it for communication or entertainment. One company that's leading the way here is Meta, the owners of WhatsApp and Facebook, and I'd like to bring in their Vice President of Wearables, Alex Himmel. Welcome, Alex. Hi, thanks for having me. It looks like you are in fact wearing a pair of the Rabban meta displays. The release of those, it was due to happen in the UK and also in France, Italy, and Canada, but it's been delayed, I believe. Yeah, we're trying to get them out as soon as we can. I mean, we're selling them as fast as we can make them in the United States. And so as soon as we have enough that we can fill stores, then we'll certainly make them available in the UK, France, Italy, and elsewhere. There are a more basic and inverted commerce pair, the Meta Rayaban AI glasses . They start from two hundred and twenty four pounds in the UK . Alex, how do they differ from Tracy's fashionable face furniture? The pair I'm wearing right now is the microphone and speakers that I'm using to be on this call. And the mindset we have is, you know, if you're already gonna wear a pair of glasses, why wear headphones and glasses when I can just wear the glasses? Where are the speakers, Alex? They're right above your ear . And so we pipe the sound kind of through the air directly into your ear. Does that mean other people someone stood next to you could hear that sound? Only if it's cranked up very loud and they're very close to you. And we've got, you know, I'm holding up here, these are the Oakley Meta vanguards which are des,igned for sports. And these are the loudest speakers that we have the designs if you're flying down a mountain or on a bike, you'll still be able to hear and it's the same technology. So it's still sending the sound waves through the air. And the point with the Oakley sports glasses I've seen on your website, you know, you describe them as a handy way to capture video hands free while you're running or cycling or skiing. First of all, they're glasses primarily. And so if you're on a bike you want a shield lens so they're able to kind of shield the wind and the sun . Then there are also speakers. So people like listening to music and these are open ear. So as you're on a street, on a bike, you can still hear cars around you to stay safe . And then they yes, they have the camera there and you can automatically capture videos at certain distances or certain speeds. And what about your everyday glasses, the ones that you're wearing now? What functionality do you use beyond listening to music or joining video calls? The most common one is just joining calls. If you're going to do phone calls or zoom calls, taking photos and videos is the second most common use case you've got young kids. And I was just at my daughter's talent show last week and I was able to capture her performance to where she was singing without having to watch her performance through the screen of a phone. It just allows you to be kind of living in the moment with your head up and your hands free. And then increasingly AI so that we call 'em AI glasses because you can talk to the AI assistant that's on them and we're investing a lot as a company and as a team to try to make that better and better. Phillip, what do you think of these glasses My own personal experience with these actually relates to sister and brother in law who are both visually impaired actually. They're both technological early adopters and my brother in law and particularly has had great success with his because it means of course he's been able to do things like open the letter, come through a letter box in the morning and see what it's about by commanding the spectacles to read what's in the letter or looking at tins in a kitchen cupboard and the spectacles revealing what that is. But you can just see how transformational it is for people who have particular vision impairment needs. Alex, Meta didn't design these glasses specifically for visually impaired people , but it does sound like that is a user group who could really benefit from them. Yeah, we're actually seeing a lot of usage from the blind and low vision community. We partnered with Be My Eyes so you can install the VIII's app on the glasses, which offers remote assistance from someone you can connect with who can see what you're seeing , or you can use the AI to make sense of what's in front of you. Use cases we hear is like now I can go to a restaurant and read the men u with the glasses reading it to you or things that are being worked on is helping prevent you walking into an object, you know, collision detection, knowing when something's in front of you that you don't want to bump into. Yeah, potentially incredibly powerful. You said you're wearing the Rayaban Meta displays. They have this heads up display that can privately show you messages and images, et cetera. That's a whole extra level of functionality that could be particularly helpful, Alex. We all read things faster than we hear things. And so with displays, it can either it just print it out or sometimes even better than that is just a picture. So if you ask, hey, what's the weather going to be for this week instead of hearing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we're kind of used to seeing that grid of weather forecasts on the newspaper or looking at it online. And so the visual responses are also helpful. I find it frustrating when I'm talking to someone and they look at a message that's popped up on their phone. Am I going to be even more frustrated if they're wearing smart glasses and I see their eyes flick to a text as something pops up in their vision? I mean, I think the person who would be the most pressed would be the person wearing the glasses if they were getting overwhelmed with messages while they were in the middle of a conversation. I think one of the areas where there needs to be a lot of innovation that we're investing a lot in is how do we pick up on the context both of the message that's coming in and the context of what you're doing. So if I'm talking to you right now , it needs to be really, really, really, really important to interrupt me because otherwise it's taken me out of the moment or the conversation. Picking up on that context and using it to be intelligent, I think that's where we'll see a lot of innovation. The other thing about the Meta Display glasses is as well as voice commands you can control them using a neural band which you wear on your wrist. How does it work? Voice is very good , but there's certainly times where you don't want to speak loudly or out loud. And so we have this band that uses surface electromiography technology, which basically means it's reading the signals that your brain is sending to your musc les. Simple version is as I'm moving my fingers, we use machine learning to predict what movements I'm doing. So if I double tap my middle finger , that turns the display on. If I do it again, that turns the display off . And I'm sure you can do a shortcut to take a photo. Yeah, you can use the adjuster to initiate and to stop the video. I saw Meta's founder Mark Zuckerberg was quoted in an interview for Verge. com saying, quote, I think there will be this gradual shift to glasses becoming the main way we do computing. So he's suggested that we'll still have our smartphones. It's just that we'll gradually leave them at home or in our pocket for longer. Alex does, Meta see smart glasses as a successor to the smartphone ? Just about everyone wears glasses, whether it's optical or sun , and we think it'll be the best interface for AI. So as AI is getting better and better, the glasses will help make you smarter, it'll help you be more present with the people you're trying to spend time with while still being connected. I don't think it means phones are going away. You know, phones are ubiquitous, but I still have a laptop. So I didn't replace them , but we think that tasks that use other devices for today will shift to glasses. And more importantly, glasses will enable you to do more and more things that you're not able to do with other devices today. So we define augmented reality as you're looking at the physical world and virtual content is overlaid on top of it. So you can imagine instead of a physical TV, you could have a virtual one on the wall. You're trying to jump start a car, you can have arrows pointing to where you should be putting the cables . We believe that a lot of the hard problems we had to solve we had solved , and we're getting ready to ship a real product for it, which I can't share the date yet, but that is something that we're actively working on. Priya, what do you think of these smart glasses? Genuinely impressive, particularly how much capability you can now fit into something that could still look like normal I were where the value is clearest for me is like Philip said, you know, for people with low vision or specific eye conditions, features like object recognition or text reading, they're not just convenient. They can be life transform ing for people . But I do have my concerns. One of those is privacy concerns . There was a recent BBC investigation into this, and in fact, I was being recorded by someone and I didn't know that was happening in a conversation at a meeting. Let me put those privacy concerns directly to you, Alex. I know that Meta smart glasses have a light that comes on to show when the camera is recording or when the wearer is live streaming. But as Priya says, it has been in the news recently of reports of multiple men possibly covering the light and then filming women with these glasses and uploading the footage without their consent onto social media. So where does Meta stand on that? We take it extremely seriously. There's two principles we have when designing these glasses among others. But one is that they need to be stylish and comfortable and you need to like the way they look. And the second thing the people around you need to be comfortable with you wearing them. Otherwise, you're going to stop wearing them. And so on the privacy side, from generation one to two, we actually made the LED light larger, brighter, and when you're taking a video, it pulses continuously during the length of it. And I'm sure there are ways we can continue to improve, but we're explicitly trying to make sure that it's clear to the people around you when you are taking a photo or a video. It's designed so you cannot cover the LED. We actually have a light sensor and if it's being blocked, then the camera won't work. It does suggest though that these recent news reports that there is a way around that. And there are plenty of web forums and videos online with instructions on how to disable that light, but still be able to record people. So I'm sure you don't condone this sort of behavior, but the challenge here is that these smart glasses are potentially enabling that sort of behavior ? And we treat that like security . We're active in forums looking for ways that people are able to use our glasses in ways that they weren't intended. And we take them very seriously and we go and we try to close out any security vulnerability that was exposed that was unintended. I've been in software intact for many years. That's kind of the game, which is people are always trying to exploit the system that you've built and you can get ahead of most of it. And then when stuff happens that you didn't anticipate, you need to fix it as fast as possible. Listeners might remember Google started selling smart glasses, Google glass back in twenty fourteen, and they ditched them not long after . So Alex, why do you think that the public now will be more inclined to accept smart glasses? I mean, I think the biggest thing that we did differently this time is they look like normal glasses . And I think other products were tech first . And so that's why we work at SOL EXOTICA, and they make Rayban, they make Oakley, a lot of different luxury brands. We have strict requirements around the industrial design and the weight and the comfort , our strategy is to keep offering more brands and more styles. So I think it's the glasses first approach that's different than what we're doing. Would you be tempted, Tracy? Yeah, maybe. I think what's really interesting is that as you suggest, Google Glass didn't really work last time , but AI wasn't there. So the actual experience just wasn't there for Google Glass is this pre AI age and now we've got all of these extra experiential layers to really benefit users that we didn't have before . My recurring question, I guess, is that with any of these, are we going to have advertising, interrupting displays . Alex, will we see adverts popping up? So I worked on advertising for many years at Meta. So I'm pretty familiar with the space. I'd say just a few things on it. One is people don't dislike ads. They dislike bad ads . But I think for the classes , first of all, we're not working on it right now. There's no reason to work on it anytime in the near future because it's to build an advertising platform, the single most important thing is scale. Otherwise there are not going to be any ads built for it. And so it doesn't even make sense to discuss for us until we're talking, you know, hundreds of millions of people wearing the glasses. When that scale is reached, I do think that there is a way to do it that would be valuable to users and not intrusive. Nobody wants to walk around and constantly have ads popping up in their face that are irrelevant and interrupting them. That is not a product that should be built or certainly not one that I want to build. But you can imagine some contextually irrelevant versions. Like even think about , hey, instead of looking at a physical billboard ad , why not have it personalized to you overlaid there? I think that's a product that would be better than the ads that we see in the world today that could be enabled with glasses. But I'm just conjecturing. It's just not something that makes sense until you have a large amount of scale. So it does sound like when you are at scale, good ads are not off the table. They're certainly not off the table, but with every product that we've built, ads don't come early. First, we want to establish a really great product. Then once we hit scale, we find a way to bring them in in a way that's additive to the user experience as opposed to something else. Alex, thank you so much for joining us on DOE. Hey, thanks for having me. This is fun. If you'd like the full story of Google Glasses, sad fade into the history books, there's an episode of our sister show Toast all about that over on BBC Sounds. Phillip, the expectation is that Google are going to try again with smart glasses this year, and there is a rumor that Apple may be coming to the party too with their own glasses this year twenty twenty six. I mean, Apple have talked , there are now, I think, much more talking about this after the vision Pro , which is absolutely astonishing to wear. The resolution and the detail in those devices is incredible breakthrough technology. But it is big, it is cumbersome, it is heavy, it is a bit of a solo experience , not really social socially acceptable. But I'm sure there'll be some technology from that that they could then move into spectacles which probably ticks more boxes. Tracy, what other clever glasses are out there already? So we've got hearing glasses . We've got directional microphones built in and open ear speakers. The idea is to enhance people's hearing with the spectacles, rearview cycling glasses. They're interesting and augmented reality glasses for runners. They've got a heads up display in the lens showing you your speed. But I think those are all really interesting applications, but to me they sort of tend towards sporting performance or medical conditions . I think they're doing something slightly different to what we were hearing from Alex. I'd love to talk to you experts about smart contact lenses. I was amazed to see that there was a contact lens sensor that was CE marked in twenty ten offered a quote continuous twenty four hour recording of ocular dimensional changes in people with or at risk of developing glaucoma, glaucoma being a group of eye diseases that damage the optic nerve. Priya, why is there such interesting contact lenses that can measure glaucoma? So glaucoma is known as the silent thief , particularly in areas that I work in Africa and Asia, we see a lot of it. Basically what it does it slowly takes away your peripheral vision. People who start losing their peripheral vision don't always notice it. And by the time they do, it may be sometimes a little bit later. Gondak lenses that can monitor your eye pressure or your tear chemistry in some way definitely would present more opportunities to spot sounds of glaucoma outside the usual sort of clinical tests. And those patients who have got glaucoma, this would be, you know, a fantastic way of monitoring how their eye pressure is doing. And Philip, tell me about what advances have been made since that twenty ten contact lens censor I think that remains still the state of the art in terms of contin monitoring eye pressure as an indication of a risk for glaucoma, but there is some excitement around the development of a range of contact lenses that are able to sense changes to the tear fil.m What's interesting about the human tear film it shares a number of attributes of blood. It's already been identified, for example, that there are changes in proteins in the tear film that relate to various forms of cancer. So potentially you can detect and perhaps detect early the presence of cancers by wearing a contact lens that is sampling the tear film environment. So these are a little bit in the future I think at this time, but you know, the logic is already there. It seems a sensible thing to do and some of the technology is already happening. Tracy, do we know of any plans for non medical smart contact lenses? Well I used, to follow a company called Mojo Vision in the States and they built this prototype which boasted it had the smallest micro LED display in the smart contact lens, a medical grade microbatter s. So just like the glasses, you'd be able to see a display on your contact lenses. Yes, exactly. I researched it quite a lot, but I was really sad to see that they've now ceased production. I think they've pivoted to a different kind of innovation because I thought it was really transformative and interesting, but I wonder if it will be the same story as Google Glass, you know, it's a little bit too soon and actually they'll have learned some things maybe in the further future it'll come back in a different form. I also was reading it was a company who said they were working on contact lenses which offer superpowers like night vision and telescopic vision. Well, I think all these things are theoretically possible. You've just got to squidge it all into a very tiny area power them and power them. But I think actually a lot of the breakthroughs are already there in terms of power, making very, very small microbatteries and other things . I don't think that will be the stumbling block, but some of these other areas would be, I think, fairly tricky with the optics and the manufacturer. Okay, time for my final question to both our experts, Philip and Pria . When you consider the future of eyewear, what do you think we will see rise to success and what will fall into obscurity prior . I think that smart glasses I agree are likely to be on the rise, but I think the most meaningful growth may actually be as medical assistive devices and in fact Meta are recipients of the twenty twenty six Zero Project Award for Disability Inclusion . So I think it may actually be for assistive devices for people with low vision, macular degeneration rather than as a lifestyle gadget . And then coming to what I think might disappear. I think consumer smart contact lenses. I know often we thought they'd be the next logical step, but I think there's a very different set of constraints and we touched on that here in terms of how do you keep them powered? Not everyone likes to put something in their eye and touch their eye. So they may become something that is for disease specific population rather than a mass adopted way of going. So those are two that I think. At Philip, what do you think you'll see rise at fall? Well, I am very excited by the rise of the specialized contact lens designs and spectacle designs that will cont rol the growth of the eye. That's a real fundamental shift from just simply correcting vision to actually controlling the growth and the state of the eye to avoid my opioid in that case. I very'm excited by what we've heard with regard to these technology delivery spectacles. I think they're great and the fact that the mass appeal of these is going to drive investment and therefore actually bring with it develop ments to people who have visual impairment and the great benefits that it will bring to them. In terms of things that will fade away, I think some of the materials of spectacles and glass lenses and the old fashioned bi foalc designs, I think that they will fade away, but I think spectacles and contact lenses that we have currently fundamentally work very well. They're fundamentally inexpensive and accessible to all largely all over the world. I think they will be here for a long time yet. Priya, Philip, thank you both so much for joining us today. Thanks very much. Thank you . Time for my final question to you then, Tracy, what do you think our eyewear could be like in five, ten, and fifty years time . So I think in the next five years, everything our experts have just talked about, you know, enhanced medical assistance and there's some simple AI assistance in augmented glasses like the metal ones. So not too much changing, just enhancements for people who need it. But ten years from then, I think probably IWAR starts explaining the world to you. And it gets explained in lots of different media communications and formats. Real time translation, of course, that's going to be incredibly important object highlighting and health signals. So that diagnostics for everybody through their eyewear could be really, really interesting . But fifty years, who knows where we'll be fifty years from now. I have a suspicion that sight becomes software. So we've talked before about mobile phones, they become a bit more like the brain, they go into the background . And actually things like your eyeware is where you get the layers in the interpretation of the world. So we're moving away from staring at screens and actually experiencing information layers through our eyewear. Oh, that was really, really interesting eye opening, we could say big thanks to Tracy Follows, Professor Phillip Morgan, Priya Morgaria, and Alex Himmel for joining me today. Which of these potential futures of eyewear will prove successful? We'll just have to wait and see. Next time on Dough it's, one of my favourite topics food . What will we be eating in a hotter, more unpredictable world ? This episode of Dough was presented by me, Greg Foot and produced by John Douglass. You can find all our previous episodes on the sliced bread feed on BBC Sounds. Dough is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio four and BBC Sounds. What would you do if your deepest secrets were held to r ansom . In twenty twenty