Here they are -- the glasses that allow you to focus from your wristwatch to Neptune with a simple sliding control on the bridge.
Somebody is working on an automatic version, but these are gonna be something for folks who need bi- or trifocals; who wear one pair of glasses at the computer and a different pair for reading or driving.
Of course, they cost about nine hundred bucks and they only come in round ...
I just got bifocals for the first time. I feel old for getting them, and stupid for having waited so long to get them. Wearing an eyepatch doesn't bother me, though I don't do it much these days (driving at night, mostly.) But bifocals are for Old People.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a scene in a later Camber novel the other day. You remember the Asian monk Camber ran into? Ten years passes and he meets him again ...
"How old are you?"
"Sixty-two."
I shook my head. "You were fifty-something when I met you? I though you were old, then."
"Fifty-something is old, to the young. Now you're old, and you're embarrassed to have thought me old."
"I'm not old."
He smiled at me. "Wait."
Ah, so true.
ReplyDeleteI've been wear specs since I was fifteen, and realized I'd flunk the driver's test without them. Going to bifocals wasn't that much of a leap, though the no-line ones work really well for me, and with the high-density plastics, they are thin and you can't tell by looking they are bifocals.
The infinitely adjustable jobbies will have limited use. Glancing at the speedometer and then back at the road might be an iffy deal if every time you have to do it you also have to work the slider. But if you are in front of computer for hours at a time, or reading, then need to run to the 7-Eleven, they could be convenient. Nine hundred bucks a pop, they'd have to be more than just convenient.
I clicked through and looked at their demo. That looks like such a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the notion of reaching up in front of your face whilst tooling down the freeway at seventy to adjust your focus is iffy. Even coming over the top and working the slider, unless there is a click-stop, which there doesn't appear to be, you risk blurring yourself mostly blind if you hit a bump in the road at the wrong second.
ReplyDeletePresetting them and leaving them in a position while you work on the computer or read, then again as you step out the door for a walk? That would work. but I can get a pair of high-end, no-line bifocals from Costco for a third what these things cost, and not having to move my head up or down a bit to focus isn't worth six hundred bucks.
Kind of like the Kindle -- not quite there for me yet.