US military developing multi-focus augmented reality contact lenses

I'm not sure 'contacts' are a good match with 'soldier'.<p>Gear for soldiers needs to be rugged, idiot proof, and easy to work with. Inserting contacts to gear-up for a patrol would seem to be none of those.<p>I'm not adverse to the idea .. I would have liked to use this myself, back in the day .. but we need to keep in mind that information overload is a very real problem for these guys.<p>" A screaming red display flashes up on the goggles informing him that the millimeter-wave radar has noticed a stream of bullets headed in his direction and would you like to know where they came from, sir?<p>He turns off all of the techno-sh<i></i> in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern. Time to get immersed in Reality, like all the people around him."<p>~Snow Crash

You can spend the rest of the day thinking of practical and non-practical uses for technology such as this.<p>I'm more interested in this tech as I see it as humanity's next, and perhaps biggest, step towards the singularity. The introduction of eye optics such as this is going to create a very clear division in our culture.<p>Just like my grandmother wants nothing to do with a PC there will be those who will want nothing to do with wearing, or implanting anything that gets them closer to their computer.<p>You can argue that those who have never touched a PC/Internet have evolved differently than those who haven't. So to the people who do embrace this tech will spin off and start to 'evolve' at a different pace/way than those who do not. This isn't like an iPad though. It's pretty easy for most to digest why that's better than always lugging around you laptop. I don't see this tech being so popular among the masses. However, I do see it being very popular among certain pockets of people.

$ puts "US military developing #{Faker::Company.catch_phrase}"

Seems like there's a lot more entertainment potential than military.

How long until a YouTuber does a Google Glass / iOptiks on the battlefield parody. . .

Can't wait to see this.<p>Was involved in the British Army BOWMAN (Better Off With Map And Nokia) system which when finally delivered included a mobile base station that needed a specially strengthened LandRover to carry, a wrist mounted data terminal that weighted 5lbs and batteries that were the size/weight/cost of a small car.