It's not often that a government agency can justify its existence and pay its own way. But sometimes, even that's not enough. After 23 years of advising Congress on technology-related issues, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) has fallen victim to congressional budget cuts. The nonpartisan OTA provided Congress with analyses, background, briefings, and testimony on technical issues so that elected officials could make informed decisions affecting policy, funding, and laws. OTA projects underway when the lights were turned off included "Wireless Technologies and the National Information Infrastructure," "Information Technologies for Control of Money Laundering," and "Electronic Surveillance in a Digital Age."
Perhaps OTA's crowning achievement was a report last year that put the skids to the Social Security Administration's plan to buy $2 billion worth of outdated computer systems. That savings alone more than covered the OTA's $22 million annual budget. From how much we pay for computer memory to who we export our software to, technology-related decisions coming from Capitol Hill directly affect all of us. Let's hope our elected representatives find a creditable means of filling the information void created by the demise of the OTA.
Although subliminal advertising has been outlawed since the 1970s, it's not illegal to embed subliminal messages in computer software. California-based Interloc Design Group, in fact, has developed a "subliminal module" that plugs into screen savers (text or image), flashing at 1/50 of a second. That subliminal messaging is legal is of little comfort to British parents whose teenagers are flocking to a Time Warner Interactive computer game called "Endorfun." Time Warner openly crows that the game has more than 100 subliminal messages, including such Hallmark-inspired gems as "I expect pleasure and satisfaction," "It's okay for me to have everything I want," "My heart is filled with joy," "I am in harmony," and "I create miracles." In fairness, players can turn off a music track containing audio messages and play only with sound effects.
The name "Endorfun," by the way, relates to the brain's ability to release natural chemicals called "endorphins" that relieve pain and produce a natural high. Time Warner boasts that the game lures players into a "trance-like state." Independent tests conducted by the London Times bear this out. Said one 14 year old after playing Endorfun, "it is like a trance." Out the other side of its mouth, however, Time Warner insists that "there's no scientific proof that subliminal affirmations work." Just to hedge its bets, Time Warner is also promoting the "feel good" game as a politically correct alternative to the violent, militaristic genre of computer games.
In the meantime, officials in Hong Kong have called for legislation to ban electronically influencing the subconscious using software, and British politicians are clamoring for Time Warner to remove the game from store shelves.
Of course, there are those among us who can neither see nor hear subliminal messages. In such cases, it's comforting to be reminded that computer technology can make a beneficial difference.
Simply saying that Harvard Medical School's Joseph Rizzo and MIT's John Wyatt are developing embedded systems is an understatement. They are developing a tiny, solar-powered computer--literally the size of the date on a penny--that can float inside your eye. The top layer of the chip has solar cells, with logic and circuitry on the bottom layer. Electrodes send signals to the retina nerves, which in turn transmit signals via the optic nerve to the brain. To activate the system, a visually impaired person dons special eye-glasses with optical detectors and a laser. The laser sends visual data to the embedded computer and provides energy to its solar cells. The narrow field of vision will be limited, but that's of little consequence to someone who can't see at all. Rizzo and Wyatt's prototype costs about $500,000, but production versions are expected to sell for $50 or so.
Rizzo and Wyatt were inspired by the success of cochlear implanting--surgically attaching digital devices inside the ears of people with severe hearing impairments. A small, external microphone transmits signals to an analog/digital converter, which generates electrical signals that stimulate the ear's auditory nerves. This information is then sent to the brain. Thousands of people worldwide have been fitted with the devices, enabling many previously deaf individuals to have phone conversations. Although cochlear implants have been available for several years, the Food and Drug Administration only recently approved them for U.S. adults.
On the nonsurgical front, hearing-aid manufacturers are going digital: The emerging generation of hearing aids can be programmed according to an individual's ability to hear sound-specific frequency ranges, filtering out background noise in the process. The resulting realistic sound is then amplified by a tiny speaker.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief