I love cool social apps and addicting games, but it’s refreshing to see advanced technology used to improve our health and not just increase someone’s wealth.

Thanks to a new automatic vision-correcting technology developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, irritating contacts and glasses could soon become a thing of the past.

TV’s, smartphones, tablets or any form of LCD screen are just a few years away from coming equipped with the power to alter images based on your glasses prescription. According to a July 31 TechCrunch article, these new eyesight-enhancers are essentially a variation of glasses-free 3D technology, using a special algorithm and a transparent “light field” cover that’s placed on the screen.

“People spend more time looking at displays than ever before. The benefit of the research is that it in a sense puts glasses into the display itself,” said Gordon Wetzstein, in a July 31 PCWorld.com article.

The research team will present their vision-correcting technology next week in Vancouver at the annual SIGGRAPH conference. SIGGRAPH is a five-day event where exhibitors from around the world get a close up on leading-edge computer graphics.

Glasses are generally worn because of trouble seeing text or images at a certain distance or angle, and the lenses adjust the light flowing into the eyes. The idea behind this technology is to anticipate how our eyes will naturally distort whatever is on-screen, and adjust it beforehand.

While it is still in the beginning stages, the possibilities for this type of technology are endless. Kindle users could finally ditch their reading glasses. Farsighted drivers would no longer have to strain to see street names on their GPS. And I may never have to wear those hideous bifocals when I’m older.

I credit the researchers for being proactive and thinking ahead. We are in uncharted territory in terms of technology and health, where most of our days are spent staring at bright pixilated screens. No one truly knows what effect this will have on our eyesight down the road. I don’t currently have vision problems but with the amount of time I spend in the digital world, I wouldn’t be surprised if this technology comes in handy one day.

But like every groundbreaking development, there are some early pitfalls. While these displays can be altered for each individual, people with different strength prescriptions viewing the same screen would run into some trouble. Also stated in a July 31 Forbes.com article, the technology currently requires viewers to keep their eyes and head still, or use head movement tracking software in order to work.

Other startups have jumped on the fitness bandwagon and created products and apps tailored around health in the past year. Apple has released hearing aids in the past year. Recombu.com reported that Apple filed a patent application for “gaze vectors” back in 2007 but Samsung beat them to the punch when they released their newest phone, the S4, which is the first to scroll up and down depending on where your eyes are looking.

If wearable technology ever becomes mainstream, I expect the trend of health-first tech to increase even more. This new vision technology isn’t the first to focus on the well-being of our bodies, but it has a chance to be the most useful.

In twenty years, we could possibly look back at this vision-correcting technology as the spark that shifted efforts and resources of technology companies into improving our health instead of entertainment.

Health and fitness tech might not be the sexy new app on the market, but research like this could ultimately end up saving our vision. Hopefully this group of researchers’ ability to see the future will help us all see in the future.

Aarick Knighton is a junior information management and technology major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at adknight@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @aarickurban.

Published on August 11, 2014 at 2:22 am