• by May 1, 2009

When someone's eyes move up and right, it's a signal they are accessing the creative part of the brain. Up and to the left implies they are accessing memory. If you are speaking with someone and they quickly look right, that implies they are lying and if they look left, they are likely telling the truth.

I was thinking about those early findings on eye-movement interpretation while sitting in my office on the 23rd sub-basement at WorldMedia headquarters wondering if voice-recognition technology will ever allow me to successfully dictate a memo to my virtual-secretary avatar. I'm thankful, at least, that the developments in eye-movement interpretation software over the past five years that reinvented NTHDI (Non-Tactile Human/Device Interfaces) have made formerly "dumb" machines more intuitive.

I was one of the first to buy the "eye scope" Wii. Finally I could control the gun-site for my SRS 99D Sniper Rifle on Halo 8 simply by looking at what I wanted to shoot. At first that seemed like overkill, but when the 3-D upgrade optimized for a 120-inch virtual video platform was released, it became a necessity if I wanted to survive more than two minutes in the online multiplayer contests. According to the unofficial German 4 Color Rebellion RSS feed, the technology was originally designed for military purposes, but proved too unstable and so was repurposed for commercial use. I doubt if that's true, but I am trying to secure the ARG rights to the rumor. It would make for a great interactive content opportunity for our WorldMedia clients at our branded content development center.

I like to think of myself as a technology advocate, but even I was against utilizing retinal image-recognition technology to allow online advertising networks to track not just where people look on screens, but who they are based on their unique retinal 'fingerprints.' I'm sure the IAB was hoping public and government sentiment would have allowed for it. One can imagine how rich the data would be once networks could compile information about consumers based on every interface they have with any machine anywhere in the world.  That is too much information. I did read about a test pilot program at a university in Korea. The students loved the fact they no longer need ID cards - no more lost card fees. No surprise, technology often makes the younger generation feel liberated while the older generation feels the need to grasp at arcane notions of privacy. Thankfully, here in the United States, we are not allowing for that kind of infringement on privacy anytime soon.

I was amazed by how quickly municipalities adopted the eye-tracking technology for public use. The new metro card eye-kiosks in New York and Chicago sped up the time it takes to get metro cards by 40 percent. Everyone already knew how to move the cursor and "click," simply by staring at the screen. After a couple of times, it feels as natural as dealing with a real person and better than the touch screen. Purell sales must be plummeting.

From my standpoint, the big deal was how eye-tracking readers revolutionized computing and Internet advertising. This was the opportunity that made Google, Microsoft and Apple play well together. Once they agreed on a standard way to retrofit eye-tracking technology to existing Web cams, that instantly extended the technology to 90 percent of U.S. households.

That was just the hardware story; the real driver of the near instantaneous mass adoption was how wonderfully the software worked. Now, whenever I read an article on The New York Times Web site, the site actually "knows" what I am interested in by the amount of time my eyes spend on specific words, as well as my eyes' reaction to sentences, pictures, video, audio cues, etc. Five years ago, I rarely clicked through ads. Now I am interested in 80 percent of the ads served and I actually click through 30 percent of the time. It is easy to forget about the days when the World Wide Web was a visual mess rather than the most efficient way to reach potential consumers. With all of the improvements in NTHDIS one would think they could get voice-recognition technology right already so I could finish dictating this boring memo.