i LOVE my iphone. I recently realized that i should go and download every TEDtalk and throw it on there for viewing the subway.
the thing is…IT’S ANOTHER SCREEN. All day I’m looking at screens. They are everywhere. Laptops, TVs, and now even advertisements and Menus (in defense i love them at rice to riches). All of this means that we are focusing extremely close to our faces.
The physiology of looking at things close to the face is that the eye muscles must contract. The converse is that by looking further away, our eye muscles relax. While studying anthropology way back when, I remember hearing about how our eyes were actually best at tracking movement at great distances (hunting in Africa) but in recent generations that skill has been fading.
So the longer you stare at something close up, the longer your eye muscles must contract. A simple comparison is to hold your arms out straight in front of you…in small bits it’s fine…but try not moving them for 10 mins….30 mins….2 hours(some bootcamps like this game). That same strain is comparable to what your eyes feel after 8 hrs in your cube. In today’s world, we are straining our eyes more and more. To and from work and throughout the night when we are looking up directions, watching movies, or simply changing the song in our portable devices, we are straining our eyes.
Eye strain is already a big issue, and as we stare at more and more screens, it’s only going to get worse. The really scary thought though, is that this is all muscle related and until we discover a way to grow or transplant eye muscles, there will be no true cure. We can only increase our contact prescriptions to stronger and stronger levels as we age.
So the human race is at this horrible void where it would take generations for our eyes to adapt to our new world of screens and close focusing, yet technology has not found a better solution to aide us as we grow old.
But at least there is an eye trainer for DS
I guess I just need to get one for my iphone…or just keep the phone in my pocket more
