On dimensionality and projections

This is a work of fiction inspired by my recent experiments with augmented reality, something I might make a real post about later - beyond that, the rest of this post is a mix of reality and fiction and I will not break character again

I have recently been experimenting with reproducing the eyetap by Steve Mann - a device which captures light headed for the eyes and redirects it to a camera. A computer than processes the visual input and a small LCD is used to project an altered version of reality on top of the outside world.

Many are familiar with this technology from Google Glass, but Steve Mann is the man who invented it.

To construct one of these devices you must first acquire the parts - one such part is an optical beam splitter cube - a device that is rather like 2 right-angled prisms joined together and used to split the beams of light. Using such redirection we can have a computer modify what is seen while also recording what your eye sees exactly as it sees it. This is unlike the type of Augmented Reality that has become popular where you observe through a screen that blocks all light - the eyetap is see-through.

Because beam splitter cubes can get expensive, I have built my prototype using a simple sheet of plastic - it's reflective and translucent enough to work fine for this purpose.

Once I had it all finished off I swapped the camera for one that can pick up on infrared and ultraviolet and used some software to render these hidden parts of the spectrum giving me enhanced vision.

Of course since the device was only over one eye I began to think - I am still limited to augmented 2D graphics for the most part. I can of course project a 3D model onto a 2D plane and display it in the usual way and I have naturally experimented a lot with this, playing the odd silly game, but I desire to do it properly.

So my next step was to acquire more parts and build a second eyetap. I had to work a lot with the software but eventually I got the 2 devices to stay in sync with one another.

Naturally I was still generating the "3D" images by projecting from the virtual models onto 2 2D planes - but now I was able to make my visual cortex process them like all other sensory input. This is when a thought occured to me, one I wish I had never had.

What would happen if our retinas were not 2D planes but rather 3D in nature? No longer would we have to use projections - instead we could present full 3D objects to them.

Over the course of many years I looked into how to achieve this - prosthetic retinas have been around for many years, but they are of course still 2D - it took decades but finally I managed to create a new prosthetic and could make use of nanotechnology to rewire the visual cortex to directly accept 3D inputs. Why I did not realise the horrors I was to witness I do not know. Looking back it is so clear and obvious.

A 3D object with light reflecting off it causes a 2D projection on our retinas, or on computer screens. Our brain reconstructs the 3D object from this data.

We think we live in a world with 3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal. I wonder how many more there really are.

I awoke after the operation in a strange place. I could hear the voices of the doctors, but what I saw was not a hospital room.

A being with 4 dimensions will project a shadow into a 3 dimensional retina. That must be what I saw. I can not explain it to you, I am only able to dictate these words for I am now blind.

That being, it is truly something man was never meant to see.

Words come to mind, they are true:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

I was saved only by removing my new eyes. I wish never to see again, for then I might witness that which was not meant to be seen.

Do not reproduce my work.