Signal processing is part and parcel of what we see. The retina
is in fact actually composed of brain cells and interpretation
plays a part from the first instant of perception. Because the
image it receives is optically inverted and the data arrives
faster than it can be processed, the brain adjusts the
information before we “see” it in our minds. “The retina, unlike
a camera, does not simply send a picture to the brain. The
retina spatially encodes (compresses) the image to fit the
limited capacity of the optic nerve.” It does this in part, by
sending the changes in a visual image rather than the entire
dataset containing the static parts of the image. But if Mother
Nature tricks us, then why not Google? Dean George Orsak of
Southern Methodist’s Lyle School of Engineering says that
“augmented reality” has had a long played a large and perhaps
dangerous role in our vision. Something fascinating happened
during a football game between the Bengals and Ravens in 1998.
It seemed a little gimmicky at the time, bu