Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I see amazing solutions and advances in technology everyday. Are all these, however, solving worthwhile problems?

I recently read about how persons at Nvidia created a system that modifies a live video so that the eyeballs of the person on camera point to the camera. This happens while the real eyeballs are glancing away at notes and things.

This is an amazing technical achievement.

They have modified video in real time so that a small portion of the video feed is “corrected” to a specific target. Again, an amazing technical achievement.

Is that a worthwhile problem?

The system will be quite useful to some persons. Their live video feeds will look better. Those watching the video feeds will feel more comfortable with the speaker and may listen better and… the list of possible benefits goes on.

Still, is that a worthwhile problem?

Will anyone sleep better tonight because they feel safer? Will anyone function better because their disability is reduced? Will anyone be nourished instead of hungry?

Am I being too naive?

I hope that good, smart people work on worthwhile problems.