Seeing the world with new eyes...

This morning I felt a bit queasy and dizzy headed.  Tried to find out about the Eye Clinic appointment this evening, but only answering machines to leave details on.  Phoned work and told them I would be in for the lecture this afternoon but not before.  Take it easy. You've still got just under half a busy term to go.

Podium in the lecture theatre was emitting an horrific grinding static; totally off putting to me and irritating as well to the students, who could hear it clearly especially with the microphone on.  In the end I gave up, switched the microphone off and moved over to the front row to continue delivery.  I could see smiles rising on the faces around - they like it when things feel more personal.  The presentation today was on Social Cognitive theory - including self-theories and how we construct both preconscious and conscious schema to represent both how we perceive the world and how we respond to what we see.

Guy on the news - Jaron Lanier - big white guy with the most massively long dreads I've ever seen.  He is one of the conceptualisers of free internet and the creator of virtual reality who thought thirty years ago that by now we would all be seeing the world through new eyes - virtual reality eyes.  If we didn't like the reality we had we could submerge ourselves in an alternative reality, constructed using computers, of course.  Now with the downturn in the economy he has started to see the world of the internet and free information he helped to create with new eyes: whilst we pay for access to the virtual world but everything we provide can be used 'free' (for marketing and targeting  there will never be any ethical brakes on the use of information. Lanier thinks we should start charging for what we GIVE, not just what we RECEIVE. Ordinary people should be paid for information - including data obtained by CCTV camera on the streets of London, information and pictures provided on Facebook and right down to twitter 'tweets'.

"Lanier argues that the early internet years have fetishised open access and knowledge-sharing in a way that has distracted people from demanding fairness and job security in an economy predicated on data flow."

 An interesting idea, but I'm sure someone somewhere would still be making their money out of all the buying and selling of little packets of information that would ensue. 

So - I arrive at the clinic and park up. The building itself is one I never knew existed.  It's got a strange little picket fence and inside is a patchwork of outdated styles tacked together in passes for rooms, with other rooms leading off where consultations appear to be made.  Just as things seem to be thinning out alarmingly the biggest, brownest, oldest looking door opens and the eye specialist calls me in.

After the left eye - now it's the turn of the right!

Long and short of it is that, as I expected, there is a cataract growing in the centre of the right eye now.  It's only small, he says, you may want to get new stronger glasses and wait for a while. No, I've had enough of that already - and it's never going to get better. I'm getting scared driving at night again because of the distortion and when I walk into a new environment (new focal depth) I'm confused and uncomfortable as I can't make the visual adjustment.  He's done the obligatory health diary and I'm relieved to see that he understands what vasospasm and variant angina is and suggests I have this eye done under a general anaesthetic. He doesn't want a patient having palpitations with anxiety... He'll even do it before we go on holiday, if I like, so that I can see the views!  Ah - but I have to go to work, I nearly say.  'We work at weekends', he tells me - op on the Saturday, check-up visit on the Sunday.  All I might miss would be one Monday lecture.  Maybe I'm worth it....

Next thing is the focal depth - 'you do know you'll have to wear glasses to read from now on'.  I explain that the left eye lens is slightly myopic - I can see to read, work the computer and see him, all with clarity.  Can I have the right eye to see distance, I ask - then I've got an eye for each?  It's what my brain is used to.  Are you right handed, he asks.  I'm left eye dominant - I know that's unusual - and right handed.  Yes, very unusual he replies.  Okay, bring your prescription with you to the pre-op - we'll match your right eye to it.  I will have one eye to see close, one eye to see distance, and both with clarity!  My brain will be in heaven! I hope we can find a weekend soon to get it done - it will be literally seeing the world with new eyes ;-)