This week, we discussed vision and light and the way our physical eye responds to light. At one point, there was the maxim, “What you see is what you can see.” First, this makes me think about vision, and the limits upon it, and the enhancements we have made through technology, and the enhancements we can find in nature. We are limited only to the visible light spectrum, which is probably a good thing (as most sensory adaptations are). But it is then conceivable that we might be able to perceive both UV light and IR light–and we can, with the help of technology, such as IR goggles, which bring those waves into the visible spectrum somehow.
But if you keep going, suppose we could see radio waves and TV waves. It’s a reminder of exactly how much random energy is flying around our heads at all times–radio, cell phones, wireless, TV, Bluetooth, UV, IR, etc. Certain animals are highly tuned to motion–that’s another type of information that could be integrated. I imagine that our minds would find some way to distinguish between these energies, but I wonder just how useful it would be to see things that we don’t really directly interact with. It would probably make certain types of espionage much more difficult. It would also just be generally overwhelming, were all these integrated into vision.
