Uhh what if no physical configuration of the LEDs is sufficient for blinding? This does not seem like an issue if the hardware is incapable by design.

Besides, such a product could arguably be more useful than a car, and certainly more safe; you've driven, haven't you? I think you're being a little naive and hasty. I could see a similar comment 20 years ago about cell phones and "brain damage."

Maybe someone could still maliciously make it display self-illuminated shock porn that stays in view even if you close your eyes.

. . . so turn it off? I mean, someone could hack your computer and (effectively) do the same thing for the couple of minutes it takes you to figure out what's happening and flip the power switch. It's a screen. They're all screens.

The real danger is from more subtle manipulation, assuming most people come to trust what's being displayed. That's true of any information source that can be spoofed, though. GPS errors are bad enough already.

His point was that turning it off is not an option: The automated porn-feed injected into your glasses/contacts/etc could make it offensive enough to effectively deny service.

Even if not porn, Spam WILL be targeted at these eventually. I recall a scene in either "The Diamond Age" or perhaps a Gibson novel where the characters were using smart chopsticks that had been hit by malware which had once spewed ads but in that particular are of town had been spewing porn. Onto chopsticks.

(With my luck, it was Rainbow's End that had this scene -- I forget where I saw it, but it was memorable.)

There will always be someone trying to find a way to inject ads.

> You could get a phantascopic system planted directly on your retinas,

> just as Bud's sound system lived on his eardrums. You could even get

> telæsthetics patched into your spinal column at various key

> vertebrae. But this was said to have its drawbacks: some concerns

> about long-term nerve damage, plus it was rumored that hackers for big

> media companies had figured out a way to get through the defenses that

> were built into such systems, and run junk advertisements in your

> peripheral vision (or even spang in the fucking middle) all the

> time—even when your eyes were closed. Bud knew a guy like that who'd

> somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach

> motels, in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his

> visual field, twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself.

-- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

In my (admittedly limited) experience people don't weld contacts to their eyes, nor are contacts capable of physically restraining you from pushing an 'Off' button. I suppose you could attack someone with epilepsy this way.

The rest of your post is rather more accurate. Hence the need for good security (on devices that you don't wear as well as ones that you do).

So you take the contacts out. It takes like two seconds.

Wow, that's terrifying.

May I recommend reading Permanence by Karl Schroeder, where, among other interesting bits, the Rights Economy extends to access control via completely removing things (such as doors) that should not be seen from view.

That sounds interesting as hell. I'll look, thanks!