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Element 86

86◕›
Ga
Gaze

Look at it, and it knows what you mean.

eye tracking · look to select

First known

Opened

1974NASA's eye-controlled 'teletypewriter': look at a letter on a keyboard chart and it types that letter. Langley Research Center.

See also: NASA's sight switch, which a wearer works by looking toward it (patent filed March 1966).

“Thus by looking at a specific character or letter, the subject could cause the "teletypewriter" to type that letter on its page copy.”

Bolt (1981) was the first to do this with windows on a screen, not the first to select by gaze; eye-typing for disabled users came years earlier.

Someone opened the dated document itself. The source.

  • ReadingValue

Specimen № 86 — operate freely

Your pointer is your eyes. Open only the tile that says “hello”.

Fig. 86 — Gaze

000 readings · idle

Anatomy of Gaze

  1. 01Look
    You
    Looks at a thing.
    It
    Estimates where, with a tremor.
  2. 02Dwell
    You
    Keeps looking, perhaps only to read.
    It
    Counts the time, and takes a long look as a yes.
  3. 03Pinch
    You
    Makes a separate, deliberate gesture.
    It
    Selects what the eyes are on, and only then.

Phases light as the specimen above registers them. The dark ones are the ones it can't sense.

Lineage

Robert Jacob's 1990 paper on eye-movement interaction named the Midas touch problem: if looking selects, everything you look at gets selected. Apple Vision Pro (2024) paired gaze with a pinch, so the eyes aim and the hand commits.

Descends from
Gaze
Gave rise toAn origin

Under delegation

Mutates

  1. Survives
  2. Mutates
  3. Dissolves

Gaze makes intent cheap to read, and that is the danger: a machine that watches where you look can act on attention you never meant to give. The remedy is still Jacob's. Let the eyes say where, and keep a separate, deliberate signal for yes.

Becomes

Down the Look column

  1. it reactsGlGlance
  2. it followsSScroll
  3. it targetsHvHover
  4. it remembersZZoom
  5. it connectsBBrowse
  6. it guessesGaGaze
  7. it actsInInspect

Read down and Glance gets heavier: each step is the same act, on a machine that keeps track of more.

Bodies

The act stays put while the hardware changes. These are some of the forms Gaze takes.

  • eye tracking
  • look to select

From the 2021 table

This was a tile of its own. On this table it is a form of Gaze, and its old address lands here.

  • Eye VergenceIsotopeThe same act in another body.