Sunglasses That Block All the Screens Around You (wired.com)

Scott Blew, an entrepreneur and engineer, recalled an article he'd recently read in WIRED about a new kind of film that blocked the light emitted from screens. He wondered if the same technology might work on a pair of glasses, to block the screens that seemed to be everywhere. From a report: He contacted Steelcase, the company that made the Casper screen-blocking film, and ordered a sample. Then he popped out the lenses in a pair of cheap sunglasses and replaced them with the film. Amazingly, it worked: Blew could look through the lenses and see everything -- except for screens, which turned black. Now, Blew and a small team are turning that concept into a real product. Their IRL Glasses, which launched on Kickstarter this week, block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD screens. Put them on and the TV in the sports bar seems to switch off; billboards blinking ahead seem to go blank. Within three days of launch, the project had surpassed its funding goal of $25,000.

Comments

Wavelength

[religionofpeas]

block the wavelengths of light that comes from LED and LCD

Has nothing to do with wavelength, but with polarization of the light. Anybody who has looked at screens with polarizing sunglasses is familiar with the effect.

Re:Wavelength

[taustin]

I have prescription polarized sunglasses (damned good ones, too). No, it doesn't work this way. Yeah, half the screens will go dark, being polarized one way. The other half will be largely unaffected. Which half depends on which way the glasses are polarized. The effect also varies with the angle at which you're viewing the screen. I regularly see screens dim, then brighten back up, as I walk by.

The only way to do this with polarization would be have two layers, at 90 degree angles. Which would render you completely blind, as no light of any kind would get through.

Re:Wavelength

[GrumpySteen]

They've discovered polarized sunglasses! Genius!

Nah. They've discovered a way to sucker hundreds of people out of $40 or more for a pair of cheap sunglasses and get free advertising that will probably get even more idiots to jump on the bandwagon before the kickstarter campaign is over.

Re:Wavelength

[ShanghaiBill]

Color is how we distinguish light frequency. That's what color is!

Who said anything about frequency? These glasses filter by wavelength, not frequency. Totally different thing.

Re:Wavelength

[powerlord]

Considering the Team page ends with:

"In Memory of Levi Felix, Co-Founder of Digital Detox and Camp Grounded, whose passion and prankster spirit continually inspires us"

and that the people leading the project are "Scott Blew" and "Ivan Cash" (so they're even telling you that you "Blew Cash" on the product) I would lean more towards this being a mild scam or an Andy Kaufman style hoax.

Re:Wavelength

[amicusNYCL]

The details are really hard to come by. I guess I should have clicked on the Kickstarter link first, where they do say things like "The polarization is TAC 1.1, Cat 3, UV 400" and "IRL Glasses block LCD/LED screens through horizontal polarized optics".

Instead, like the last time Slashdot ran this story, I thought to myself "surely they didn't just discover polarization." So, instead of Kickstarter, I clicked on the link to "Casper screen-blocking film." Which, by the way, they literally refer to as "cloaking technology." The intro video describes the "inventor" as suddenly remembering something from childhood and "testing his theory about light." The text "polar" is nowhere to be found. The few seconds in the video devoted to how it actually works claims "physics, science, and a little of this *space shuttle launches*". This isn't for sunglasses, by the way, it's "architectural film" for putting on open glass conference rooms so that people walking by can't see the screens inside.

The 7-page Designtex Casper Cloaking Technology Process Overview PDF does not contain the text "polar." But under the section about "validating monitors", it talks about mounting your monitor either "regular," or rotated 90 degrees, but not rotated 45 degrees! They also show a layout diagram and point out that people viewing through glass that is angled 45 degrees to the screen, or people near the wall and viewing almost from the side, will still be able to partially see it.

So, yeah, it's polarization, and for some unknown reason, as if polarization is not some widely-known thing, the design company goes to pretty far lengths to not use the word "polarization."

Here's the list they specifically say it won't "cloak":

Microsoft Surface Hubs
Cisco Spark Board
Direct LED displays
Passive 3D displays
OLED displays
Plasma displays
CRT monitors and displays
Prysm Laser Phosphorous
Displays (LPDs)
Smart Kapp white boards
Traditional white boards
Projection devices

It will "cloak":

Most LED displays 40” and
larger
Telepresence and media:scape
units
Google Jamboard

And it may "cloak":

Small computer monitors
Laptop computers
Notebook computers
Touchscreen computers and
kiosk displays
Displays mounted behind glass

Re:And what about LED traffic lights?

[religionofpeas]

LED lights aren't polarized, so the glasses have no effect on them.

I already tried this...

[Bluecobra]

I already tried doing this, and the results were frightening. Aliens everywhere, and all the billboards said stuff like obey, consume, etc. I ended up chucking the sunglasses in the bin.

Re:Doesn't work on portrait screens

[TeknoHog]

Regular polarizing sunglasses should work for those. Presumably, the polarization direction in most LCDs is chosen so that they remain visible with polarizing sunglasses (whose direction, in turn, is chosen to reduce reflections from horizontal surfaces).

Cherry on the cake

[Luckyo]

Creator's name is "Ivan Cash". Yes, he wants cash. For a pair of polarized sunglasses.

I'm just speechless.