Courtesy of Wired, an article on Eye-Tracking Tablets and the Promise of Text 2.0.
Eye-tracking software may reshape how we read. I have no idea how far off a commercial implementation of this technology is, but it sounds like it has some unique potential.
The following passage is what jumped out at me:
Their technology is capable of monitoring your eyes in order to define words if you stare at them puzzled, eliminating non-essential information when you’re skimming, helping you pick up exactly where you left off, swapping images based on what you’re reading, surfacing relevant reference materials and more.
I don’t think I would care for implementations as shown in the embedded video in the article (the red dot would annoy the shit out of me), but as books evolve into meta-textual, active works, this could provide some unique features.
I don’t think all, or even most, books would benefit from this, but applied in a limited way to the right works, I think it definitely has value.
If you’re interested, head on over and read the whole thing.
