How IT will cook up a feast for the eyes

Trends in computing mean developers will soon have to add visual literacy to their skills.

Here’s a thought: “Processing technology is going to develop as a graphics technology.” So said Hector Ruiz, chairman and chief executive of chip firm AMD, in a recent interview. He was referring to the spread of online video, and the graphics power required to run Microsoft’s Vista operating system. Not for nothing, therefore, has AMD paid $5.4bn to acquire ATI Technologies, maker of Radeon graphics processors. ATI’s trademarked slogan? “The ultimate visual experience”.

Thankfully, the august Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has also noted the heightened significance of graphics today. In its just-published Information Technology Outlook report, the OECD has kind words for the role that visual representation, through IT, has to play in the handling of natural disasters.

As processing power increases, the OECD argues, “costs will decline and larger amounts of data generated by different disaster-prevention and warning technologies can be processed, visualised and included in the decision-making process”. Footage from individuals at the scene of a natural disaster, it adds, is already used.

I approve of all that; and I’m also heartened by the OECD’s line on another very visual emerging technology: epiretinal implants, which should be on the market perhaps as early as 2009. Put a tiny video camera onto spectacles, and make a processing unit send radio signals to silicon photocells that are coupled to electrodes and implanted on the innermost layer of the retina. Result: electrical impulses that reach the brain through the optic nerve.

Along with simpler, subretinal implants, the epiretinal sort could make a big difference to the partially sighted. Yet the OECD’s treatment of matters visual is a touch too exotic. Happily, disasters and blindness are low-incidence phenomena. The big impact of the visual lies in more mainstream applications.

Way before YouTube, or today’s controversies about the Islamic veil, it was clear that the expressiveness of the face would be key to enterprise productivity in the future. With the rise of Web 2.0, we can expect face-based video messages, as well as live video-conferencing, to spread. Face recognition, face synthesis, “talking head” versions of Photoshop, simultaneous translation that takes account of smiles and frowns – all these will become more important. Graphics processing will centre on the face.

As things stand, Britain’s cadre of programmers and IT chiefs is ill-equipped for the visual sensibility of tomorrow. It is trained in the sciences, not the arts; in data, not the physiognomy or psychology of a smile.

That will have to change. Forward to more Leonardos in IT!