While the tech industry is hoping that Snapchat’s Spectacles will change consumer tastes in wearable technology, consumers are mostly busy using a face-mounted camera for exactly the thing you’d most expect. But one surgeon has decided instead to use them as a teaching aid, thus creating genuine value from a pair of $130 sunglasses out of a vending machine.
Dr. Shafi Ahmed, with his patient’s permission, used the glasses to record the relevant points of a hernia operation and shared them on Snapchat as it unfolded. An assistant recorded the footage and posted it, and over 150 medical students watched the procedure. Ahmed points out that the ten-second time limit forces him to think about the operation in realistic terms, as a teacher:
The Snapchat platform is really interesting because it mimics who we are. It thinks on a 24-hour, short-term basis, and we, as individuals, work in short-term basis. We see things, we forget about them. Some goes into our long-term memory, but most of it, 95% of it, is all short-term.
Which is perhaps a worrying stance for somebody who’s job is “cutting you open and fixing your parts,” but hey, whatever works. Besides, as an educator, he’s got a point in that forcing you to think about structure is good for both teacher and student. And if nothing else, it’s no more gross than what your friends share across the platform after a night of drinking.
(via Time)