Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my eyes. Design-wise they aren’t so great. I am very near-sighted. I’m fortunate that my vision is easily corrected with glasses or contacts, but without corrective lenses my adult vision has landed somewhere between 20/220 and 20/240. Legal blindness is 20/200 in the better eye. I can’t read normal print more than about 6 inches from my face, and headlines are a strain at arm’s length. Since eyeglasses weren’t invented until the latter half of the 13th century, I am grateful to have been born afterward. In the 12th century, despite a pretty capable brain, my options would have been quite limited by my visual impairment. My potential – maybe my understanding of the world – would probably never have exceeded the length of my arm. Ironically, my inability to see would have rendered others unable to see me for who I truly was. Continue reading →