Mediated reality[18] differs from augmented reality in the sense that not only can visual material be ``added'' to augment the real world experience, but reality may also be diminished or otherwise altered if desired. One example application, the correction of visual deficiencies, was presented in[19].
In addition to further insights in human perception, some new inventions arose out of this work. For example, the ``life through the screen'' experience, over a three-year period, caused the author to visually evolve into a 2-D thought paradigm. (Others have reported ``living in video-mediated reality''[20], but only over short time-periods, perhaps due to the more cumbersome nature of their apparatus, which also did not contain any computational capability.)
``Life through the screen'' gave rise to a manner of pointing at objects where the author's finger would be aligned with the object on the screen, yet others who were watching the author point at something (like an exit sign or surveillance camera up in the air), would indicate that, from their vantage, the author's finger appeared to be pointing in another direction.
This ``life through the screen''[18]
resulted in some new observations,
among them, that the finger would make a useful pointing device
for a personal imaging system.
This pointing device, called the
fingermouse, was reported in [11]
and [15]
.