Deus Specs: Concerning Adam Jensen's Glasses

While revisiting some of Yahtzee Croshaw's older Zero Punctuation videos on a slow afternoon, I pulled up his review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, having forgotten most of his talking-points on the game and cyberpunk in general. When he brings up Adam Jensen's shades and how willingly they slide in and out of his skull, I began to wonder. Like he said, that's a ridiculously intrusive surgery for something that comes across in-universe as cosmetically badass at most. However, I think the shades are higher-tech than we can reasonably guess at first glance.

Quick disclaimer before before we start: I have played Deus Ex, but I have not played DE:HR. While this conundrum may already be addressed in the game and its supplements, my main goal here is to show you how close to this level of technology we actually are.These truly are exciting times we live in.


Now that I've addressed that, let's look at how the implant appears to operate. When the device is activated, two polarized lenses emerge from two synthetic ridges near his temples. It happens quickly and fluidly, requiring no overt means of activation (like a toggle or switch). for those of you who haven't seen it or don't get what's going on, the video on the right was the best I could find at the moment.

I think the main flaw in the general approach to this device is the assumption that the lenses are made of glass or a similar polymer. If the lenses are made of a rigid material, the design would be a poor one. The spaces left by the extended lenses weakens the structural integrity of the skull, and the retracted lenses complicate any percussive injuries to the respective areas of the cranium. While this form may be the intended design, it certainly seems unlikely given these critical drawbacks.

The thing we need to remember here is that we are in the future. We aren't confined to modern practicalities or technology. Taking this into account, let's look at a more likely design for Jensen's glasses.

Let's go through this step by step. We've already established that since the skull still needs to maintain its structural integrity, the lenses are probably not stored within Jensen's head and are thus probably not rigid. Since the glasses are not stored in sub-dermal compartments, the only logical place for them to be stored is exterior to the body. Perhaps the lenses are stored inside their frames, crumpled up like a plastic foil that can be extended or retracted via specially designed pockets. This is actually well within possibility even for modern technology, thanks to the piezoelectric effect.

I know "piezoelectric" is a pretty freaky term that might scare you off, but it's pretty straightforward stuff. A material is piezoelectric if it has a specific relationship between physical change and electric current. Either the material generates an electric current when bent or similarly stressed or changes its own shape when a current is applied. If you ever received one of those electronic workbench kits for your birthday when you were younger, it probably had a piezo-transducer -- a disc-shaped device that uses a piezoelectric diaphragm to either generate sound from current or to generate current with changes in air pressure. This is also how a crystal watch works as well, using the oscillating voltage from a stressed quartz crystal instead of a pendulum. Since the change in voltage is a predictable occurrence, you can quite literally set your watch to it to judge the passage of time. It looks like this kind of material is what we're looking at; a retracted piezoelectric component could be extended with a small stream of electricity and vice versa.

Now, let's think about how we could design these shades under the same parameters as before, but this time accounting for exterior storage. Theoretically, one could make the lenses of transparent, polarized plastic supported by a minimal skeleton that can be toggled mentally. Compartments to store the glasses are interior to the synthetic ridges. Add another set of piezoelectric struts to the lenses, and you can curl them back in the same manner. Voila: retractable shades that don't eviscerate your brain.

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