(Harnessing vision for computation.pdf by Mark Changizi was originally found on the author's twitter @MarkChangizi)
The author's idea is to use the human visual system to carry out computation. The software is embedded into a picture and by looking at it our visual system is tricked into carrying out the computation.
The example he gave was of an object that can ambiguously be perceived as "toward you" or "away from you". If it is perceived as toward you, his value is 1 otherwise 0.
He gave several circuits as examples. Each picture has to be read from top to bottom with each part of the circuit altering your perception until you reach the bottom with the correct perception.
One issue is that it is still based on perception and therefore not 100% accurate. It is also easy to change the perception at the end if you look at the object for too long.
However, I wonder if colors could reinforce the correct perception, or if a stronger optical illusion could be used?
In any case, I find this paper extremely interesting and it's been a while since I saw something that novel and creative.
Most papers related to visual programming are only focusing on graphical interface or how to visualize a program. I never saw any paper that directly try to use our brain as computers. It is usually the other way around: to simulate a computer as a brain.
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Backlinks: Human 3.0 Review