Stories of Your Life and Others

Maria deSouza:
SEE has had extra neurostat programming helmets set up in the
Student Health Office, and made arrangements so they can offer
calliagnosia to anyone who wants it. You don't even have to make an
appointment, you can just walk in. We're encouraging all the students to try
it, at least for a day, to see what it's like. At first it seems a little odd, not
seeing anyone as either good-looking or ugly, but over time you realize how
positively it affects your interactions with other people.
A lot of people worry that calli might make them asexual or
something, but actually physical beauty is only a small part of what makes a
person attractive. No matter what a person looks like, it's much more
important how the person acts; what he says and how he says it, his
behavior and body language. And how does he react to you? For me, one of
the things that attracts me to a guy is if he seems interested in me. It's like a
feedback loop; you notice him looking at you, then he sees you looking at
him, and things snowball from there. Calli doesn't change that. Plus there's
that whole pheromone chemistry going on too; obviously calli doesn't affect
that.
Another worry that people have is that calli will make everyone's face
look the same, but that's not true either. A person's face always reflects their
personality, and if anything, calli makes that clearer. You know that saying,
that after a certain age, you're responsible for your face? With calli, you
really appreciate how true that is. Some faces just look really bland,
especially young, conventionally pretty ones. Without their physical beauty,

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those faces are just boring. But faces that are full of personality look as
good as they ever did, maybe even better. It's like you're seeing something
more essential about them.
Some people also ask about enforcement. We don't plan on doing
anything like that. It's true, there's software that's pretty good at guessing if
a person has calli or not, by analyzing eye gaze patterns. But it requires a lot
of data, and the campus security cams don't zoom in close enough.
Everyone would have to wear personal cams, and share the data. It's
possible, but that's not what we're after. We think that once people try calli,
they'll see the benefits themselves.