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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

Video on the internet was not a popular thing until we had broadband internet. Similarly it took millions of years for evolution to capitalize on the much broader bandwidth of color vision. I don't even want to know what will happen when we acquire infrared and uv vision

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Flowers will happen. Most “white” flowers actually have landing strips painted on them in ultraviolet.

With the evolution of tech that enables viewing past visible light, humans have been able to find new ways of diagnosing and treating conditions that were just “bandaged over” a mere 200-300 years ago.

>Video on the internet was not a popular thing until we had broadband internet.

I think it's an example of a post hoc fallacy. The popularity of video was in large part responsible for the investment into broadband in the first place.

Unlike evolution, humans can think ahead.

A big driver for investment was the idea of 'internet tv'. Remember MSN TV?

Wasnt it sort of a lockstep evolution, like how symbiotic systems can evolve together?

We LOST infrared and UV vision by being little shrews scurrying in darkness from glorious five-color-receptor-vision dinosaurs. Even the third color we apes have we had to re-invent.

A lot of insects can see in UV.

Edit: interesting article here- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_communication_in...

Yes, I read that pollinators see flowers very well because many are very bright in UV against the background [1]. Lots or cool pictures, too, if you Google "flowers UV".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_coloration_in_flowers

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