There are several caveats to customized corneal ablations. Dilation agents added to the eye distort the cornea slightly, thereby affecting the data taken to program the laser. The eye changes shape over time, a natural process nearly guaranteed to throw any adjustment out of camber eventually. And corneal thinness may make difficult the resectionings needed to correct problems of earlier operations, such as starbursts. Considering the potential complications of surgery, the rush to substitute possible hazards for the minor inconvenience of wearing lenses may be hard to understand.
Most people work in offices and have no reason to see to infinity.
Burns raises philosophical questions as well. The rapid pace of innovation, however, would seem to leave little time to ponder such questions. It's hard to keep up with it all. Singer Neal Singer, based in Albuquerque, writes about science for Sandia National Laboratories. He is quite fond of his glasses.