Gbur, an optical physicist at the University of North Carolina, has made invisibility something of a hobby.

One automaker is now offering a “stealth” paint option-“a dark, enigmatic look,” for “an entirely new personality.” Gregory J. We know about stealth aircraft, aspirationally invisible to radar. Over the past two decades, scientists studying optics have considered invisibility not just as a fantasy but as a practical possibility. “Transparency” is a watchword and a virtue-so we are told-and the desire for invisibility might be a natural reaction. Still, we crave invisibility in response to a growing sense of ubiquitous surveillance: our images captured and displayed everywhere, our inner souls turned out for all to see. If everybody were being perfectly honest with you, they would tell you the truth, which is that they all want to be invisible so that they can shoplift, get into movies for free, go to exotic places on airplanes without paying for airline tickets, and watch celebrities have sex.

People who chose invisibility imagined themselves lurking, eavesdropping, and peeping. He was disappointed that no one wanted to use their superpower to fight crime. The humorist and actor John Hodgman explained that he had been asking people this question for years at meetings and dinner parties, and that their choice revealed primal desires and unconscious fears. It was a test of character and a probe of the zeitgeist. These are “two of the superpowers which have fascinated humans since antiquity,” said the host, Ira Glass.

Some twenty years ago the radio program This American Life asked listeners which of two superpowers they would choose: flight or invisibility.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt expression