This is amazing. Not only has Google just opened up the pre-order program for Google Glass to ‘creative individuals’, it has also unveiled what the user interface looks like and how it works. It’s… Nothing short of amazing. I’m throwing money, credit cards, my car keys, my house keys, my Surface RT, my cats, everything at my screen. I want this so bad.
The user interface is controlled through speech, and additionally through what appears to be a small trackpad on the side of the device (for silent operation). The user interface itself sits at the top-right of the visual field and… Well, just watch the video.
So, what kind of people are they looking for? “We’re looking for bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass. We’d love to make everyone an Explorer, but we’re starting off a bit smaller. We’re still in the early stages, and while we can’t promise everything will be perfect, we can promise it will be exciting.” You have to send in an application and so on, and it’s unlikely any of us regular folks would ever be able to get into the program – especially since, as usual, it’s US-only.
Still, this is so much awesome.
Just one small question though…
WHERE ARE THE HOVERBOARDS?!
What do you mean? They’ve been out for years now. It’s just that it’s probably been banned in your area because of your local parents group protesting the sale of the product.
At my former university, we physicists built some hoverboard-ish thing a bit more than a year ago, to celebrate the past century of superconductor research. Complete with french TV news coverage !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Og8YUrNRw
Edited 2013-02-20 17:05 UTC
They’re in the secret government storage facility next to the jet pack and flying car.
We have top men working on it right now… Top men.
It’s a good question. But till then maybe these will do…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Bm3cs9TFo
In an alternate timeline.
Features presented are amazing, but in day to day life wouldn’t people be reluctant to wear these glasses to avoid being ridicule?
In the demo video, we almost never see an other person wearing the glasses.
Also, I don’t really see myself talking to my glasses when I am with friends…
Only scenario where I would use them would be when biking (and perhaps hiking). Taking pictures, movies and using GPS this way would be really great.
Tom
The same argument were made about the mobile phone
.
And the argument was made about bluetooth headsets and nothing changed there: it looks douchey (of course, that doesn’t apply to everyone). But I’m not aware of such arguments around cell phones in general…maybe when phones were the size of 24 oz beer can and not *that* portable, OK… And even if you’re right, well then the argument has come back to life: just look at the divide around “phablets” like the Galaxy Note.
Looks matter, period. To those who suggest they shouldn’t matter when it comes to Glass, then why doesn’t that apply to fashion choices? If we always prioritized utility over looks, then wearing “fanny packs” would be cool and our universal dress code would be cargo pants and SWAT team vests.
Reluctant to wear glass no, reluctant to use a device which depends on voice recognition (given its sorry state), yes!!
Use Google Now for a while. Its voice recognition is otherworldly creepily good.
It depends on the individual. Voice recognition fails hard for me despite myself having relatively plain accent.
My accent just breaks pretty much all speech recognition software out there.
Insecure people, yes, or people who sheepishly follow fashion. I, on the other hand, already look out-of-place everywhere I go, so plopping the Google Glass on wouldn’t really change a thing.
You just have to ask yourself: “is the reason why I don’t use the Google Glass because there is something wrong with the platform or something about it that makes it not work for my use-cases , or is it really because I am just too worried about what other people think of me?”
It not really quite as simple as that is it?
It really is, yes.
No it isn’t. You are over simplifying it.
I know people that wear contacts, not because how other people think about them, but because they don’t like how they look with glasses on.
And that is one example, I can think up off the top of my head. I am sure there are others specific examples I could remember given time.
I really think a lot of nerds/geeks whatever we wanna call ourselves have a real misconception about why people choose products.
Edited 2013-02-20 18:21 UTC
Yes, and in this case glasses don’t suit their use-cases whereas contacts suit them better. I don’t understand what you’re really arguing about.
I wouldn’t wear the damn glasses because I might get mugged because I am wearing them.
Others would have their mates rip it out of them (and yes I do care what my friends think about me, otherwise they wouldn’t be my friends).
There are a multitude of reasons why you wouldn’t wear them and they are vaguely related to how other people think or perceive you.
It isn’t as simple as you make it out to be.
It doesn’t boil down everytime to “haters will be haters” for everyone. It might do for you and that is fine … but it doesn’t for me and a lot of people I know and the way that is talked about like it wholly negative thing when it isn’t, which is what I was taking issue with.
Edited 2013-02-20 18:40 UTC
Yes, it is. Some of us already wear glasses, and while some people will ridicule you for doing so, WE HAVE NO CHOICE. So we wore them anyway, and guess what? It’s not really so bad. The people who will ridicule you are not people you want to associate with in any case. So those of us wearing glasses will have no problem at all wearing Google Glasses. Those of you who don’t wear glasses, take it from us – it’s not that bad, really. We should know.
I wasn’t talking about people ridiculing anyone.
Oh yes you’re a rebel because you look different.
Truth is, your style is to look different. That’s because you do care about what others think. Don’t tell me if you were the only person on the planet you would look exactly the same, that’s nonsense.
Human nature is to care about what others think. Some people dress to mainstream fashion and others dress to the exact opposite, but both are equally driven by how you want others to see you.
This is a bit harsh but made me laugh. A comment on Google Glass by Brian S Hall.
Coolness is more important than privacy.
What’s that? The non-consented voice and video capture of me you just uploaded in real-time to Youtube for the world to see includes my location, down to the nearest GPS coordinate and has face-tagged me, and now Google is selling that information to every advertiser on the planet who are now pestering me with ads and tracking my every move and anyone on the planet can have a instant Google alert to be notified the very millisecond I show up on the great Google eye and all I only wanted was to enjoy this nice cup of tea but now you’ve fucking ruined it so maybe you should take off those fucking glasses before I smash your fucking face.
Just saying.
Then again, that’s really no different from how things already are as anyone can just pop in and take your picture or record a video of you with the myriad different mobile devices around. In practice it makes no difference.
Of course it’s no different. You can do the same with any phone – including the iPhone – and it has been that way for almost a decade. Nothing new.
But it’s from Google so better make some snide remark about advertising even while their own site uses advertising and tracking as well.
I think I would be more relaxed about this if it wasn’t an advertising company making it.
Well, why? Atleast with Google they’re not selling your details to others, but if it was some non-advertising company you could bet your ass that they’d sell all the details they could to some 3rd party they do not really have control over, and would that really be preferable to you?
Google does sell your content to advertisers, though not personally identifiable in most cases, it does scan through sensitive materials like e-mail. I don’t think it’d be too much of a leap to suggest they could do it for other sources of information.
These contextual ads are no-opts , you cannot turn them off. Google is a nefarious company which occasionally does some pretty neat things like Glass.
No, they sell information about trends, not your content.
In most cases? They don’t sell information about individual people, they sell marketing data in large batches of tens of thousands of people.
It’s okay to not like that, but atleast get your facts straight.
Aye, but how does that differ from everyone else, then? They all do that these days, and if Google Glass came from some other entity they’d do that just as well. Again, it’s okay to not be okay with that, but let’s not pretend that Google is somehow a more evil entity than the others here.
Directly gathered from…your content. Just because they package it up and present it in a different manner doesn’t mean its any less wrong.
And that is any different how? It still creates a perverse incentive to be intrusive in users lives, and Google often complicates or completely removes the Opt-out process.
I think just have different takes on the severity of the issue, not in isolation, but in reference to them also making an intimate consumer device.
Does any other company do it by snooping through your e-mail? Look, I don’t care if I search for something and ads are targeted based on what I search for in Google, but to go through my emails is, I think, a step way above that.
And I think your last sentence underlines my point exactly: All corporations do this to some extent, but to Google, this has a lot to do with their livelihood as a company. They fill their coffers off of the proceeds of your data.
So while others may be evil to certain extents, Google is right up there with Facebook in the terrible data policy department.
There is a massive conflict of interest here.
Edited 2013-02-20 21:21 UTC
Microsoft doesn’t, and that is something they love to tell you lately.
Ehh, not a long time ago it was ~”do no evil” for Google – now it’s “not more evil than others”?
Oh to be young and naive. Truly funny how people think a publicly traded company who’s primary revenue is advertising is somehow looking out for their interests.
If Google sold their users’ details, that would diminish their value. Google’s business model is targeted advertising.
We all find advertising useful sometimes both as receivers of ads and as purveyors of ads. But I do think some things are probably best not run by advertising companies, and this sort of wearable device might be such an example.
I think the police are necessary and useful but I wouldn’t be happy if they ran the kindergartens, I think religious institutions have their place but I wouldn’t want them to control the ministry of culture, I think political parties are essential to democracy but they shouldn’t decide the verdict in court cases. etc etc.
If a company, such as Google, makes all it’s money from advertising then that has an effect on what it does and how it does it. A non-advertising company would probably do a lot of things differently than Google does them. I think it would be silly to argue otherwise.
Maybe the fact that Google Glass is a product of an advertising company will have no impact on the end user experience. On the other hand it might, and that impact may have negative consequences for end users.
I would of thought it should be possible to raise such matters, even occasionally in a caustic and satirical fashion, without such concerns being condemned out of hand.
Just saying.
I assume you are implying that you would be more likely to trust Apple to make this since they are not an advertising company… I mean really, who else could you POSSIBLY be talking about…
So what is an “advertising company”? Isn’t it a company that sells access to it’s users eyeballs, making revenue by charging a fee for such access?
http://advertising.apple.com/
Well?
Yes, I realize there is a rather large difference in scale between Apple’s small scale endeavor and what Google does… But I would argue it doesn’t matter – your argument is about principle, so it is the principle that counts.
If Apple took an official stance and publicly stated “we are a technology company – we aren’t interested in making money through advertising” then I might actually agree with your point. But they don’t. They are just as much an “advertising company” as Google is – they are simply not as good at it yet. So they make vastly more money selling hardware, but that in no way gives them any moral high ground – i.e. it is no reason to “trust them” to make something like this product any more or less than Google.
If they are willing to pursue revenue through selling access to their users, well they are advertising company – the scale doesn’t matter.
Name such a non-advertising company?
Samsung maybe
I think the problem is the concerns you are raising are based on a completely false premise. Maybe if you reply here that you meant Samsung or HTC or some other “pure” hardware maker would make you feel better… But we all know those were not the alternatives you were thinking of when you wrote this.
I personally think you are maybe just a tad bitter because Apple didn’t think of this one first
Interesting how there was no mention of Apple but somehow you immediately jump to that conclusion and launch on a tangent. Obsessed much?
I figured you were new here, but your profile says otherwise…
How could you possibly have been here 8 years and not know that the only thing Tony post’s about is Apple???
Of course he meant Apple – Im not jumping to a conclusion. If he cannot link the topic at hand to either making Apple look good, or making one of their competitors look bad – well he doesn’t bother posting.
Really, just go read the last 40 or so posts he has made… Find one that isn’t either cheer leading for Apple or ridiculing a competitor.
So instead of even thinking about the argument he’s making for one instant, you immediately go into a boring rant about Apple vs Google.
Fact is, I wouldn’t trust either of them with my data, but many people somehow buy into the idea that Google is more ethical in some way. It is a fundamental mistake to trust a company the same way you would trust a person.
He even said once “I write to defend Apple”…
I think I agree with more than half of what you’re saying for a change(knowing you’ve a somewhat Apple bias..and each to their own)
But I’m just imagining a scenario where say 4, 6 even companies have similar offering in broad over area of AR/VR/HUD glasses. be they similar notifications a la bluetooth companion watches for smartphone simple info/pic consumption (but strapped near your eye)….or up to google glass (or http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/10/augmented-reality-… ) or a switchable mix of AR/VR even with variable transparency.
And the contenders beyond Google are obviously Apple and Microsoft, but maybe also Canonical, Amazon, News Corp..? or other wonders.
And it’s always going to be the back-end/cloud voice and data processing (and hoarding, and selling) that is going to be the worry. If these companies were brave enough (and decent enough) they’d allow, and cooperate to an extent to facilitate customers using AR hardware from each other to use different back-ends ..e.g. Google Glass hardware with Apple’s Siri backend as the only example that one could use so far..
And vice versa, whenever more come on stream. I think this kind of facilitating of customer choice would be the ONLY way that we as customers/consumers could have even the vaguest amount of hope or trust that someone somewhere can’t literally tapped into your video/audio/location feed as literally a walking spy drone.. (let alone more innocuous advertising worries). Paranoid enough..?? ..Never!!
It’s totally different. It’s the difference between capable and easily capable, not mention discrete. Sure, you can do the same thing now and even years ago, but you can’t capture video just by looking at someone–you have to get your phone out, access it’s camera, aim it at your subject, etc. It’s not discreet, and if you started recording videos of strangers for an extended period of time, someone’s probably going to ask you what the eff you’re doing.
Will that stop this from progressing? Maybe not. But, social consequences are a consideration and certainly have–and will continue–to influence the adoption of a technology.
I don’t know Thom …the degree of automation really can make a difference.
But then OTOH, I don’t really see what the big deal is about Glass – seems like a bit fancied out webcam; its videos seemingly impressive mostly because of pro editing, including music, short clips.
Edited 2013-02-25 11:07 UTC
No, there is a subtle difference. With, say, a mobile phone, you have to get out the phone and somehow surreptitiously angle it to record my face. Doable, perhaps, but not easy.
With Google Glass and using the trackpad, it is much easier to record a video of me without my ever knowing.
This criticism would be laughably ironic if it were to come from an Apple fanboy.
Don’t worry jealous fanboys. Apple will eventually invent this device and it will be revolutionary, especially in regards to privacy protection.
Initially, yeah. But that’s a cultural thing and bound to change in time.
It helps that these things are expensive as you’ll have the nerds who’ll wear them because they’re nerds, but also some hipsters wearing them because it’s expensive and thus yet another excuse to flaunt their wealth.
Hipsters buy stuff because it is retro, old or made by Apple.
Google has gold on their hands if this works exactly as advertised. This is their iPhone.
Really looks very cool, but the thing is that most lifes are rather boring and tiresome, so not that much use for such a expensive gadget that is good at capturing great moments.
The internet shows a lot of people don’t think their life is boring. This is all about conspicuous consumption.
Most people aren’t graphic artists either but they buy a mac thinking that people are going to think they’re a graphic artist because they have a mac.
Even more people think they’re graphics artists because they have a degree from a four year program, but their work suck eggs. Its probably true of many professions that they sort of suck at their jobs after spending a ton of money to be good at it, but graphics arts is so easy to see it with. Most of my friends that studied graphics arts are unemployed for a reason…
Most people by a Mac? that’s news to me.
Haven’t you heard? They’ve got the largest market cap blah blah worth $600 billion dollars blah blah which is what it’s really worth and will never change blah blah and therefore everyone likes them blah blah meaning everyone has one blah blah.
Seriously though, given the rising popularity of macs, it is entirely true to say that most people today are by a mac. They may be sitting next to a person on the bus with an iPhone, and thus by a mac. Or they could be standing in line for a coffee, which is the mating ground of macbook carriers, thus standing by a mac.
I guessing they will be a huge hit with the “put your food on instagram” crowd
What they have now is interesting, but it falls short of the original promise. I guess we just have to wait a few years for enough processing power to do the face recognition, text recognition, and other computer vision applications. For example, it would have been so much cooler in the video to have glass translate the Chinese characters on the sign rather than using a voice command to ask for a translation from English into Chinese.
But then everywhere they look, they’re going to think every Chinese character means “404 Not Found”.
Most of the processing would be done in the cloud and smart phones have been able to do the camera based translation for a little while already. So I suspect there were usability reasons for not having auto translate (possibly because it would result in so much data on screen that it’s overwhelming for the wearer?)
I like what I’m seeing. Real world use will tell the full story, though.
I can’t see myself using this over a handset in the real world, but make me an Arai or Shoei with this functionality and I might consider it, as long as it doesn’t distract too much. Speed, revs, gearing, sat-nav/mapping, additional settings, etc… all on the visor. Might be useful, or might put me in a ditch, but it’ll be way cooler than the dorky glasses.
Edited 2013-02-20 18:45 UTC
Well all you would need is an app for that. And you don’t need to have it fixed to your helmet think about it. Just wear the glass under it and flip the shade down, fire up an app such as Torque and your done.
call them google googles*
*edit: google goggles
Edited 2013-02-20 13:59 UTC
Google Goggles already exists. It’s an Android image recognition app.
Amazing idea, amazing technology, amazing implementation. Has potential to change the world.
But as much as I dislike Apple, I wish they would have come up with it. From all the technology companies, Apple has the most power to get people into new technology and trends. There is a lot of more people ready to accept anything new that comes from Apple than anything new that comes from Google.
But I guess it’s still good enough. If this came from Microsoft no one would care at all.
Don’t worry, they’ll copy the concept sometime in the future and claim that they were the first one to invent it.
You mean aside Google Maps, Google Street View, Google Earth, Google Mail, Android, Chrome, ChromeOS and a boat load of other tech that are amongst the most popular products in their respective fields?
Yeah, just like how nobody cares about the Xbox360, Windows n, Office, Visual Studio, Kinect, etc
If a product is good enough people will buy it regardless of whether it’s owned Apple, Google or Microsoft. Where Apple comes into it’s own is keeping users buying into average evolutionary devices (eg each predictable upgrade of the iPhone).
I think Apple is great at refining an idea and removing complexity that others often miss as a barrier to entry.
They didn’t invent the phone, or multitouch, or apps, or app stores, nor did they invent PMPs or tablets but they took the idea, made it simple enough to reach a broad audience, and marketed it very effectively.
Apple is pretty much in a league of its own when it comes to marketing an end to end experience in human terms. Google has gotten dramatically better at adding a human aspect to their company. Microsoft still falls flat here.
I think Google is right to try to shape their own destiny and push forward with this without the benefit of hindsight, they are right to be bold and pioneer.
Google has proven it can keep up with Apple when it comes to pace too, so it can both pioneer and refine the idea at the same time.
I have no idea what Microsoft is cooking up, but I sincerely hope they do not miss the boat again. They’re great at catching up from behind, really, they are, but it doesn’t have to be like that. There needs to be some forward thinking when it comes to radical new products. The Kinect is an example of this. Their investment in Pen computing is another (and a huge irony being that Samsung took Pens and moved them forward almost single handedly with their Galaxy Note lineup).
We live in strange, interesting, fun times.
This has nothing to do with the product itself being good. It’s about people looking like total dorks. this is a wearable device, and people is much more proud to show themselves with Apple devices than with anything else. It means it will be accepted more easily because of the hugely (sadly) positive connotation an apple product has.
Seriously, such a device has been featured in so much fiction that it’s quite pathetic that it hasn’t been marketed already. Although there are many quirks of which I don’t understand how Google will fix them, I’m very excited!
Transporter beams and superhumans have also been featured in lots of fiction. Why don’t we see them being marketed?
Edited 2013-02-20 14:31 UTC
Meh…. not Ghost in the Shell enough for me. Will wait a few more years.
give it a few iterations and it will just interface with your brain in a few years
…and then we’ll all be able to enjoy the benefits of brainjacking and cyberbrain sclerosis.
I like the idea, but:
* How well does it work?
* How long does the battery last?
Certainly the battery has to last a whole day, because it sucks to have it run out of power and you have to carry the device around in a not working state. Remember how we used to leave our homes with our walkman, only to have it run out of batteries before the first song ended?
Turning the device when you need it and off when you don’t kind of damages the whole experience. The moment you need it it has to be there, not having to be turned on.
I also wonder if it’s safe, because it might be very distracting when used in a car or just walking around.
It could be partly solar and kinetic powered so it’s charging most of the time.
Or it could be powered by the wearer’s own sense of self satisfaction.
Well, the number one consumer of battery is our display. The number two consumer is signal processing. The display looks to be passive and probably won’t work in a lights out, dark environment. The data connection is trickier, and with them showing hangouts up in the sky, they allude to an always on environment. That is incredibly difficult. I bet the battery life wouldn’t be that bad if it isn’t searching for signals, and as soon as it has to up the power to talk to APs you can watch it drain.
It is possible that it can hook up to your pre-existing devices via bluetooth so that it can instead use your cell-phone’s connection instead, thereby saving power.
This is something I see people saying quite a lot, but well, it is safer than a smartphone, for example: it covers only a really small portion of your view, you don’t have to take your hands away from whatever it is that you’re doing and it’s mostly transparent. Sure, compared to nothing at all it’s a distraction, but compared to anything that’s already widely in use it’s an improvement in safety.
You could also turn the question completely around, whole 180 degrees, by asking the question: “how much safer will you be if you have constant, 24/7, access to directions or guidance just a twitch of the eye away?” You don’t have to keep yourself occupied with a smartphone, possibly dropping it somewhere, not being able to pay attention to the traffic and flow around you or anything the like.
I’m not too concerned about it blocking your view, rather the eyes focussing on the information displayed and the brain processing it.
But if so many raise this concern I’m sure Google or some third party will investigate it.
It would be very strange if a large group of people were wearing these glasses and someone famous showed up and all these people started talking to their glasses to take a picture.
I guess old people think the same if they see large groups of people staring at their mobile phones I guess.
I miss 80h on one battery of my walkman…
IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!
First, they need some motion control. I thought I was going to be sick a few times during the video.
Second, can I get these in prescription lenses? Or are all glass wearers out of luck?
Extremely distracting UI IMHO: how long before the first car crash?
Google takes a smartphone UI with voice control, makes it transparent, put it in a corner and voil~A . It is personally not what I would expect from such device: I want augmented reality and this is not that at all.
Once again, Google is the first to tell the world how cool they are and create a nice techno-geek concept.
I think this kind of device as well as autonomous cars are the future, but I don’t think Google will be the one to trigger this revolution, at least not based on this video.
Uh, what? How much UI did you even see there? Do explain, what exactly is it that makes it a “smartphone UI?”
Well, no shit, Sherlock. If you want augmented reality then you need something that covers the whole view and has a lot, lot more processing-power, and then it won’t be nearly as comfortable. If you were expecting Google Glass to be that then you expected something they never were selling in the first place.
I can see a widget with the time being always displayed, a scroll list, a recording icon, a pulsing microphone icon, a textual “sending” notification, a wall of thumbnails to display photos, a weather widget with a sun icon and the temperature, and so on, all that within a small rectangular window.
This is basically exactly what you would see on a smartphone.
Google didn’t even try to bring something original concerning the UI!
And yes, I want augmented reality because this is exactly what such devices should be used for, something covering the whole view as you can find for years in military aircrafts, only nicer and connected.
And yes, I think the technology is not right there and I think that several companies (including Apple) are currently working on such device in their lab. Only Google feels the need to tell the world about it, release a gadget and pretend it is the beginning of a revolution.
But no, it is not: the revolution will be the full augmented reality UI and until someone is able to make it a reality, these glasses are only the last Google’s concept.
Edited 2013-02-20 17:38 UTC
Oh come on, Project Glass was shown off as Augmented Reality from day one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/04/google-unveils-project-glass…
I think its fair to point out that Glass as it stands currently does not live up to this promise. In fact, Glass here is a lot different from what they showed off originally.
Not to say what they have now isn’t immensely impressive, but it isn’t Google’s full vision realized at this point in time. That’s likely why others have held back on showing off their work in the open, its an area of intense research.
Cool toy, or gadget, take your pick. We’ll see if it can move past that. Now, ….
Cost?
When will it come with night-vision capability?
I already wear glasses, so it’s not quite for me yet. They need a “clip on” version.
It will only be distracting if you start getting unsolicited information. Such as talking to someone and you start getting SMS messages or tweets or whatever that Will Not Stop. You will feel obligated to focus on them since the screen real estate is so small, and the movement will be distracting.
Having the constant “Temp: 70” displays won’t be a big deal. As long as the image is static, you will soon ignore it. But unsolicited action and motion will distract.
I think it would be interesting if there were a virtual environment where some information is “above you”, so when normally walking, etc., the information is not in your line of sight, but if you “look up”, shazam, there’s the weather, or whatever.
Battery power and other utility function, that’s really secondary at this point. More interesting to get it in the field and see what folks do with it to make sure they even want to have it available all day long.
That said, if it does become popular, then it will need to be truly a 16-20 hr battery life so that it only recharges when you are asleep. It’s not like a cell phone you can put down in your desk charger during the day.
Folks will “miss” having the little sunshine or whatever in their field of view.
I don’t own a digital camera, or a smart phone (anymore) and I will probably let me pass by.
I can see a HUD being useful for certain professions, but if this is prohibitively expensive / bulky it will be no go.
I can see this having lots of uses for professionals. But for personal use it really needs to be paired with some kind of touch screen I think. It certainly can’t replace a touchphone, but it would work great to extend one.
I would be worried about carrying a wireless device so close to the head all the time though. That’s something many of us try to avoid.
Edited 2013-02-20 19:17 UTC
I can see this have a use for POV revenge porn first.
You can watch porn movies while in boring meetings. Or you can play some games while riding the bike and after that use them to record the doctors during the surgery.
A whole new world opens.
Call me paranoid, but someone out there will see through my eyes. Pass.
How much until some not to be mentioned company comes up with iGlasses and sues Google because their Glass has round corners?
The main problem is that all their promo videos.. show it up as just being a camera. I mean seriously, i don’t care if its 6pm when i’m paragliding.
I don’t care to get the GPS when i’m slaloming cars (i think i’d die in 10s otherwise.). I have the audio gps instead; much safer and convenient. (yes i slalom cars with a bike in a busy city.)
So basically, i’ve seen zero good use case for this so far. I think the software is just not up to it. Most of it should be unattended AND useful. Well, on phones, the unattended software sucks terrible hairy balls, so yeh. (its close to AI and that’s hard to get right.)
Additionally, those promo videos are likely mostly recorded by pros, certainly professionally edited by pros into short clips, with nice music – that is why they seem impressive; not because of Glass, which will probably ~disappoint when used by more typical folks.
Snow Crash’s gargoyles have finally arrived. (From the glass video: “the old won’t get us tonight”)
Edited 2013-02-21 13:15 UTC
Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time. – Snow Crash, Chapter 15, Neal Stephenson.
Maybe Google has thought about this but I am wondering how this thing works right in front of your eye. For instance, I need reading glasses to see up close but have better than 20/20 distance vision. Will I be able to have this device in focus, sitting at 1 inch away from my eye at the same time as looking far away?
90% of that video was just taking pictures and video of stuff. In other words what GoPro has been doing for years.
And then GPS navigation? Works great on the phone already without me looking like a tool everywhere I go.
It’s going to have to do so much better for people to take the step of wearing these things in public.
Well… it is a cool device, but for me this just shows that techno civilization is ultimately doomed. People can’t cope with advance of science and technology. They will try and not succeed.
Call me crazy I don’t care
Elaborate?