'Wearable Computing Will Be the Norm,' Says Google Glass Team

An anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Wired, Google's Steve Lee and Babak Parviz spoke about how they've come to use Project Glass in their lives, and where they expect the mobile computing industry to go in the near future. 'We've long thought the camera's important, but since we've started using this in public and with our family and friends and in real situations, not just hidden in the Google lab, we've truly seen the power of being hands-free. ... It's my expectation that in three to five years it will actually look unusual and awkward when we view someone holding an object in their hand and looking down at it. Wearable computing will become the norm.'"

Comments

Dear Slashdort:

[For a Free Internet]

Please stop posting corporate advertising as "news." America needs communism now! Then everybody will have compotors.

It used to be that...

[bmo]

... when you saw someone standing alone and talking, sometimes even getting animated and agitated, you thought they were crazy.

Now you look and hope they're wearing a bluetooth headset before making a judgement.

Soon, with the further miniaturisation of wearable computing, you won't be able to tell the difference between a gesticulating drunken bum, and a drunken, gesticulating businessman.

--
BMO

Don't forget about the end purpose of all that

[tftp]

Wearable computing will continue, since modern smartphones are pretty close to the desired ideal.

However many proponents of wearable computing are explicitly associating it to wearing headsets, Borg-like heads-up displays, cameras, GPS, implanted compasses, and whatnot. These, IMO, will not be popular just because there is no need for them. Even the heads-up display is a distraction for most people. A cell phone form factor is with us since the days of ancient clay tablets. It is something that we are well equipped to operate - we can take it, give it, leave it, look at it, and work with it. I can imagine a communicator from ST:TNG as well. But even those communicators, as shown, are pretty limited. They had no video, for example - and many an away team would benefit from that. They would be better off with a modern smartphone, actually, as long as it can communicate with the orbit.

At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.

Also in all these cases we must remember that the battery technology is still not good enough. Replacing batteries in all these wearable gizmos is a hassle - and a visible expense.

Re:Don't forget about the end purpose of all that

[wild_quinine]

At most I can imagine a heads-up display that is wirelessly linked to the smartphone in your pocket. That would have some use. Beyond that I don't see anything obvious; perhaps future developments give us other hardware that is worth wearing.

Every year or two somebody comes up with something that "could replace the mouse". It never does. I'm not saying never will, but I don't see anything coming. Why? Because the mouse is pretty close to perfect. It allows for fine manipulation from the wrist and/or fingertips without fatigue - in fact the arm is almost at rest. Only the nipple, trackball, and touchpad have ever really come close, and I'd argue that most people consider them to be acceptable compromises.

Kinaesthetic peripherals such as the Kinect, the Wiimote, the Move, Gyroscopic mice, heck, even the Gloves of Love from Minority Report - none of them are never going to become ubiquitious input devices like the mouse, because none of them are better than the mouse for general purpose input, in these really fundamental ways. If you want fine motor movement, you generally don't want to get the whole arm involved.

All novel ways to interact with the world are up against similar issues. They can't all be directly compared to the mouse, but for genuinely novel ways of interacting with the world, consider these three questions: 'is it a hassle to use?', 'can you forget it is there?*', and eventually, 'do you look for it, when it is not there?'.

A lot of wearable computing devices won't even pass the first test - you're right about the batteries being a likely issue. Keeping five or six items charged is going to be a pain. But also consider fatigue, fineness of control, etc.

* under 'can you forget it is there?', consider also 'are you always looking for the thing you know exists, which would be simpler to use'... such as a mouse, or sometimes a keyboard. :)

Advertising will kill it

[petes_PoV]

We know that any piece of personal technology that CAN support advertising WILL be used for that purpose - whether we want it to, or not. Imagine how intrusive it would be to be using the Google Glass technology to look at something and suddenly an ad. pops up trying to sell us something that looks like what we're looking at.

What's even worse will be the privacy issues. Not only will advertisers be able to track the users as they can now, with 3G, Wifi and BT triangulation, but they'll be able to infiltrate our state of mind by interpreting what or who we're looking at.

Because I really need more tracking

[antifoidulus]

I was just thinking to myself the other day, you know Google doesn't have QUITE enough information about me in their databases, wouldn't it be wonderful if they could track my every motion and everything I see too? Then my life would be complete.