The Future of Project Glass

An anonymous reader writes "Project Glass made a big splash not too long ago at Google's annual developer conference when they showed several users falling on to the Moscone West in San Francisco. Google's pretty bent on showing us the sharing possibilities with Project Glass, but it feels like in time that technology could become a ubiquitous part of our lives. Fortunately for those of us who lack a hyperactive imagination, a short film popped up recently that can help fill in the blanks. The world created in the film was made possible by wearable tech. Games, cooking challenges, information in real-time about the person you are talking to, all made possible by the contact lenses being worn. And of course there's a darkside to the equation, the potential to hack and therefore influence the actions of others. Ultimately, it's a realistic idea of the future we all face."

Comments

Another user created video

[Anonymous Coward]

Showing how life would really be with Google.

Nothing of note

[girlintraining]

games, cooking challenges, information in real-time about the person you are talking to, all made possible by the contact lenses being worn. And of course there's a darkside to the equation, the potential to hack and therefore influence the actions of others. Ultimately, it's a realistic idea of the future we all face."

I'm not worried about hackers influencing the actions of others. They've had many, many other avenues for doing this, and for the most part they don't. The only thing anyone who's up to no good is regularly interested in is money: Either by browser hijacking or identity theft. What I AM worried about is businesses. Getting by in modern society increasingly requires that we surrender our personal information to faceless corporations who can do pretty much whatever they want with it. Want a job? Give us your Facebook password. Don't have a Facebook? That's a disqualifier. Want to buy anything? We only take credit cards here. Want to get on the internet? We'll be monitoring everything you do, storing that information forever, and selling it off to anyone who wants it. Cell phone? Same deal. Even your electric meter on your house is now phoning home with details of when you watch TV, cook dinner, etc.

I might as well not wear clothes anymore; Corporations already know everything about me, and for a pathetically small fee, so can you. Why the hell should I be modest about showing a little skin too? It's about the only thing you don't have pictures of. Wait... pictures from the full body scanners at the airport are being posted online? Sigh... nevermind...

Augmented reality is extremely compelling

[oakgrove]

Here is an excellent blog post by a Valve Software employee about the potential of augmented reality. Basically, the real thing like what you see in the video above while the guy is cutting the cucumber is very hard. Things like perfect motion tracking, contextual awareness, seamless overlays are science fiction at this point. But this is a very compelling scenario and very smart people are working on it so sooner or later it's happening. Hopefully Google Glass will get us one step closer. Ironically, one of the best uses for it is real life ad block. Imagine riding down the freeway and every billboard is replaced by a giant sequoia. Or a mushroom Smurf house.

Too expensive

[Hentes]

VR has been there for quite a while, and the reason it is not widespread isn't lack of imagination but its prohibitive costs. And since Google Glass still costs an arm and a leg, it won't start any revolution.

Re:Too expensive

[oakgrove]

Um, it's not even for sale to the general public so how would you have any idea what it will cost? And if you think the explored kit they are selling to the Google I/O attendees is indicative of the real price, I ask you, have you priced console dev kits vs. The price of the consumer hardware lately? The two have nothing in common.

The Internet is a funny place

[oakgrove]

The Internet is a funny place. About half the comments on any blog post about Glass are comments mocking it. Yet in the next breath, the same commented will decry "lack of innovation" in the tech industry. Personally I don't need yet another way to edit my spreadsheets or unlock my phone. I'm ready for something new and consumer palatable augmented reality is it. Google might still get it wrong but I'm with them all the way for trying.

Re:The Internet is a funny place

[oakgrove]

The friction isn't solved by Glass, it's solved by algorithms.

What is an algorithm without implementation? Glass is an implementation that assuming Google follows through will be attainable by the typical westerner and reduces the friction of "just in time" information by a higher degree than anything else that you can readily get your hands on. I'm not pretending that it eliminates friction. I would imagine that Gods-like omniscience is the only thing that can do that and that isn't even on the table right now.

As anyone using a search engine (including Google's), recommendation engine, or various other information tools, can tell you, that friction still exists because the algorithms in use are simply not good enough.

This is true. Many CS problems including complete contextual awareness will probably only be solvable by general AI especially things like real time human level speech translation (to give an example) but Glass isn't claiming to be perfect only a step. Actually, I don't think Google is claiming much of anything about it right now other than it can be a neat way to get directions and take first person photos and videos. We are the ones filling in the blanks. I gave this a bit of though after seeing the skydiving stunt at Google IO and honestly, I couldn't come up with any extremely compelling scenarios where Glass would change my life for the better. But I do have a general sense of potential and as you say with the right algorithm it could be huge. However, with that being said, I do have a Galaxy Nexus running Jellybean and Google Now. The algorithm behind that does have a rudimentary contextual awareness and is genuinely helpful. Not life changing but helpful. Google will be refining it and Glass isn't even scheduled for general release until late 2013 at the earliest so they have a lot of time to work on their algorithm for it but with just what they have now in GNow, I would find a heads up display useful. More useful than pulling my cell phone out of my pocket when it beeps at me.

Also, having a constant feed of information may cause even more changes in memory ability that have already been shown from reliance on the internet -- viz., a loss in the ability to remember any information we believe the feed can easily provide.

I have seen this particular risk hypothesized before but I have seen no empirical evidence that it is harmful. I hate to use analogies but you could make the same argument about the advance of specialization post hunter-gatherer days. Before the beginning of our agrarian base society, almost everybody in the tribe "knew" everything there was to know. And if you go far back enough that is a virtual certainty. Still, nobody reasonably wants to turn back the clock in the name of regaining the ability to remember information. We are too far removed from that lifestyle. This will continue until inevitably strong AI is invented (discovered?) and we humans no longer have to do anything. I'm banking on us merging with the machines but you can assume any scenario you want as it doesn't change the presumed inevitability one iota.

The truth is that for most of us, we have little practical use for a non-stop feed of information and may well be worse off for it. There may be isolated instances where the feed would be helpful, but that's just as we already see with smartphone and tablet usage.

I think things like Glass and Google Now and Siri to a lesser extent actually help lessen the problem of information overload. Think of them as intelligent agents that present information to you as you need it. You don't have to burden your own time (and it is a factor of time really) with trying to sift through it all when an agent can just give you what you need when you need it. That frees you up for what humans are good at, e.g., being creative and making plans and simulating the possible outcomes of those plans.

Not really convincing...

[openfrog]

Polished piece of work... must have been quite a bit of work, but there is a major inconsistency:

For the major part of the film and during most of the interaction with the girl he is dating, the info he gathers on her is a distraction and makes him look like a dork.

Indeed, this is all information (her Facebook profile) he could have read beforehand, which is already possible and happening in the real world. As his prior gathering of info would have been rather uninteresting in the story (although it would surely have been more efficient for him achieving his goal), here it is shown happening in real time. It can only be a distraction, especially in a live conversation, and the film carries this quite well. The guy looks like an idiot.

Then, at the very end, what has been portrayed as a debilitating distraction suddenly turns into an absolute power of manipulation, out of all conventions built during the preceding scenes, and without letting the viewer know what would be the source of that power. He stops her going out of his apartment by a simple voice command, and presumably rewinds her memory to prior her discovery of damning information on him. All of this happens in the very last seconds of the film, where we are suddenly thrown in deep sci-fi territory, in a completely inconsistent way. The film concludes on that little surprise, and it is obvious that it could not have carried on after such a stunt.

So, I see this as a slick flick without much depth, attempting to piggyback on the publicity surrounding Google Glass. Clever.

Illium/Olympus

[gmuslera]

If you want to go full to the future, those novels from Dan Simmons references what could be the a far future from the project glass, both from "interaction" (i.e. thinking in geometric shapes to activate some function) to going so far to become unusable (i.e. activating the wikipedia-like function to know everything in detail of what you are seeing around, at the point of becoming unpleasant to use)

Face Blindness

[MrLogic17]

As someone with mild associative prosopagnosia (google for Face Blindness), I *really* want this. Way too many people look alike to me, and I miss out on a lot for the first half of most conversations. I have to avoid names and only talk about general, common topics until I figure out who the heck I'm talking to. With a VR system, I might be able to follow the plot of more movies, too!

From a technology angle, contacts simple can't work for this application. You can't read text that's not directory in the center of your view.
See also: http://www.xkcd.com/1080/

Re:Don't worry

[ZankerH]

If Apple were to be the first to market with a contact lens hud system like this, and did it by a few years, wouldn't you have to say that perhaps they figured out how to make it work and deserve some reward for that?

Yeah, the "few years" of being the only company to sell those. Past that, once other companies reach the same capabilities and technologies, it should be fair game, otherwise you're just punishing them for not being Apple.

Moderately preposterous

[Thuktun]

For a better idea of what could happen if you have total control over sensory overlays, there are much better examples that don't require unspecified, magical leaps in brain manipulation.