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A Year With Google Glass
Mat Honan, a writer for Wired, has posted an article detailing his takeaways from long-term use of Google Glass. He makes particular note of how the device's form factor is much more offensive to others than the actual technology contained within. For example, his wife wanted him to take pictures and shoot videos of their child's birth, but not with Glass: "It was the way Glass looked. It might let me remain in the moment, but my wife worried it would take her out of it, that its mere presence would be distracting because it’s so goddamn weird-looking." It can get unpleasant when strangers are involved: "People get angry at Glass. They get angry at you for wearing Glass. They talk about you openly. It inspires the most aggressive of passive aggression. ... Wearing Glass separates you. It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion (not everyone who wanted Glass got it; you had to be selected). Glass is a class divide on your face." Honan found most of the default software to be handy, but the third-party software to be lacking. Glass also facilitated his unintentional switch from an iPhone to an Android phone. He ends the piece by warning of the inevitability of devices like Glass: "The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face. We need to think about it and be ready for it in a way we weren’t with smartphones."
No dumbass, we just don't like you aiming a camera and microphone at everywhere you look.
When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an asshole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.
You've got a standing treadmill desk, and it's GLASS people make fun of?
This guy's already living the douche life.
Go f*ck yourself Matt Honan. I should invent a "Glasshole Killer" hat which projects a bright IR light onto the user's face effectively blinding the device's recording capabilities.
It will take hell or hight water to get "Glass" onto the people that spend god awful amounts of money on fashion and tech toys. The glasses are ugly looking AND imply that you're being recorded. There is resistance for a reason. The glasses need to be completely innocuous for this entire fashion/tech concept to take off. "
It will work out fine for all the people that really love technology but don't actually have any real life friends. You know who I'm talking about. No friends = no one to object.
Personally, I'm offended if one of my friends spends more than a few seconds staring at a smartphone in a social situation. Its OK if they excuse themselves from the group, but it isn't if they are sitting with other people and mentally somewhere else. Google glass is the same, but maybe worse because you think they are there but aren't.
Maybe in 30 years, and even then it won't work the way google wants it to. Come on, this is this decade's "Segway" , a solution in search of a problem.
A 3D TV has pretty much one use. I can envision dozens of niche apps for Google Glass without even trying that could make real differences in some areas.
How about Glass for an auto mechanic. Look under the hood of a car and it overlays the wiring diagram, exhaust diagram, part you're looking at with price and local availability, etc. Switch layers on and off with a glance or voice command.
Add a bluetooth ODB2 synced to Glass and you can see real-time engine stats as you are working under the hood. No more having to have a stack of manuals or tweak something and look up at the portable computer to see what change it made. You see the changes as it happens.
Add auto recognition of the make and model, so you don't have to look up which manuals.
Ditto airplane mechanics.
I can also easily imagine augmented reality applications for surgeons, dentists, dermatologists and just about every category of health professional.
How about an app for foreign tourists. Auto translate whatever written material you look at. Read street signs, menus, directions, brochures, etc. Probably an audio version of that as well -- automatically translating what you hear. Maybe subtitles.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.