The idea of a real heads up display is just too much for me to pass up. I'm setting up events this year to prepare me to buy Glass the day it comes out.
What are your thoughts on it?
I agree on a lot of what Fuffle said. It's just another Gizmo to filter life through, and I already feel like cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter are taking their toll on the younger generations and even mine to some extent. With Google Glass just taking that a step further to where you actually wear it, I just can't get excited about it. I just don't see what's so wrong with life now that people feel they need another gadget to "enhance it" or "make it better". People already annoy me with how often they play with their cell phones in social situations or while standing in line at stores, or while driving, and I can tell you I'll immediately look down on people wearing Google Glass who are obviously paying more attention to their gizmo than the people around them (but most of us already do this with people and their cell phones they can't put down). And I already don't like the idea of people recording me or our interactions without my knowledge. I don't like the "ME ME ME ME" culture that has already been reinforced by Facebook, youtube, twitter e-lebrities, and the rise of smart phones role in this, and how a thing like "life casting" might actually come into existance with a product like this. Sure, it might have some fun and interesting apps, and don't take my criticisms too negatively. I won't care if other people use them and hell I'd like to try it to see what it's all about, but I don't see myself owning one and I'm certainly not "excited" about it coming out. I had a flip phone until a year ago. I'm not big on "being connected", and prefer to be "disconnected". I sit infront of a computer all day and work and do IT stuff, so I'm not a fan of staring at another one in my free time, nor like the idea of actually wearing one and ALWAYS being connected. I feel too many people spend too much on the computer, internet, playing games, tweeting, Facebooking, etc, and I see a new device that allows this that you actually wear only exacerbating the problems I have with that culture. TL;DR: Not for me, not interested in the slightest. Worried about further negative social implications.
Obviously, I'm on your side of the spectrum. There's an interesting counterpoint to the first part of your second paragraph, though, in an interview with one of the Glass designers. Wish I could find/link to it, but I can't remember her name or where it was published. Anyhow, she was talking about the point at which she started thinking about Glass- she walked past a long line of people waiting for the bus or something, and saw them all with their faces pointed down, ignoring the world around them in favor of their smartphones. She decided she wanted to push for a smart system that encouraged you to interact with your surroundings via the interface rather than ignore your surroundings in favor of the interface. So there's that. But still, I suspect it's just going to going to become another method of diluting/replacing reality rather than really augmenting it. Also, feels like it's just another logical step in a progression towards complete integration, where an interface is indiscernible from the body using it. Which I think a lot of people would think was really cool, but I find unsettling.
And I agree with that statement, it might turn out to be better than everyone staring at their phone, but they are still feeling the need to interact with their surroundings with a gizmo instead of their own body they already have. Talk to people, draw, read a book, etc. There are plenty of methods to interact with the world around you without some layer of technology. That's my view of that. So while it may be less intrusive, it's still a filter/layer of gadgetry in place of natural interaction. But whether it's a HUD like Glass, or a phone app you're looking at, it's still an app/gizmo distracting from what's REALLY going on. I'm right there with you, that's a little unsettling to think about. The world around us is already beautiful and interesting enough for me, I don't need to enhance or augment it, if anything I find those augmentations and enhancements take away from the world around us an genuine human interaction for the sake of human interaction, not to analyze it, or put it on twitter, or interface with some social application via Glass.She decided she wanted to push for a smart system that encouraged you to interact with your surroundings via the interface rather than ignore your surroundings in favor of the interface.
Also, feels like it's just another logical step in a progression towards complete integration, where an interface is indiscernible from the body using it. Which I think a lot of people would think was really cool, but I find unsettling.
Also, imagine walking around Boston or New York and having historic sites described to you audibly while an overlay of the way it used to look was displayed.
Definitely the bikes GPS/Odometer! People pay hundreds for dedicated bike GPSs (see, Garmin Edge series). Since I'm no racer, I could never bring myself to buy anything like that. I just use Strava on my phone. Sure, a smartphone with GPS would work fine, but this bring's the best of a dedicated GPS all over! You can see a small 'mini-map' anytime you want. You can see anything the Garmin would show you. I only hope this gets optimized real well! Gosh I love bikes.
Aside from what has been demoed, the api looks super easy to work with. It looks mostly to be just pushing json to google. I can create notifications that get pushed out of the way in my vision. I guess my main excitement is that it's a friggin screen in your face at all times.
It worries me how much power Google has over our lives, and now, if it became evil, it'd be able to have complete video access to one's life via Glass. I dunno, it just makes me uneasy. It's hard for me to trust a company with a self-driving car, my email, what I search, my browser, my social network, my phone, my operating system, my files (Drive), my entire life (Glass, as stated above). Imagine if they started selling real estate! Not that much of a stretch considering all the areas they've gotten into. I really wouldn't mind having a corporation controlling those separate areas, but for one company to have control over all of that?
Google does not and can't have complete video to access one's life via glass. Glass can only record when a user tells it to record. You may not be referring to it potentially always recording video, but I read articles where people are fear-mongering such things enough to make me angry. There's lots of misinformation being spread regarding privacy with glass out there.
They're borderline monopoly. The only reason why they haven't yet, is because of US Commercial policies. At this, they're even expanding into INTERNET SERVICE with Google Fiber. This is just a rumor, but you know what they supposedly want to do? They could easily buy out a cell company, such as T-Mobile or Sprint. They'd have cheap yet ridiculously high quality phones that run on THEIR cheap but amazing service. On your PC or on your $200 Chromebook, you're using THEIR amazingly cheap internet service! In this near future, the mindset is "You don't use all Google products? What's wrong with you!" And they're so innovative, so fresh, so cool, so practical.. who wouldn't use them? But then what? What if they turn sour? I know it's unlikely to happen, considering that as a company, it's not one entity. It's not one big fat guy, who decided on the best way to make money. Google is a company. It has employees, who are nearly all down to earth. When I graduate, it's where I want to work. These employees use Google most of the time themselves! They use Galaxy Nexuses, like me. You know Google's privacy policies, user friendliness, customer oriented mind-set won't decrease anytime soon because the actual WORKERS wouldn't let that happen. I'm sure those who know are already sick of hearing it, but I've been to Google once and this is what I found: everyone's happy! I visit Microsoft all the time, or at least I used to. My parents have tons of family friends who work there. Yeah, the Redmond Microsoft headquarters is a nice campus. Yeah you get free drinks.. but the atmosphere is clearly frustration. Creativity in it's most oppressive form. At Google, things just felt more colorful! The free gourmet buffet every lunch must help too. Everyone was laughing, smiling. These are normal people, who won't let the company go to shit. Or at least, I hope they won't.
How bright, shiny and full of smiles a company can present itself doesn't make me any less cautious of them, as I am of all organizations that hold immense power. Let's not have delusions about what they do, which is sell parking spaces in your brain to the highest bidder.
People have expressed a lot of concern, and I can respect that but it's so cool! So cool guys. I'm hoping this leads into a new trend of ever-better innovation with this tech. I would think it's insanely awesome for a lot of applications. How about an app that allows glass to highlight certain elements. This seems small and pointless, but imagine if you could make a tool that has Glass highlight all the nouns on a page as you're reading. If it can do that, it can do a lot more, too, I imagine. Maybe a programmer can keep a whole development environment attached to their head that can follow snippets of code or take blocks of it and keep it in front of your face if you move to a new file. Or how about Google Glass 2, throw on some EEG meters and you can visually track your brain states in a HUD? That would be super rad I think. I'm not getting it day 1 because even though I have the spirit of the early adopter, I also know that first-run new tech is often buggy, broken, overpriced and too weak compared to the inevitable new model. So, I will wait for this to get the most out of it.
I can see the obvious utility of it, but I don't like the idea of experiencing the world through yet another filter of manufactured semi-reality. It's almost like we'll be forgoing immediate experience and skipping straight to nostalgia- instead of enjoying the immediate experience of, say, a ball game, we'll record it and then instantly appreciate the memory of the recording or something. Also, as Humanadon pointed out last week, there are a lot of obvious opportunities for misuse that'll be really hard to crack down on without some sort of codified new etiquette. Stranger things have happened, I guess. And on that note, while the benefits are easily identified ahead of time, a lot of the pitfalls will only be clear in retrospect when the product has been hacked to do all manner of crazy shit. What about the potential for hijacking a pair of somebody's glasses? Hacking their interface, recording their life? Seems like the potential for disaster jumps tremendously when we're invited by a product to experience everything through that product constantly, in a way not even approached by current smartphone tech. It's neat as something to read about in a novel, but horrifying in the implications of real-life use.