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"...Cards appear throughout the day..." Yay, just what I wanted: yet another software service to interrupt me thoughout the day. Snarkiness aside, I'm sure th

"...Cards appear throughout the day..." Yay, just what I wanted: yet another software service to interrupt me thoughout the day. Snarkiness aside, I'm sure the information is relevant and good. But if I forget that my favorite team is playing while I'm working on a design, do I really need to be reminded? People are not machines. I do not subscribe to and process an information feed in the same way that an email client would. I see Google continually trying to work the problem of strong AI and transhumanism and that's great. I'm all for it. But they seem strangely blind about the real hard edges associated with being human. Instead of assistance it all seems to be about data, speed, and relevance. It seems the assumption is that people will adapt to however fast we can push the information at them. I'm not so sure that is an valid assumption. Or if it is, I'm not sure I like the way we would adapt to this vision of the future.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
I'm not under the impression it constantly notifies you, only that the cards it's showing you when you launch it are shuffled (sorry) depending on what's going on.
methodin 14y ago
We've never gotten there so it's an intriguing experiment regardless if you agree with it or not. 12 years ago I imagine most people thought it would be ludicrous that people would be walking around consumed in a mobile device - but that came to fruition just as stuff like this will.
- disappointment 14y ago
  Believe it or not, we had PDAs back then. And before that, we had pocket TVs.
  - marcusf 14y ago
    But they were never mass market in the same way. Walk on to the tube today and 70% will have their noses buried in an iPhone (or less often, a 'droid). That wasn't the case with either PDA's or pocket TV's. Possibly with walkmans/iPods.
    - abrahamsen 14y ago
      SMS among kids would also qualify, at least in Europe (took off later in the US for some reason).
    - pvidler 14y ago
      > Possibly with walkmans/iPods And do books count as well? Not really devices, but just as absorbing, for some of us. I don't really understand why we think about electronic devices differently from every other human invention. A year or two ago, I had a short train commute (Loughborough to Leicester and back, on one of the main routes to London) on a daily basis and saw far more people immersed in books than in their phones -- I suspect it was a bit early in the day for the younger folk, though. In fact, it was more common to see business people using laptops than books and phones combined.
- Spearchucker 14y ago
  I got my first PDA (a Nokia 9000 Communicator) in 1997. It was first released in '96 (that'd be 16 years ago).
gouranga 14y ago
Spot on. A great illustration of this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)#2._.2215_Million_Merits.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)#2._.22...
- Scene_Cast2 14y ago
  Just watched this. That's... well... wow. My question: how do we prevent this from happening? Free market + choice?
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Well personally I just swapped my smartphone (lumia 710) for a 10 year old Nokia 3310. In the last two weeks since I disposed of it, I'm less stressed, considerably more alert, have slept better, feel like I'm slightly less thick, more productive and haven't had a single migrane. The thing was a ball and chain. EDIT: this move was motivated by Black Mirror. Thank you Mr Brooker.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  Greatly recommended to watch, for everyone. That particular one was the best episode of the series too, IMO (they all tell a stand-alone future story).
rryan 14y ago
Most of these are passive notifications -- i.e. they don't ping you they're just there in your notification bar (or if you swipe up to start the Google Now app). In some cases, it makes sense for some of these to be notifications that ping you. I want my phone to remind me if I need to leave right now to make my next meeting. Finally, you can configure each individual card provider to be on or off so if you don't like a particular type of card, just don't use it. I'm excited to see if they will provide an API for this. I would love to write custom card providers so that I can get ambient notifications of things happening in my world (e.g. the build is broken on an OSS project I run, a motion sensor in my house was triggered, etc.)
- barista 14y ago
  So this looks similar to the Local Scout that Windows Phone added a couple of years ago. Of course that was limited only to places. Features like these are nice "demo" features. These make great ads but does it really get used in real life?
  - myko 14y ago
    It was pretty neat for me today. When I woke up my phone told me it would take approximately 18 minutes to get to work given current traffic conditions. As the work day was ending I got a card saying about the same amount of time getting back - though by the time I left the timer had increased to about 30 minutes. I like this a lot, if there is an accident or something I'll notice via this card and potentially avoid it. Great potential here.
    - BigTigger 14y ago
      Sorry, is it out, or is it part of another App? I attempted to look for it on the Play Store this morning but I could not see it.
      - rryan 14y ago
        It's part of Android Jelly Bean which is available to Googlers and Google I/O attendees.
gms7777 14y ago
I feel like it's intended to be more the information that you look up throughout the day, just all combined in one location. I mean, I get up in the morning, I check the weather, I check the traffic, etc. If the problem is about how much data we're processing, we're already there and we were long before this. This just removes some of the padding in between, perhaps making it a bit more obvious.
napoleoncomplex 14y ago
As far as I see, you have complete control of what type of cards you see as well as the extent of the notifications. Being customizable to that degree, I don't see how anyone could be overloaded with information they don't want. As you said you do not care about when your team is playing or rather if you care, you will mark it down some other way and do not need Google's help with it so you most likely won't have that card "turned on". If you care, but don't want to be interrupted by notifications specifically, then you'll either turn off notifications for that card, or if possible (the following is pure assumption based on the Jelly Bean notification priority options), you would set that specific card's notification priority to minimum, meaning it does not show up in your status bar and doesn't fire off any sound/vibration signals, but if you pull down on the status bar (meaning you are looking for information) it's there at the bottom of your notifications, completely unobtrusive. Either way, it's the user's choice.
- dwc 14y ago
  I really doubt this is the case, from my experience with other Google products. On Google+ valuable screen real estate is devoted to telling me I could follow popular entertainment people, or trying to get me to chat, hangout, et al. My android phone is chock full of things I can't get rid of, things that start services which if turned off turn themselves back on, etc. To actually use android I had to finally break down and get a gmail account, and found that my youtube account switched irrevocably to gmail. I was not asked, and there was no undoing it. Everywhere I turn with Google I am being forced into a Procrustean bed, and you tell me that everything with Google Now is totally configurable so that it'll fit me. Sorry, at this point I do not believe you.
mitjak 14y ago
Also, what the hell is a card? After reading the word "card" for the 5th time, even after reading the few paragraphs below the main image, I still have no clue what on earth a card is. Like an app in webOS? Or is it a game of some kind? Apps and websites that invent their own names for existing concepts and seem to assume that you're silly for not having inborn knowledge of what they mean are frustrating.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  It's an item, an instance. Because they're all different types of thing Google couldn't call them 'appointment' or something like that so they've called them cards. Watch the video, they show what a card is at the 20 sec mark.
- icebraining 14y ago
  The half bottom of the page is only examples of "Google Now cards". The phone image shows how these cards are displayed. Seems very obvious to me. What would you call them?
  - planetguy 14y ago
    Dunno, a message? A notification? "Card" isn't intuitive because this isn't the way people use cards in real life. The only analogy for using cards as a notification I can think of is in an old novel where a visitor comes to your door, your butler shows them into the parlour, and brings you their calling card so you can decide whether you want to see 'em. This nowadays lies outside most folks' field of experience.
    - polynomial 14y ago
      What are the odds Google did user testing on this before launching? On one hand, cards seems like a strightforward label for an atomic collection of data on a digital device. On the other hand users may bring with them all sorts of connotative baggage, or it just might not resonate with them. In any case it's likely whether or not it will catch on as a term-of-art will heavily depend on whether people want to use the service. Google doesn't have a great track record when it comes to designing new products / interfaces so will be interesting to see whether this takes off or not.
nutanc 14y ago
Or maybe, Google Now will figure out you are working on your design now based on your Google searches and prompt you to check out the latest relevant designs :)
r00fus 14y ago
> . It seems the assumption is that people will adapt to however fast we can push the information at them. I'm not so sure that is an valid assumption. Or if it is, I'm not sure I like the way we would adapt to this vision of the future. If true, this would be very ironic, as Google's ascendancy was based on their curation of the wild wild web, making sense of the terabytes of data out there.
guelo 14y ago
It's been interesting how every Google announcement on HN this week has had a negative reaction as the top comment. People here don't seem to like seeing Google innovating for some reason.
- laconian 14y ago
  It's been a HN meme for quite some time.
  - hammersend 14y ago
    It's been a meme all over the internet for a while now. Its quite frankly childish and annoying. You would think a place like hacker news would be above that.
    - mieubrisse 14y ago
      There IS always the possibility that people don't really like the product... the top comment of this post is well thought-out and provides valid reasons for not being interested in the product. It's definitely not a flame. And I, for one, agree; I like a little bit of randomness in my day. I don't need an algorithm telling me what I should be doing/knowing at the very moment.
- molmalo 14y ago
  And a few years ago, everybody cheered like crazy , whenever Google released something (maps, gmail, chrome, maybe even Wave)... Maybe they gradually lost the "cool" factor in some people's eyes...
sageikosa 14y ago
In Soviet Google, information organizes you!

ConstantineXVI 14y ago

I'm not under the impression it constantly notifies you, only that the cards it's showing you when you launch it are shuffled (sorry) depending on what's going on.

methodin 14y ago

We've never gotten there so it's an intriguing experiment regardless if you agree with it or not. 12 years ago I imagine most people thought it would be ludicrous that people would be walking around consumed in a mobile device - but that came to fruition just as stuff like this will.

disappointment 14y ago
Believe it or not, we had PDAs back then. And before that, we had pocket TVs.
- marcusf 14y ago
  But they were never mass market in the same way. Walk on to the tube today and 70% will have their noses buried in an iPhone (or less often, a 'droid). That wasn't the case with either PDA's or pocket TV's. Possibly with walkmans/iPods.
  - abrahamsen 14y ago
    SMS among kids would also qualify, at least in Europe (took off later in the US for some reason).
  - pvidler 14y ago
    > Possibly with walkmans/iPods And do books count as well? Not really devices, but just as absorbing, for some of us. I don't really understand why we think about electronic devices differently from every other human invention. A year or two ago, I had a short train commute (Loughborough to Leicester and back, on one of the main routes to London) on a daily basis and saw far more people immersed in books than in their phones -- I suspect it was a bit early in the day for the younger folk, though. In fact, it was more common to see business people using laptops than books and phones combined.
Spearchucker 14y ago
I got my first PDA (a Nokia 9000 Communicator) in 1997. It was first released in '96 (that'd be 16 years ago).

gouranga 14y ago

Spot on. A great illustration of this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)#2._.2215_Million_Merits.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)#2._.22...

Scene_Cast2 14y ago
Just watched this. That's... well... wow. My question: how do we prevent this from happening? Free market + choice?
- gouranga 14y ago
  Well personally I just swapped my smartphone (lumia 710) for a 10 year old Nokia 3310. In the last two weeks since I disposed of it, I'm less stressed, considerably more alert, have slept better, feel like I'm slightly less thick, more productive and haven't had a single migrane. The thing was a ball and chain. EDIT: this move was motivated by Black Mirror. Thank you Mr Brooker.
tripzilch 14y ago
Greatly recommended to watch, for everyone. That particular one was the best episode of the series too, IMO (they all tell a stand-alone future story).

rryan 14y ago

Most of these are passive notifications -- i.e. they don't ping you they're just there in your notification bar (or if you swipe up to start the Google Now app). In some cases, it makes sense for some of these to be notifications that ping you. I want my phone to remind me if I need to leave right now to make my next meeting. Finally, you can configure each individual card provider to be on or off so if you don't like a particular type of card, just don't use it. I'm excited to see if they will provide an API for this. I would love to write custom card providers so that I can get ambient notifications of things happening in my world (e.g. the build is broken on an OSS project I run, a motion sensor in my house was triggered, etc.)

barista 14y ago
So this looks similar to the Local Scout that Windows Phone added a couple of years ago. Of course that was limited only to places. Features like these are nice "demo" features. These make great ads but does it really get used in real life?
- myko 14y ago
  It was pretty neat for me today. When I woke up my phone told me it would take approximately 18 minutes to get to work given current traffic conditions. As the work day was ending I got a card saying about the same amount of time getting back - though by the time I left the timer had increased to about 30 minutes. I like this a lot, if there is an accident or something I'll notice via this card and potentially avoid it. Great potential here.
  - BigTigger 14y ago
    Sorry, is it out, or is it part of another App? I attempted to look for it on the Play Store this morning but I could not see it.
    - rryan 14y ago
      It's part of Android Jelly Bean which is available to Googlers and Google I/O attendees.

gms7777 14y ago

I feel like it's intended to be more the information that you look up throughout the day, just all combined in one location. I mean, I get up in the morning, I check the weather, I check the traffic, etc. If the problem is about how much data we're processing, we're already there and we were long before this. This just removes some of the padding in between, perhaps making it a bit more obvious.

napoleoncomplex 14y ago

As far as I see, you have complete control of what type of cards you see as well as the extent of the notifications. Being customizable to that degree, I don't see how anyone could be overloaded with information they don't want. As you said you do not care about when your team is playing or rather if you care, you will mark it down some other way and do not need Google's help with it so you most likely won't have that card "turned on". If you care, but don't want to be interrupted by notifications specifically, then you'll either turn off notifications for that card, or if possible (the following is pure assumption based on the Jelly Bean notification priority options), you would set that specific card's notification priority to minimum, meaning it does not show up in your status bar and doesn't fire off any sound/vibration signals, but if you pull down on the status bar (meaning you are looking for information) it's there at the bottom of your notifications, completely unobtrusive. Either way, it's the user's choice.

dwc 14y ago
I really doubt this is the case, from my experience with other Google products. On Google+ valuable screen real estate is devoted to telling me I could follow popular entertainment people, or trying to get me to chat, hangout, et al. My android phone is chock full of things I can't get rid of, things that start services which if turned off turn themselves back on, etc. To actually use android I had to finally break down and get a gmail account, and found that my youtube account switched irrevocably to gmail. I was not asked, and there was no undoing it. Everywhere I turn with Google I am being forced into a Procrustean bed, and you tell me that everything with Google Now is totally configurable so that it'll fit me. Sorry, at this point I do not believe you.

mitjak 14y ago

Also, what the hell is a card? After reading the word "card" for the 5th time, even after reading the few paragraphs below the main image, I still have no clue what on earth a card is. Like an app in webOS? Or is it a game of some kind? Apps and websites that invent their own names for existing concepts and seem to assume that you're silly for not having inborn knowledge of what they mean are frustrating.

mattmanser 14y ago
It's an item, an instance. Because they're all different types of thing Google couldn't call them 'appointment' or something like that so they've called them cards. Watch the video, they show what a card is at the 20 sec mark.
icebraining 14y ago
The half bottom of the page is only examples of "Google Now cards". The phone image shows how these cards are displayed. Seems very obvious to me. What would you call them?
- planetguy 14y ago
  Dunno, a message? A notification? "Card" isn't intuitive because this isn't the way people use cards in real life. The only analogy for using cards as a notification I can think of is in an old novel where a visitor comes to your door, your butler shows them into the parlour, and brings you their calling card so you can decide whether you want to see 'em. This nowadays lies outside most folks' field of experience.
  - polynomial 14y ago
    What are the odds Google did user testing on this before launching? On one hand, cards seems like a strightforward label for an atomic collection of data on a digital device. On the other hand users may bring with them all sorts of connotative baggage, or it just might not resonate with them. In any case it's likely whether or not it will catch on as a term-of-art will heavily depend on whether people want to use the service. Google doesn't have a great track record when it comes to designing new products / interfaces so will be interesting to see whether this takes off or not.

nutanc 14y ago

Or maybe, Google Now will figure out you are working on your design now based on your Google searches and prompt you to check out the latest relevant designs :)

r00fus 14y ago

> . It seems the assumption is that people will adapt to however fast we can push the information at them. I'm not so sure that is an valid assumption. Or if it is, I'm not sure I like the way we would adapt to this vision of the future. If true, this would be very ironic, as Google's ascendancy was based on their curation of the wild wild web, making sense of the terabytes of data out there.

guelo 14y ago

It's been interesting how every Google announcement on HN this week has had a negative reaction as the top comment. People here don't seem to like seeing Google innovating for some reason.

laconian 14y ago
It's been a HN meme for quite some time.
- hammersend 14y ago
  It's been a meme all over the internet for a while now. Its quite frankly childish and annoying. You would think a place like hacker news would be above that.
  - mieubrisse 14y ago
    There IS always the possibility that people don't really like the product... the top comment of this post is well thought-out and provides valid reasons for not being interested in the product. It's definitely not a flame. And I, for one, agree; I like a little bit of randomness in my day. I don't need an algorithm telling me what I should be doing/knowing at the very moment.
molmalo 14y ago
And a few years ago, everybody cheered like crazy , whenever Google released something (maps, gmail, chrome, maybe even Wave)... Maybe they gradually lost the "cool" factor in some people's eyes...

sageikosa 14y ago

In Soviet Google, information organizes you!