7 ms·

Dude I don't care what you think, but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. The "How It Feels" video literally made me in tears because

Dude I don't care what you think, but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. The "How It Feels" video literally made me in tears because the vision is so great, so compelling. The way we interact will change fundamentally, but that isn't a bad thing. People are always terrified by progress because progress means difference, and people feel comfort in falling back to the same thing. But, again, I don't care. The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed. We will all be living in an age of augmented reality.

paganel 14y ago
When I first read Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun" as a kid in the early '90s I was thinking "hey, this is really only science fiction, we will never be like that". With the passing of years it seems that we get closer and closer to what I was actually thinking was only fiction. This is the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun#Plot_introduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun#Plot_introductio... > The planet has a rigidly controlled population of twenty thousand, and robots outnumber humans ten thousand to one. People are strictly taught from birth to despise personal contact. They live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Communication is done via holographic telepresence (called viewing, as opposed to in-person seeing). It is likely that the society is based on that in E. M. Forster's 1909 short story "The Machine Stops". Of course, the irony is that I had forgotten the exact name of the story and I had to use Google and a very fuzzy search to find it. And Google actually found it.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
What specifically in the video are you responding to?
- derekchiang 14y ago
  The vision. Don't you see it? If we can pull this off, technology thereafter will be embedded into our consciousness. The reality, as we see it, will be transformed. We as human beings will literally become "supermen", in the sense that we will be able to "see" so much more than we could ever imagine. To an extent, this is a human evolution.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    I understand what you're articulating as the vision, but I'm not seeing it in the promo video. I mostly see people recording a lot of activities. What specifically in the video excites you?
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      Off the top of my head, instant sharing of anything without futzing around with a discrete device. How many moments are missed because a camera wasn't ready or the app took to long to load? "Ok glass, record a video" Bam. If it works in real life at the same speed as in the video, I don't think this effect can be overstated. It allows you to share while still being a participant in the experience (as opposed to the guy just holding a camera). Instant knowledge extension is the other one. Google's getting quite good at the whole "answering your questions on page one" thing already, but now you don't have to fish around in your pockets for it. Settle arguments with your friends instantly ;) It's just there. Always in the corner of your vision. There when you want it, easily ignorable when you don't. It's part of your senses, you don't have to think about it, and I can see it becoming as intuitive to ask glass to search for something you want to know on the spot as it is to reach for Google when we want to find something on the internet. I don't think people understand how big a deal this ease of access is. You've just tied two of your senses into the largest collection of human knowledge ever collected. On a more direct level than has ever been accomplished in the past. Think about it. How many more questions would you ask if you could just ask on the spot and have an answer right there? How much more would you share if it was truly effortless? Maybe I'm just drinking the kool-aid here, but I really, really think this will be big.
      - derekchiang 14y ago
        Yes, this will be very, very big.
      - redact207 14y ago
        You're at the urinal and some guy yells out "Ok glass, share video". There will be problems.
silverbax88 14y ago
Google? Granted, they've done some really cool stuff after they copied other search engines and hit upon paid search as a profit model. And not Bell Labs? The organization that built everything from scratch that Google uses to push bits around every day?
- killerpopiller 14y ago
  I vaguely remember "the internet" before google and it seriously sucked. Partially, because searching was wading through yahoo-like sites and annoying pop-ups. And before that all was in black&white. Searching was, and is, imho one of the main usage scenarios. Google toned that sonewhat loud and cluttered act down and improved it, a lot. I am thankfull for that. http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Searching-the-Internet-B-G-Before-Google/ba-p/3351 http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Searching-the-...
  - rayiner 14y ago
    I was on the internet half a decade before Google became popular and I'm not even that old. It's wasn't nearly as primitive as you make it out to be. Lycos, Altavista, Yahoo!, etc, weren't as good as Google would ultimately be, but they weren't so bad as to be a different kind of thing. I got DSL around the same time (256 kbits SDSL!) Hotmail and Amazon had been around for years.
    - killerpopiller 14y ago
      in my memories they were more registers/index than free text search engines. and besides that, some engines seemed in comparison to the clear interface cluttered, since they also were portals. Voting one down for describing another experience bothers me. The internet in a non-US country might have even been more different than nowaddays.
  - marssaxman 14y ago
    It wasn't that bad. Sounds like you never used Altavista, which was far and away the best of the pre-google search engines.
rayiner 14y ago
> but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. Bullshit. NASA sent humans to the moon. Bell Labs gave us the transistor. U.S. Steel basically built our modern civilization. Google found somewhat better ways of searching documents in return for selling advertising, plus rip-offs of Hotmail, MS Office, iOS, Facebook, etc.
- vacri 14y ago
  Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh). Sure, NASA is a force majeure and certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the efficiency and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google maps was equally revolutionary - available to anyone who could access the internet, and for free, something not done before - Google keeps on doing services like this. I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs) and steel companies? Bell Labs certainly contributed heaps to everyday culture, but if they were #1, that wouldn't really knock Google very far down the list. And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Google touches more normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot. So does Coca-Cola. I'm not sure this as compelling an argument as you think it is.
    - vacri 14y ago
      So... you're saying the Coca-Cola isn't the greatest drinks company out there? I think there's a fundamental part of what I'm saying that you're missing.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh) Our GPS satellites wouldn't be in space without the rocket technology developed by NASA. > and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google started separating itself from the Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, etc, pack around very late 1998 into 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history. That's roughly contemporaneous with "pets.com" which was an exemplar of the .com bubble that most people peg as starting in 1997. In comparison, Amazon was founded in 1994 and IPO'ed in 1997. Hotmail was purchased by MS for $400 million that same year. PG sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998. The uptake of the web was not only well on its way by the time Google got onto the scene, but the .com bubble was already well on its way by then. > I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs) There is a big leap from pre-NASA rocketry (in the U.S.) and post-NASA rocketry. There isn't a big leap (if at all) from iOS to Android. Arguably, MS Office to Google Docs is a regression. A lot of Google's tech is not only derivative, but doesn't even really advance the state of the art. V8 is like Lars Bak's third or fourth implementation of the same basic concept. Gmail didn't really do anything Hotmail didn't do, and the Hotmail acquisition by MS was a decade before Gmail went out of invite-only. > And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched. Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.
damoncali 14y ago
To each his own, I suppose. While you were crying I was repulsed by the intrusion of little bits of low value information and the threat of constant mental overhead in dealing with that little floating box. But more so, I'm repulsed by the thought of having to fight my way past other people's little boxes in order to communicate with them. Progress indeed.
evilmushroom 14y ago
I went to the San Francisco Glass Foundry--- it was awesome. I felt loss after I had to hand the device back-- as if I was missing one of my senses. :) Unfortunately as you undoubtably well know, I cannot talk any details due to NDA.
timbre 14y ago
There's not much augmented reality in glass; only the turn-by-turn directions sort of qualify. I think the key thing about glass is that it's hands-free. As handy as smartphones are, it's remarkable how much of a difference not having to take the thing out of your pocket and push a button makes. (The reason there's not much AR is that AR is very power hungry (you have to leave the camera on).)
rollo_tommasi 14y ago
The "How It Feels" video put you in tears because it's a cinematic compilation of a fantasy lifestyle set to stirring music. The vision you found so compelling is the vision of a life filled with aerial acrobatics, skydiving, exotic travel and the surface indicators of deep personal relationships. It's a product pitch, not a manifesto. It is to a true vision of a better tomorrow what a thirty-second "I Approve This Message" ad is to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It has been calibrated and hand-crafted by highly skilled advertising professionals to evoke an emotional response that you will imprint onto the product itself. You are already living in the age of augmented reality. It just hasn't been augmented in quite the way you're hoping for.
jrogers65 14y ago
Technically Google is an advertising organisation which uses technology as a means.
hnriot 14y ago
what nonsense, sure google's useful, but no more so than bing or any other company that wants to build the same. How about the cellular carriers, or the infrastructure companies that make internet in your house possible. Google was an inevitable company, someone would have made the web searchable... Google Glass isn't progress, it might lead to some progress, but right now its a delivery platform for commerce and a camera. Ok Glass, CTRL-ALT_DEL

paganel 14y ago

When I first read Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun" as a kid in the early '90s I was thinking "hey, this is really only science fiction, we will never be like that". With the passing of years it seems that we get closer and closer to what I was actually thinking was only fiction. This is the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun#Plot_introduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun#Plot_introductio... > The planet has a rigidly controlled population of twenty thousand, and robots outnumber humans ten thousand to one. People are strictly taught from birth to despise personal contact. They live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Communication is done via holographic telepresence (called viewing, as opposed to in-person seeing). It is likely that the society is based on that in E. M. Forster's 1909 short story "The Machine Stops". Of course, the irony is that I had forgotten the exact name of the story and I had to use Google and a very fuzzy search to find it. And Google actually found it.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

What specifically in the video are you responding to?

derekchiang 14y ago
The vision. Don't you see it? If we can pull this off, technology thereafter will be embedded into our consciousness. The reality, as we see it, will be transformed. We as human beings will literally become "supermen", in the sense that we will be able to "see" so much more than we could ever imagine. To an extent, this is a human evolution.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I understand what you're articulating as the vision, but I'm not seeing it in the promo video. I mostly see people recording a lot of activities. What specifically in the video excites you?
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    Off the top of my head, instant sharing of anything without futzing around with a discrete device. How many moments are missed because a camera wasn't ready or the app took to long to load? "Ok glass, record a video" Bam. If it works in real life at the same speed as in the video, I don't think this effect can be overstated. It allows you to share while still being a participant in the experience (as opposed to the guy just holding a camera). Instant knowledge extension is the other one. Google's getting quite good at the whole "answering your questions on page one" thing already, but now you don't have to fish around in your pockets for it. Settle arguments with your friends instantly ;) It's just there. Always in the corner of your vision. There when you want it, easily ignorable when you don't. It's part of your senses, you don't have to think about it, and I can see it becoming as intuitive to ask glass to search for something you want to know on the spot as it is to reach for Google when we want to find something on the internet. I don't think people understand how big a deal this ease of access is. You've just tied two of your senses into the largest collection of human knowledge ever collected. On a more direct level than has ever been accomplished in the past. Think about it. How many more questions would you ask if you could just ask on the spot and have an answer right there? How much more would you share if it was truly effortless? Maybe I'm just drinking the kool-aid here, but I really, really think this will be big.
    - derekchiang 14y ago
      Yes, this will be very, very big.
    - redact207 14y ago
      You're at the urinal and some guy yells out "Ok glass, share video". There will be problems.

silverbax88 14y ago

Google? Granted, they've done some really cool stuff after they copied other search engines and hit upon paid search as a profit model. And not Bell Labs? The organization that built everything from scratch that Google uses to push bits around every day?

killerpopiller 14y ago
I vaguely remember "the internet" before google and it seriously sucked. Partially, because searching was wading through yahoo-like sites and annoying pop-ups. And before that all was in black&white. Searching was, and is, imho one of the main usage scenarios. Google toned that sonewhat loud and cluttered act down and improved it, a lot. I am thankfull for that. http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Searching-the-Internet-B-G-Before-Google/ba-p/3351 http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Searching-the-...
- rayiner 14y ago
  I was on the internet half a decade before Google became popular and I'm not even that old. It's wasn't nearly as primitive as you make it out to be. Lycos, Altavista, Yahoo!, etc, weren't as good as Google would ultimately be, but they weren't so bad as to be a different kind of thing. I got DSL around the same time (256 kbits SDSL!) Hotmail and Amazon had been around for years.
  - killerpopiller 14y ago
    in my memories they were more registers/index than free text search engines. and besides that, some engines seemed in comparison to the clear interface cluttered, since they also were portals. Voting one down for describing another experience bothers me. The internet in a non-US country might have even been more different than nowaddays.
- marssaxman 14y ago
  It wasn't that bad. Sounds like you never used Altavista, which was far and away the best of the pre-google search engines.

rayiner 14y ago

> but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. Bullshit. NASA sent humans to the moon. Bell Labs gave us the transistor. U.S. Steel basically built our modern civilization. Google found somewhat better ways of searching documents in return for selling advertising, plus rip-offs of Hotmail, MS Office, iOS, Facebook, etc.

vacri 14y ago
Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh). Sure, NASA is a force majeure and certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the efficiency and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google maps was equally revolutionary - available to anyone who could access the internet, and for free, something not done before - Google keeps on doing services like this. I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs) and steel companies? Bell Labs certainly contributed heaps to everyday culture, but if they were #1, that wouldn't really knock Google very far down the list. And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Google touches more normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot. So does Coca-Cola. I'm not sure this as compelling an argument as you think it is.
  - vacri 14y ago
    So... you're saying the Coca-Cola isn't the greatest drinks company out there? I think there's a fundamental part of what I'm saying that you're missing.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh) Our GPS satellites wouldn't be in space without the rocket technology developed by NASA. > and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google started separating itself from the Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, etc, pack around very late 1998 into 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history. That's roughly contemporaneous with "pets.com" which was an exemplar of the .com bubble that most people peg as starting in 1997. In comparison, Amazon was founded in 1994 and IPO'ed in 1997. Hotmail was purchased by MS for $400 million that same year. PG sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998. The uptake of the web was not only well on its way by the time Google got onto the scene, but the .com bubble was already well on its way by then. > I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs) There is a big leap from pre-NASA rocketry (in the U.S.) and post-NASA rocketry. There isn't a big leap (if at all) from iOS to Android. Arguably, MS Office to Google Docs is a regression. A lot of Google's tech is not only derivative, but doesn't even really advance the state of the art. V8 is like Lars Bak's third or fourth implementation of the same basic concept. Gmail didn't really do anything Hotmail didn't do, and the Hotmail acquisition by MS was a decade before Gmail went out of invite-only. > And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched. Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.

damoncali 14y ago

To each his own, I suppose. While you were crying I was repulsed by the intrusion of little bits of low value information and the threat of constant mental overhead in dealing with that little floating box. But more so, I'm repulsed by the thought of having to fight my way past other people's little boxes in order to communicate with them. Progress indeed.

evilmushroom 14y ago

I went to the San Francisco Glass Foundry--- it was awesome. I felt loss after I had to hand the device back-- as if I was missing one of my senses. :) Unfortunately as you undoubtably well know, I cannot talk any details due to NDA.

timbre 14y ago

There's not much augmented reality in glass; only the turn-by-turn directions sort of qualify. I think the key thing about glass is that it's hands-free. As handy as smartphones are, it's remarkable how much of a difference not having to take the thing out of your pocket and push a button makes. (The reason there's not much AR is that AR is very power hungry (you have to leave the camera on).)

rollo_tommasi 14y ago

The "How It Feels" video put you in tears because it's a cinematic compilation of a fantasy lifestyle set to stirring music. The vision you found so compelling is the vision of a life filled with aerial acrobatics, skydiving, exotic travel and the surface indicators of deep personal relationships. It's a product pitch, not a manifesto. It is to a true vision of a better tomorrow what a thirty-second "I Approve This Message" ad is to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It has been calibrated and hand-crafted by highly skilled advertising professionals to evoke an emotional response that you will imprint onto the product itself. You are already living in the age of augmented reality. It just hasn't been augmented in quite the way you're hoping for.

jrogers65 14y ago

Technically Google is an advertising organisation which uses technology as a means.

hnriot 14y ago

what nonsense, sure google's useful, but no more so than bing or any other company that wants to build the same. How about the cellular carriers, or the infrastructure companies that make internet in your house possible. Google was an inevitable company, someone would have made the web searchable... Google Glass isn't progress, it might lead to some progress, but right now its a delivery platform for commerce and a camera. Ok Glass, CTRL-ALT_DEL