5 ms·

I guess I'm well on my way to being a cranky old man at the tender age of 34, but I find it extremely unlikely I'll ever use any device like glass on a regular

I guess I'm well on my way to being a cranky old man at the tender age of 34, but I find it extremely unlikely I'll ever use any device like glass on a regular basis. I love technology as much as the next geek, but I feel like I'm already a bit too much of a slave to my smart phone, and I don't think it's healthy to be plugged in 24/7. Having notifications popping up in my field of vision is just too high a price to pay for the convenience of not having to reach in my pocket.

Filligree 14y ago
There are things I'd want to use it for, but notifications are not it. Map overlays, video chat (with a better camera), and of course outright augmented reality. At some point, the display will be integrated in the actual glass and will be able to pick a different focus distance for every pixel. Add in sufficiently powerful mobile computers, and you have full AR. When that happens, Glass (or its successor) will become truly indispensable; this is just the birth pangs. Might be a decade or two, though. It's a tall order; molecular nanotechnology could construct a device like that, but I'm not convinced we'll be clever enough to do it before that point.
Hitchhiker 14y ago
The nuance is if one thinks deeply .. auditory interference is part of the human experience .. we even do not mind it since artifical and natural sources are always meshing in and out. This is why the Walkman took off since people were already listening to music from the time of live performances onward to the Edison era and then portables. Glass if one thinks about it deeply is something unnatural.. microscopes, telescopes, vision impairment correction or shade from harmful sun.. or immersive , time disruptive experiences like a movie. So the key barrier that glass concept is going to face is user rejection beyond the initial bubble crowd. Average people already have a certain context in which they find artificial inputs acceptable ( TV etc ). Our distinction between natural and artificial sources of audio is different to visual. I may be entirely wrong and Google may change the habits of a lot of young kids .. that is actually a rather strange and terrifying thought.
masklinn 14y ago
> I find it extremely unlikely I'll ever use any device like glass on a regular basis Glass definitely not, because it's kinda crap (what I've seen so far are phone-style widgets — which I loathe in the first place — and telling your shades to record a video — underwhelming). An actual HUD/Augmented Reality system I can see myself using rather easily (as long as it remains fully under my control), but this'll need severe improvements of image processing and recognition (speed and flexibility). I don't want notification popups, but virtual/augmented surface display could be very neat, e.g. have buses display "live" in wireframe even when they're outside field of vision (think "wallhack") to estimate how much time I have until it arrives, that kind of things. Or the ability to "switch in" to an other user of the system (and get direct viewpoint) useful for virtual visits (potentially via "presence" robots, plug into the robot and see through it), helping people with stuff or (the other way around) getting help, imagine a tech of some sort doing an estimate of building/fixing something based on what he sees through your eyes. Also useful for things like surgeries (get colleagues in-viewpoints to assist/warn) or single-person dangerous works e.g. underwater stuff, multiple eyeballs on the same field of vision can pay attention to more things. Or more "mundane" (but actually more difficult) applications such as ebooks with the physical feel of real books by having a "blank book" and AR inserting the ebook's content on the fly, or hologram/3D AR (easy to do when you've got a display per eye)

Filligree 14y ago

There are things I'd want to use it for, but notifications are not it. Map overlays, video chat (with a better camera), and of course outright augmented reality. At some point, the display will be integrated in the actual glass and will be able to pick a different focus distance for every pixel. Add in sufficiently powerful mobile computers, and you have full AR. When that happens, Glass (or its successor) will become truly indispensable; this is just the birth pangs. Might be a decade or two, though. It's a tall order; molecular nanotechnology could construct a device like that, but I'm not convinced we'll be clever enough to do it before that point.

Hitchhiker 14y ago

The nuance is if one thinks deeply .. auditory interference is part of the human experience .. we even do not mind it since artifical and natural sources are always meshing in and out. This is why the Walkman took off since people were already listening to music from the time of live performances onward to the Edison era and then portables. Glass if one thinks about it deeply is something unnatural.. microscopes, telescopes, vision impairment correction or shade from harmful sun.. or immersive , time disruptive experiences like a movie. So the key barrier that glass concept is going to face is user rejection beyond the initial bubble crowd. Average people already have a certain context in which they find artificial inputs acceptable ( TV etc ). Our distinction between natural and artificial sources of audio is different to visual. I may be entirely wrong and Google may change the habits of a lot of young kids .. that is actually a rather strange and terrifying thought.

masklinn 14y ago

> I find it extremely unlikely I'll ever use any device like glass on a regular basis Glass definitely not, because it's kinda crap (what I've seen so far are phone-style widgets — which I loathe in the first place — and telling your shades to record a video — underwhelming). An actual HUD/Augmented Reality system I can see myself using rather easily (as long as it remains fully under my control), but this'll need severe improvements of image processing and recognition (speed and flexibility). I don't want notification popups, but virtual/augmented surface display could be very neat, e.g. have buses display "live" in wireframe even when they're outside field of vision (think "wallhack") to estimate how much time I have until it arrives, that kind of things. Or the ability to "switch in" to an other user of the system (and get direct viewpoint) useful for virtual visits (potentially via "presence" robots, plug into the robot and see through it), helping people with stuff or (the other way around) getting help, imagine a tech of some sort doing an estimate of building/fixing something based on what he sees through your eyes. Also useful for things like surgeries (get colleagues in-viewpoints to assist/warn) or single-person dangerous works e.g. underwater stuff, multiple eyeballs on the same field of vision can pay attention to more things. Or more "mundane" (but actually more difficult) applications such as ebooks with the physical feel of real books by having a "blank book" and AR inserting the ebook's content on the fly, or hologram/3D AR (easy to do when you've got a display per eye)