Hacker News Reader

Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Every time I see Google Glass I think "Oh, cool" and then I realize that what I want/need in everyday life is de-augmented reality (i.e. just vanilla reality). I've already got devices buzzing etc. to get my attention for "important thing".

The argument for things like Glass is that they will make the merging of reality and technology seamless which could have great advantages. I fear, however, that it just means I'll have a thing right in front of my face asking for my attention.

The $1B idea with Google Glass is not the technology of putting it in front of your eyes etc., it's figuring out the software that filters down what's shown to the stuff you actually want/need. I don't think we've done that successfully in other domains yet.

View on HN

I see these things as a natural progression. The Internet is so important that we are becoming connected tighter with each revolultion.

When I first started using the Internet, it was using an unreliable 56k on a large desktop. I had to visit one spot in my house to connect.

After this, I got my first laptop. This was great because now I can connect any where in my house. By that time, I had broadband do always on, faster and way more reliable.

Fast forward again and I got my first smart phone. Now I can connect pretty much anywhere (given a decent signal) just by pulling my phone out of my pocket.

Google Glass means I won't have to pull it out of my pocket anymore. Now my life will be constantly enhanced at every moment by great hackers, just like it has been enhanced in increasing amounts since I first touched the Internet.

Where "enhanced" == abusive apps that rely on dopamine hits and fear of missing out to spur traction?

No, I cannot say my life has been enhanced by those types of applications.

I'm talking stuff we take for granted like email, the web, word processing. These things have enhanced my life. The web alone opens a whole library of information and I am actually thankful because without it I'd know only a fraction of what I currently know.

Similar revolutions will happen and I fully believe something like Google Glass will be the medium.

Just as a thought, look at everything you use computers for now and think what it'd be like if they wasn't there? Even the most basic tasks should be considered.

I also think people will be much more strict when it comes to picking "apps" for a device like Glass, or at least more strict with permissions.

Just from personal experience the more capable something is of interrupting me the more selective I am with privileges.

While I can barely tolerate ads and always go for the ad-free version of an app when possible, I would mandate precisely zero ads for such a device to register as worthwhile on my radar.

Try this for enhancement: shut everything off and talk to a human being, be it the local bagel shop owner or a homeless person. If I had to bet your life isn't being enhanced, it's being drained away, app by app. How many coffee cup pics must one post online? It gets boring after a while, and, imo, it's a sign of depression and a feeling of inferiority.

I've lived my entire sentient life with a cable or faster Internet connection. I spend virtually all of my time that is not spent going out with friends, eating lunch with colleagues, or having alone time with my partner on my laptop, Xbox, or Nexus S. I am, seemingly, what you fear.

I cannot think of a single reason why it would be more productive for me to talk to a homeless person instead of doing any of the things I do on computing devices on a daily basis. I don't think you can name any, beyond straw men like "you're wasting your time looking at pictures of coffee cups on the Internet." Because my life is constantly mediated by technology, I can tell you with very good precision that of the 8,760 hours in 2011, I only wasted 939 of them (and most of that was playing video games over the summer -- it's arguable that I'm not wasting time by experiencing the story of Mass Effect the same way I wouldn't be wasting my time experiencing the story of The Hunger Games, but books are more high status, so I'll give myself incentive to prefer them over video games).

If uploading pictures of coffee cups to the Internet is what you do with most of your time on computers, I feel genuinely sorry for you, and I hope that you can find a better hobby. I don't think that talking to random people you run into during your day is that hobby, though. Have you tried this app ShuffleMyLife? It might give you better things to do outdoors than try to start conversations with shopkeepers.

I can tell you with very good precision that of the 8,760 hours in 2011, I only wasted 939 of them

That's pretty good for a robot but you can still improve.

As for me, I am a normal person, I don't need to track every freaking minute of my life or be "connected" to a million devices at any moment.

The intuitive response to this is an angry rant about the definition of normality and your mandate to define it. Despite your derogatory, I empathise with your sentiment. I don't believe that recording every aspect of your life, or being integrated with the Internet will make me a happier person.

What I am really looking forwards to, is being able to lean back and read or watch video's without having to hold anything, or sit in a big room designed for the purpose.

Is the sense of superiority you feel towards tedks worth more than that?

If you aren't dead by 30, you're grossly abnormal in comparison to most humans throughout history.

The "abnormal" aspects of modernity are the most valuable parts of it. If you feel dehumanized by technology, maybe you need to reconsider what humanity means to you, and whether it's a worthy goal.

> Every time I see Google Glass I think...

... do I really want fragments of my life to be recorded by total strangers and then shared with God knows who? I really don't.

It's a cool tech, but its social implications are far from being trivial and benign.

> It's a cool tech, but its social implications are far from being trivial and benign.

Is there any cool tech that doesn't have difficult social implications?

Agreed.

You only need to look at Google Play's lack of privacy to realise they see the user as a consuming resource.

At least Apple treats you more like the owner of your purchase, rather than something to drive ads with data.

So I take it you never go outside? CCTV is already omnipresent. I'm not saying I agree with it, just that there are larger surveillance battles to be fought.

Since you live in the UK[1], I would guess CCTV would be everywhere. However, not every country is covered with CCTV (yet). That will probably change in the future though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television#Uses

Don't substitute the issue.

There are no CCTVs at workplace, at the parties and in the subway carriages. And no CCTVs are sharing out to the public. And, no, they are not "omnipresent".

Most CCTV cameras are private and not monitored. You install them and have them record on a loop - old data is automatically erased to make room for new data. When something bad happens (an accident, a robbery, etc) recording is stopped and the existing data is handed over to relevant parties.

This is far less problematic than an omnipresent, monitored, shared, catalogued and indexed in perpetuity, video system.

You mean like the government, every single day of your life?

I agree, far from trivial and benign.

Maybe for you, but the trend is to become increasingly more connected. People can still choose not to use their phone 16 hours a day, and yet they do it anyway.

It does seem to rely heavily on picking at low hanging fruit. Flight times are important if you are in an airport, but its hardly life changing. My hunch is that it will be made by a hundred thousand small niche uses rather than a single billion dollar idea. This could be completely transcendent, and maybe needs to be to cut through the sensible aversion to this kind of tech.

Flight times at the airport are a great example. I don't need to know the time of my flight, but I do need to know if it's been delayed or if the gate changes. I don't need to know those things I already know them in some other way.

But the flight example could work just as well or better with text messages from the airline. Your example is just a more annoying way of displaying notifications.

I was about to disagree with you, but I realized the real problem I wanted to address was the importance of context.

Text messages from an airline aren't great because by default they have the same "ding" as random jokes and "hey what's up." messages.

But Google Glasses could easily start having the exact same problem.

We need software to be trained with more intelligent context awareness — hey, Nathaniel put his phone on silent, but he is at the airport and here is a notification about a delayed flight, so the phone should vibrate a little bit to make sure he sees it.

We're getting better at this, as an industry: I walk into the Apple Store, it asks me to check into my genius appointment. If I walk into the movie theater, my phone pulls up my ticket as a QR code. But we still have a long way to go, and I think it's a far more interesting and important problem than whether the information shows up on my glasses or my phone.

Absolutely agree. Perhaps what is lacking is an effective feedback loop. When Google Display an incorrect search listing it is obvious based on user click patterns and can be factored into the algorithm. If Google don't tell you that your train is delayed there is no feedback loop.

I think the biggest application for Glasses is hands-free, head-up, relatively inconspicuous outdoor on-foot turn-by-turn navigation. That is the nearest thing you can get on-foot to the pleasure of in-car turn-by-turn navigation, with no need to walk around holding a mobile phone screen in front of your face. (The same kind of navigation indoors would be almost as wonderfully useful - especially for finding your way to the bloody airport departure gate! - but I assume that neither airport interiors nor v1 Google Glasses are ready to provide that today.) Combine that with the secondary application of convenient, hands-free, heads-up, relatively inconspicuous first-person photo and video recording and I think you have two pretty attractive and non-niche uses for Glasses to add to the long tail of more specialised applications. I'd say that the things most likely to hold back Glasses are price, privacy concerns (the wearer's and others'), possible social stigma, and fear of being mugged.

(You could do a decent poor-man's approximation to Glasses' turn-by-turn navigation if you had a Bluetooth handset that did head tracking and the right software for your smartphone: you'd have the audio navigation directions in your ear, plus a turn-by-turn map display on the phone screen to glance at when you wanted to. I haven't heard of any such system though.)

> I've already got devices buzzing etc. to get my attention for "important thing".

Isn't that the point though? Glass should require far less of your attention than these devices because it eliminates the need to reach into your pocket, pull it out (your device that is), swiping/unlocking, having to look down, needing a free hand or two, etc. Even something as simple as being able to scroll through my email/G+/twitter/IM hands free would be revolutionary for me and make them well worth wearing, as long as there's a gesture or gyroscope or subvocalization input mode of some sort so I don't need to give it constant voice/touch commands. It'd be well worth looking like an idiot nodding every few seconds or whatever.

Humans can walk and talk at the same time. We cannot walk and read at the same time.

We can drive and talk at the same time. We cannot drive and read at the same time.

To me the conclusion is obvious: pervasive wearable computing must talk to us, not show us things, to be useful. More specifically it must talk with us--understand what we want, when we want it, and give it to us.

I agree with you that the hardware is nothing compared to the complexity of the decision-making software. I think it is probably a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity, but it's so hard that no one company will solve it suddenly enough to corner the market.

Uh. What about superimposed maps on roads for example? What about product information just being there when you look at that in the super market (and whether it's cheaper somewhere on the internet). Or its nutrition information/health hazards etc. ! There are thousands of applications of pervasive wearable devices which 'shows us things'.

If you superimpose a map on a road, you can't see the road anymore because the map gets in the way.

You really think so? Which class you are studying in?

If you talk to the members of the Google Glass Team, they actually tell you that the device is not to augment reality at all.

Google Glass augmenting reality was coined by the press.

That should give you an idea where Google is heading with this product.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com