This needed to be said. The social implications of this device are indeed ridiculous.
Most insightful: "Can you imagine having a conversation with someone that's wearing this thing? I'd feel like they aren't even paying attention."
I already detest people wearing bluetooth headsets. They give off the wrong social cues, they were never really accepted as fashion, and other than government-mandated hands-free use in cars, they appear to be dropping out of popularity (thank god). How is Glass any different, on a social interaction level? How is it any better? How does it solve the problems that bluetooth headsets had? It doesn't. It just requires you to talk to the aether even more.
Which brings us to the other insightful quote: "I can only imagine my morning commute on the bus, with 15 different people talking to the screen on their head just trying to check email." If they don't solve this, that could be a real problem. If anyone using one of these things has even a moment of self-awareness they wouldn't be able to stop laughing.
This is a really prescient article. It brings up exactly the right UI points, and the right problems. These are problems that Google should have started with, because that's how you design good human interactions. Instead they put a computer on glasses with a HUD screen and are screaming "LOOK ISN'T IT COOL" everywhere.
No, it's not. It's not human. And the reason is common among all Google products, to the extent it's almost pathological in the company: they are engineers first. They really aren't set up for human-focused design. It's just not in their DNA.
Do they make cool stuff? Of course. But none of them fit together in the right ways. They always seem to be using rivets when they should have been sculpting from clay.
Making eye contact is the most important part of in-person social interaction, it gives a number of passive and active clues as to the persons intent and emotions.
As neither of us have had any interaction with someone wearing Glass we are both hypothesising, yet I would suggest the number 1 goal was to allow maintaining eye contact when wearing it, and then there were probably some constraints that lead the rest of this initial version, which seems to have been managed.
Whether someone is attentive or not when using it is not the definition of a product. Also, you're entire post really just boils down to hand waving and saying it's all bad.
Absolutely correct, that one interaction is not the definition of a product.
But it does greatly affect it. Even talking on the phone has this element of distraction to it—my dad notices this especially. If I start messing around on the computer in the middle of a phone conversation, he can tell immediately and starts asking me what I'm doing on the computer. Good conversation starter, but it didn't help that I was distracted in the first place.
What happens when I get a notification on my Glass when talking to someone in person? What if a text message comes up and I start reading it. What if a random restaurant notification comes up (an ad? Surely not!). There are any number of things this device adds to conversation, while you're holding eye contact. That eye contact becomes not only eye contact, but unknown eye contact. It becomes more disconnected, even in person.
What would you do if someone took out their phone and started reading their messages while you were trying to talk to them? How is that different from Glass? Can Glass tell when you're having a conversation? Maybe it can, but how do we know?
It complexifies conversation. Personally, I don't believe that will be socially accepted. But you're right, we don't know yet. A lot of this is speculation, and of course the device will be refined and the interactions will be honed as time goes on.
That just brings up another point: the product, its use, and how it fits into everyday life are not well defined. It's beginning from an experimental engineering standpoint. More on a fundamental design level, I think that origin has a lower likelihood of leading to the right type of product.
The UI Overview Slashgear wrote up via a leaker(http://www.slashgear.com/google-glass-in-focus-ui-apps-more-...) says that the swipe down gesture on the touchpad takes you up a level within the UI, and swiping down at the topmost level turns off the screen completely.
> insightful quote: "I can only imagine my morning commute on the bus, with 15 different people talking to the screen on their head just trying to check email."
So, low-quality earbuds are the problem, here, right? I mean, you're talking about listening to other people talking softly on public transportation, and you say the conversation is the problem? Do you similarly hate people who use cellphones or talk with friends on the bus? Should every bus and train be all quiet car, all the time? :)
It's funny: I haven't seen a lot of objections to Glass based on how poorly it seems likely to work[1] (which, you know, I'm hopeful, but wearables haven't caught on, yet...). Instead, objections seem to focus on two aspects:
1. Oh, noes, people can snoop on me! Well, first, they already could, and second, there's literally nothing that can be done except to make sousveillance tech illegal, which will ensure that we only have surveillance.
2. Oh, noes, I can snoop on people! That's an objection that the article seems to be making, here. I have a solution: don't pay attention.
[1] Well, Nick says "impractical", but I didn't see any examples of that unless fashion faux pas are impractical.
If you can't see the difference between someone holding a largish device (say, a phone), point it at you and record a video (hence, obviously snooping) versus same said person closing their eyes, pretending they're sleeping, having their head tilted in your direction and recording a video...
Then yeah, I guess you're the kind of creep this product might appeal to.
Actually, what I want is everything logged that I could have seen or heard, had I been paying attention.
I want to be trying to remember what someone said to me while I was distracted by a road sign, and be able to pull up audio or video of that moment by reference to the distracting sign ("triangular blue sign") by doing a video search via voice input.
I want to have every moment of every day in my life available via search or just for browsing, so that I don't have the experience, day after day, of thinking, "Wow, I wish I'd captured that moment by taking a pic or a video that I could send to my loved ones".
I want to have my systems constantly tag my ongoing conversations with wikipedia lookups so that I can stop pointless debates and move on. And I want other people to have this, too, so that I don't have to convince them.
I want to have systems that deliver on the promise that smartphones had, but which are thwarted by slow wake-up times, bad connections, difficulty of use while driving, low battery lives, etc.
The fact is that we're currently losing almost our whole lives because our current recording technology, human memory, sucks so much. I don't want to forget things. Ever. Again.
> Your loved ones don't want every piece of your daily minutiae, really, they don't
I'm not sure what to say to this. Try to have more fun? :)
> Technology will get better
I'm counting on it! But Glass is not the final attempt to do this -- it's one of the first attempts. Within ten years, absent political dystopia, there will be no way to tell if the person you're having a conversation with is lifelogging.
> You never forget the best times, the rest is unimportant
Empirically untrue, sadly. From reminiscing with friends, it's clear that both they and I have forgotten some of the best times, since I remember some of the best times and have forgotten others, and vice versa. I can remember that I had quite a bit of fun during the late eighties, but the vast majority of the detail is gone. When I've written down decade-old memories and looked at them a decade after that, it really, really often happens that I'm disturbed at how differently I remembered that event when I was halfway closer to it than now. Human memory is so sketchy and malleable that it's just barely useful at all. :(
Unfortunately some of us have terrible memories, and are really important events, such first memories with our children are fading only a few years later.
Having technology that captures this automatically for me is huge! I'd love to have it recording all the time, and to spend a little time each day highlighting the fun bits.
Time with my kids is precious to me, its fun, its good, and I'm sure that both me and them will want to remember them. Having a crap memory sucks, having a piece of technology to do it for me is worth every penny.
Not strictly technology-related, but certainly human related, you might want to read Albert Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past". You might develop a new perspective on "remembering things" and memory after reading the book, a perspective not limited to technology or fancy gadgets but instead one that touches on our very essence as human beings.
There have been covert cameras available for creeps for a long time. And these are a lot less noticeable than Glass... http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f03a/
Yep, the 3G hardware (especially the battery) is still to big to fit such devices, which is probably why Glass also will just tether to your smartphone.
Heh. :) Most days, I take the VRE or Amtrak into DC to work, and there's always someone talking on their phone, or to their friend in the seat next to them, or to the conductor. Except, mostly, on the Quiet Car.
I hate people who talk on their cellphone on a bus, as well as people who yell with their friends too loudly on a bus.
Concerning your "snooping" point... it lowers the barrier to entry. Sure, people can always take a picture of you, but if they can do it in a discreet way, there's less incentive for them to have the common courtesy to ask.
Did it really? I didn't find the article insightful in any way, it's only superficial complaints about a product he's never used.
People are excited about this project not because of Google -- they're excited because it's a brand new form factor. It's something that is revolutionary and not just evolutionary. And yes, first generation products do tend to be ugly, slower, and have input problems as I'm sure Glass will. But this was also the case with the first mouse and GUI, the first touch screens, and the first multi-touch screens. They got better, and cheaper. Modern smartphones are incredibly polished after only 5 or 6 years of refinement (that is, from when this no-button multi-touch model took off). And you know what, society adapted to them just fine.
Btw Voice is not the only way to control glass. I'm not sure if voice can be eliminated altogether but that should be easy enough. So the second problem is actually not a problem.
It would be amazing if something similar to Leap were implemented. Imagine how cool it would be - you would simply point/click in the air with your finger where the interface elements were augmentally displayed to you.
Granted, it would look incredibly stupid for the unknowing onlookers though.
I think the future of Google Glass is paring it up with tech like what Emotiv has been working on (http://www.emotiv.com/epoc/features.php). It's already on your head and if we can get the Emotiv like tech far enough to understand a few distinct commands it would create some amazing synergy. If it can recognize my when I think "back" or "home" and maybe "up" and "down" for cycling through menus we can save voice for command sequences.
So if you get a message notification on-screen you can read it and just think "back." Glass would interpret it as a swipe up on the touch or saying "back" by voice, and the message will be marked as read and the screen will turn off. I think voice commands are still very useful for what would be sequences like "Give me directions to the nearest Dunkin Donuts."
I'd genuinely not imagined adding something leap. That's a brilliant idea. I guess depending on where it was pointed, your actions could be more or less obvious. I imagine touching different fingers together to carry out different actions.
It could be just a display/HUD for your phone, sure. That might be more human for when you can't use your voice. But most of the interaction Google shows is via voice, so I'm not seeing it yet, and if it's an afterthought, then I'm guessing it won't be great.
You can control it via touch. This info is present in many reviews. Why are you dismissing something without even researching it?
As I said earlier I'm not sure how much can be controlled via touch but that is a not a big problem to solve. Google shows off voice interactions because it is more cool.
Most insightful: "Can you imagine having a conversation with someone that's wearing this thing? I'd feel like they aren't even paying attention."
I already detest people wearing bluetooth headsets. They give off the wrong social cues, they were never really accepted as fashion, and other than government-mandated hands-free use in cars, they appear to be dropping out of popularity (thank god). How is Glass any different, on a social interaction level? How is it any better? How does it solve the problems that bluetooth headsets had? It doesn't. It just requires you to talk to the aether even more.
Which brings us to the other insightful quote: "I can only imagine my morning commute on the bus, with 15 different people talking to the screen on their head just trying to check email." If they don't solve this, that could be a real problem. If anyone using one of these things has even a moment of self-awareness they wouldn't be able to stop laughing.
This is a really prescient article. It brings up exactly the right UI points, and the right problems. These are problems that Google should have started with, because that's how you design good human interactions. Instead they put a computer on glasses with a HUD screen and are screaming "LOOK ISN'T IT COOL" everywhere.
No, it's not. It's not human. And the reason is common among all Google products, to the extent it's almost pathological in the company: they are engineers first. They really aren't set up for human-focused design. It's just not in their DNA.
Do they make cool stuff? Of course. But none of them fit together in the right ways. They always seem to be using rivets when they should have been sculpting from clay.