- We learned two things on April 15. First, Google isn’t about to give up on its plans to make Glass the second coming of the iPhone, even if it’s clear that a significant number of people consider Google Glass to be a despicable symbol of the surveillance society and a pricey calling card of the techno-elite. Second, judging by the march on Twitter, the tide of anti-tech protest sentiment has yet to crest in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two points turn out to be inseparable. Scratch an anti-tech protester and you are unlikely to find a fan of Google Glass.
A few things this kind of provokes in my head: 1) I bet these folks are very happy that they have computers, which Ned Ludd would have been happy to smash because he would probably think they put a lot of people out of work, or cars, which put horse-and-buggy drivers out of work, or, well, a whole lot of very automated things which pretty much everybody in 2014 kind of takes for granted. 2) It kind of seems that a lot of them are moronically anti-education and anti-intellectual and get uppity when people want to take part in self-advancement and bettering one's life through education and amassing enough wealth to live in reasonable comfort while giving back in some way through one's time, talent, and dollars, to which I tell them that their beloved Karl Marx had a PhD in philosophy, was not so poorly off, and believed in the availability of both primary/secondary and higher education to those with the motivation and the ability, no matter their means. It's like they're the economically left-wing equivalent of the right's fundies. Guess someone had better tell them that their computers were invented by educated people and that their doctors have graduate-level educations. Paradoxically, they seem to be fighting against the very thing that Marx and his compatriots fought for.
So who here would get one? (assuming you could easily afford it)
I had the opportunity to try a friend's a month or two ago. I was pretty impressed and think it has a lot of potential as an AR device. I do agree, however, with sentiment that we need to be careful and think about this sort of technology adoption. It's a highly voyeuristic technology. On one hand it could have great benefits such as an oversight measure for police forces. On the other hand, think of all the creepers who could film you in public for fun and profit later.
insomniasexx, maybe? PS has the thing with editing in shoutouts been fixed yet?
My co-worker and I tried to get our work to buy one for us when they had the open buy on April 15th. They didn't go for it. I think it's a cool device but the price is about $1000 more than I would pay for a cool device that I fully expect to lose interest in in about a month. I think it would be especially cool to build apps for (and take naughty pix / videos with) but that's about it. My programming skills aren't good enough to build anything worthwhile at this point either. As with any device, the apps are what is going to make it. It will only take off if/when people build especially amazing apps that truly impress and delight. The threshold is set very high as it has been thoroughly established that Glass is not cool. It's going to be fairly hard to turn around the lame/cool factor, especially with no real worthwhile use and a price point that's out of most people's reach. I do think that eventually there will be some apps with very specific uses that may assist people in specific tasks. I don't know exactly but maybe some medical / research / adherence / etc. The hackers will play with it and create cool things, just like they do with the xBox Kinect right now. Filmmakers (especially in porn) will as well. Blogs will do writeups. But I predict that, unless the price is significantly lower and the apps are especially impressive, it's going to take a long time for Glass to gain any ground. Keep in mind that when the iPad first launched, no one was a big fan of tablets either. People made iTampon jokes and pointed out that they already had a phone and a laptop, why would they need a third device? Hundreds of millions of iPads later, it seems everyone, and especially their grandmother, has one. I'm not saying that Glass will take off in the same way. Just that sometimes people do some unexpected things with technologies the tech community isn't very impressed with. I have much higher hopes for the watches. I've been mocking up some things for those and reading up on the UI of those. It's a fun challenge from a design standpoint and has the ability to enable people to do some really cool things. greatscott PS: I don't know. I got this shoutout email notif. Was it edited?
No I intentionally made a new comment. Sky's the limit. Integrating hands-free and line-of-sight alone ought to make the app community beyond excited. Tons of possibilities. Agree about the watches.PS: I don't know. I got this shoutout email notif. Was it edited?
As with any device, the apps are what is going to make it.
I would, why not? It's a grown-up toy. I have serious doubts about it's potential ubiquity but I'd definitely play around with it. I happen to think watches are where things are headed.
maybe the cpu of your personal device network strapped to your wrist but watches as a i/o devices is a clunky mess. Apple is pushing it so they could force it to happen but it won't stick.