Google Project Glass
Google just officially announced that they are working on Project Glass – think of it as augmented reality heads up display glasses that works like a smartphone. This concept has been bandied about for a long time, but may be closer than we think.
I’m sure it will take a while before the mainstream legal software vendors will provide compatible software. And for those of us who have avoided glasses through contacts or laser surgery, the thought of wearing glasses again is not compelling. But the contact lens version might take a while longer.
But think of the possibilities.
Face recognition to remind us how we know that person who just said hello.
When giving presentations it could control slide advance, show us the current slide, and include our talk on a teleprompter that would automatically scroll to the speed we are speaking.
What other uses come to mind?
As for other uses, I’m afraid advertising comes first to mind.
Ah yes. I both welcome and dread the concept of location aware augmented reality promotion. It comes down to how it is actually done, and what controls we have over what we get. It will be an interesting exercise in applied privacy.
We might agree to get info from a particular retailer. Or perhaps we could turn the feature on and off so that, for example, we could agree to get whatever comes at us in a mall if we wanted. Or agree to get only certain types in a mall – such as only shoe stores, or only food services. It’s getting too complicated already!
Wearing LAARP next to the brain looks like an unacceptable health risk. If health experts predict that half of all cellphone users will develop brain tumors within a decade, what do you imagine they will say about this escalation of wi-fi?
Some day soon humans should take a realistic look at the ape in the mirror and realize that tv, computers, and electronics are not kid stuff. There’s good research coming out now reporting physical, intellectual and social damage resulting from parking young human heads in an electronics circus. It’s not the content, people (although that can be damaging, too)–it’s the gizmo. It’s the heated-up EMR bath we are so enjoying at the expense of a future.
As a cognition therapist, I work with this truth every day. Physically, intellectually, socially and morally, the adolescents who come to my program represent the weakest generation humanity has ever raised. Bar none.
Technology in itself is not a virtue. Time will likely prove it offers no advantage which is not equally offset by poor health.