Google Glass - A look into the future.

[Frank616]

Amazing look into the future with what Google is presently doing.

Article here.

Which one captures your imagination?

Frank.

[whatthefunk]

That all sounds horrible to me. What fun would life be if everything were computer assisted??

[Frank616]

What fun would life be if everything were computer assisted??

You've never tried to get a room in Germany....

I find the possibilities fascinating! This is forward thinking taken to new heights. Practical stuff.

I can see where someone in the public eye would make considerably less gaffes with a system like this.

I never used GPS on principle. I can read a map.... Then one time in a city I was unfamiliar with I got shunted onto a detour when there was an accident on the ramp to the road I wanted. Now what? The GPS dutifully recalculated, and I got on again at the next possible connection. I've been sold on it ever since.

These ideas are a wonderful extension, IMHO.

Frank.

[whatthefunk]

You've never tried to get a room in Germany....

No, but I have in Russia, Mongolia, Bolivia and dozens of other places. Half the fun was blundering about and making several mistakes. If everything had gone perfectly, I would have very little to remember.

[woodsmoke]

I normally wear glasses anyway.

The two items that really stand out to me are:

a) the being able to see the "presentation".

However, I wouldn't look at the presentation, I'd use the "notes" part of it as a reminder about things that are not on the screen.

Generally, I can keep all of that in my head, mainly because most of it is empty! But, that would be a very good way to make a judgement about what to include and not in terms of time.

b) The travel/GPS. I think that would be fascinating in a rather odd way, if it was combined with "history" etc.

In a travel, one time, I found, not on a map, but on the Android, that there was a "comic book" museum a few miles from the main road, and spent several very nice hours looking at comic covers, fan stuff, etc. from my childhood.

The whole thing is fascinating.

[oshunluvr]

Personally, I thinks it's way cool. But I don't want to wear glasses all day. I'd totally have it inside my car though. I'd love a connected HUD when I'm commuting to work.

[whatthefunk]

Personally, I thinks it's way cool. But I don't want to wear glasses all day. I'd totally have it inside my car though. I'd love a connected HUD when I'm commuting to work.

That sounds safe. Drivers are already distracted enough with cell phones, ipods, and other crap. Imagine if they also wore glasses with messages popping up all over the place.

[SecretCode]

It all sounds pretty pedestrian compared with the space battles in Iain M Banks' Culture novels (which also have augmented reality displays for the few human crew members). I'm not interested until the AI in the glasses is smart enough to translate in real time, track 1000 other people and warn me about them. And until the glasses include antimatter guns.

Actually, a simple rear-view camera with a picture-in-picture display in the glasses would be a killer app ... "I have got eyes in the back of my head!"

[GreyGeek]

I'd love to live long enough to enjoy the Google Glasses future, but I doubt I will, even though my dad lived to 94 and if I match him I have 23 years to go.

I'd also love to see all cars computer controlled, automatically constrained to obey traffic laws, except when an emergency is declared and speeding to the nearest medical or police facility is requested, and ALWAYS avoiding possible collisions. In emergency declarations the other cars would be moved by their computers to the side of the to let the emergency car pass, and then they'd resume in synchronous order. I and my fellow passengers could do something useful with our time while the car took us to our destination. In fact, people wouldn't have to own cars. Just dial one up and it would drive to your location and pick you up. Punch in your destination code (or tell it) and swipe your debit card or feed it some tokens.

I can't count the number of times I've been passed by some driver weaving in and out of traffic, going 5 to 10 mph over the posted limit, and despite their efforts to get somewhere "faster" I usually encounter them at the next stoplight. That kind of driving is usually a waste of gasoline (I got 31.3 mpg on my last tank driving in the city) and abuses the tires and drive train of the car. A computer controlled "train" of cars would all accelerate at the same time when a light turned green, thus avoiding the 3 second delay for each car in the line. It would be as if each car were at the head of the line. As things are, if you are 6th or 10th in line at a light as much as 30 seconds could pass before you could begin moving, and by then the light might be turning red. If one of the drivers in the car ahead is texting or surfing it could be another 5 or 10 seconds before he realizes that he is holding things up. Usually someone behind honks, and he gets angry because someone had the temerity to suggest that he pay attention to his driving. If he's a hot-head he could seek revenge or even become psychotic.

As population pressures increase and food shortages also, I can see feeding facilities being established, dispensing balanced meals based on age, occupation and weight. People eating until they are morbidly obese wouldn't be allowed, if for no other reason than simple humanity -- why should one person be starving while another has to waddle in order to walk, if they can walk at all? This would be fought by the food producers who add up to 35% sugar to each product to make it addictive, and add hormones and antibiotics to animal feed to make them reach market weight earlier, despite the fact that it is making our kids obese and given the boys breasts that would make some girls envious.

But, I doubt that any of these visions will come to pass if I lived another hundred years, for the simple reason that we are on lifeboat Earth, and while people demand the right to pop babies in the back of the boat when ever they want, the resources on the boat are limited and can't continue to support the ever increasing number of passengers. Iv'e believed in the past that technology will bail us out of this population dilemma. I no longer believe it. We are not taking the necessary steps to move quickly enough to a renewable resource before our oil & coal resources are exhausted. And, our existing resources are not as great as our plans make them out to be. For example: the auto industry is trying to be "green" by selling electric vehicles powered by recharable Lithium Ion batteries. The only problem with that is that the total supply of Lithium, most of which is owned by China and Brazil, were used for electric cars in the US only, the resource would be exhausted after only 10% of the cars were converted/made.

[Frank616]

SecretCode:

Actually, a simple rear-view camera with a picture-in-picture display in the glasses would be a killer app ... "I have got eyes in the back of my head!"

I already have a low-tech version of that in the form of a small mirror mounted on a boom stuck to the side of my bike helmet. It allows me to see what is going on behind me when riding.

Frank.

[oshunluvr]

Actually I was thinking of a HUD in the car on the inside of the windshield. Navigation with live traffic updates, radio controls, weather warnings, proximity alerts, rear and side view cameras, voice access to cell phone talk/text: all this is available with today's technology.

[Frank616]

oshunluvr:

Personally, I thinks it's way cool. But I don't want to wear glasses all day.

Some of us have to anyway.

If you only have it in your car, then you miss the benefits of using something like this 1) when giving a presentation, 2) when navigating a subway or an airport, 3) when doing a walking tour.

A person could use a smartphone for those tasks -- for the most part. But the convenience of not having to take it out of your pocket to consult it is rather compelling, no?

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

Inevitably, the batteries in your Googly Glass (eye?) will die. Now what? Will the pain of viewing the unadulterated world, red in tooth and claw, be too much?

<insert-ominous-music>

[GreyGeek]

oshunluvr:
...
Some of us have to anyway.
...
Frank.

And for those of us who think we cheated the effects of advancing age by getting Lasik eye surgery, we are now faced with being unable to treat our cataracts by surgery because of that Lasik eye surgery so many years ago. (Fortunately, those Can-C or Bright Eyes II drops I mentioned in another post a while back are working beautifully. I don't even notice the floating bodies because they've diminished in size as well. But, I suspect that corporations which make their money on those surgeries or the expensive alternative medicines will pay the FDA to block those drops.)

[NickStone]

...In fact, people wouldn't have to own cars. Just dial one up and it would drive to your location and pick you up. Punch in your destination code (or tell it) and swipe your debit card or feed it some tokens.

We already have those now, there're called taxi's. By the way, have you been watching Total Recall again?