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Google Glass

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Re: Google Glass

#461

Post by chestercheetaz »

Everything about this product -- Google marketing, user discussion forums, all news articles and promotional material -- keeps reiterating the hype about the "possibilities!" of Google Glass, and yet I have not seen a single realistic killer app/feature proposed. In fact, it looks like Google doesn't even have an idea what such a killer app would look like (but it's a video camera on your HEAD!!!), hence why they are soliciting other people's ideas.

Great products aren't crowd sourced -- they come from clear vision, which unfortunately seems lacking in this case.

Re: Google Glass

#462

Post by artursapek »

jedahan wrote: post #303
artursapek wrote: post #150

I am seriously concerned about this. I was in a long-distance relationship this summer. We would take turns visiting each other in our respective cities roughly 5 hours apart. It was a pretty long journey for a weekend - it would sometimes take 10 hours one way since you had to go through New York. Of course, it was worth it. But whenever we would go on a walk, or I'd take her out to dinner, I got as much face time w…

You may like this short film called Sight http://vimeo.com/46304267 . The ending isn't great, but pretty much everything else is neat.

Wow. That is really good. Thanks.

Re: Google Glass

#463

Post by tptacek »

vacri wrote: post #458
rayiner wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. Bullshit. NASA sent humans to the moon. Bell Labs gave us the transistor. U.S. Steel basically built our modern civilization. Google found somewhat better ways of searching documents in return for selling advertising, plus rip-offs of Hotmail, MS Office, iOS, Facebook, etc.

Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh). Sure, NASA is a force majeure and certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the efficiency and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google maps was equally revolutionary - available to anyone who could access the internet, and f…

Google touches more normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot. So does Coca-Cola. I'm not sure this as compelling an argument as you think it is.

Re: Google Glass

#464

Post by drivebyacct2 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #427
meaty wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. It probably would, from my perspective. I actually talk to people, properly, deeply. My memes are not limited to 140 characters...

It must be a shame to have such little will power.

Downvote me all you want. This luddite "all smartphone owners suck at communicating" is a tired annoying meme in and of itself.

Re: Google Glass

#465

Post by evilmushroom »

derekchiang wrote: post #388
damoncali wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is true and it catches on, then it is terrifying.

Dude I don't care what you think, but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. The "How It Feels" video literally made me in tears because the vision is so great, so compelling. The way we interact will change fundamentally, but that isn't a bad thing. People are always terrified by progress because progress means difference, and people feel comfort in falling back to the same thing. But, again, I…

I went to the San Francisco Glass Foundry--- it was awesome. I felt loss after I had to hand the device back-- as if I was missing one of my senses. :)

Unfortunately as you undoubtably well know, I cannot talk any details due to NDA.

Re: Google Glass

#466

Post by rayiner »

vacri wrote: post #458
rayiner wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. Bullshit. NASA sent humans to the moon. Bell Labs gave us the transistor. U.S. Steel basically built our modern civilization. Google found somewhat better ways of searching documents in return for selling advertising, plus rip-offs of Hotmail, MS Office, iOS, Facebook, etc.

Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh). Sure, NASA is a force majeure and certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the efficiency and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google maps was equally revolutionary - available to anyone who could access the internet, and f…

> Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh)

Our GPS satellites wouldn't be in space without the rocket technology developed by NASA.

> and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake.

Google started separating itself from the Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, etc, pack around very late 1998 into 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history. That's roughly contemporaneous with "pets.com" which was an exemplar of the .com bubble that most people peg as starting in 1997. In comparison, Amazon was founded in 1994 and IPO'ed in 1997. Hotmail was purchased by MS for $400 million that same year. PG sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998.

The uptake of the web was not only well on its way by the time Google got onto the scene, but the .com bubble was already well on its way by then.

> I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs)

There is a big leap from pre-NASA rocketry (in the U.S.) and post-NASA rocketry. There isn't a big leap (if at all) from iOS to Android. Arguably, MS Office to Google Docs is a regression. A lot of Google's tech is not only derivative, but doesn't even really advance the state of the art. V8 is like Lars Bak's third or fourth implementation of the same basic concept. Gmail didn't really do anything Hotmail didn't do, and the Hotmail acquisition by MS was a decade before Gmail went out of invite-only.

> And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched.

Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.

Re: Google Glass

#467

Post by chestercheetaz »

after watching the video "How it feels", I'm pretty convinced these should be illegal to wear while driving, as they introduce the same amount of distraction as reading texts on your phone.

Re: Google Glass

#468

Post by krapp »

vacri wrote: post #458
rayiner wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Google is the greatest technology organization ever existed. Bullshit. NASA sent humans to the moon. Bell Labs gave us the transistor. U.S. Steel basically built our modern civilization. Google found somewhat better ways of searching documents in return for selling advertising, plus rip-offs of Hotmail, MS Office, iOS, Facebook, etc.

Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh). Sure, NASA is a force majeure and certainly nothing to be sniffed at, but the efficiency and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake. Google maps was equally revolutionary - available to anyone who could access the internet, and f…

Landing on the moon was only quite possibly the pinnacle moment in human technological and scientific achievement, and one of the watershed moments of civilization. Google took something that already existed and made it less of a hassle. Its an achievement not even in the same league.

Re: Google Glass

#469

Post by rayiner »

killerpopiller wrote: post #460
silverbax88 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google? Granted, they've done some really cool stuff after they copied other search engines and hit upon paid search as a profit model. And not Bell Labs? The organization that built everything from scratch that Google uses to push bits around every day?

I vaguely remember "the internet" before google and it seriously sucked. Partially, because searching was wading through yahoo-like sites and annoying pop-ups. And before that all was in black&white. Searching was, and is, imho one of the main usage scenarios. Google toned that sonewhat loud and cluttered act down and improved it, a lot. I am thankfull for that. http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/Searching…

I was on the internet half a decade before Google became popular and I'm not even that old. It's wasn't nearly as primitive as you make it out to be. Lycos, Altavista, Yahoo!, etc, weren't as good as Google would ultimately be, but they weren't so bad as to be a different kind of thing. I got DSL around the same time (256 kbits SDSL!) Hotmail and Amazon had been around for years.

Re: Google Glass

#470

Post by csallen »

joe_the_user wrote: post #403
jgroome wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, and I appreciate that you put the time in to write that out, but honestly I'm hearing this kind of argument from so many quarters ("we never look up!" "we all talk, but we never converse !" etc etc) recently that it's starting to get obnoxious. Conversation is not dead. People have been moaning about how we're all becoming socially isolated since the publication of the first novel. The art…

You've made a classic argument about technology. This is an argument that has been around for a while. The parent poster is kind of enough to share that he has been an adult for a much shorter time than this argument has been around, in fact. In that fact I think you might consider this as a counter-point to your position. You see, your classic argument revolves around something like "new technology, old (adult) peop…

On the contrary, I think people are just resistant to change. My parents thought my generation was doomed because we spent so much time playing video games. And I'm sure the previous generation's parents were appalled at how much time they spent watching TV. And the parents of the generation before that were probably appalled at all the drugs and concerts. Etc.

And it wasn't just the parents. I'm sure there were conservative kids who were appalled at their peers as well. That isn't exactly a new phenomenon. I was picked on as a kid for being an early adopter of internet chat. Even today, I've had friends in their early-mid 20s criticize online dating and cell phones. And tomorrow people will pick on their friends for wearable devices. This is par for the course.

It strikes me as disingenuous to point out that kids' "neurology is shaped by technology as they grow up." Everything you do shapes your "neurology". Cell phones and Google Glass are not special exceptions. Hell, living in a basic civilization with written language and a primitive law system has drastic effects on your psychological development compared to... what are we comparing against, again? The natural state of being a caveman?

The people of the recent past were not mystical beings who were all at one with nature. They certainly weren't walking around in constant state of admiration of the beauty in the world around them. Five years ago I was the OP's age (20), and I had bad dates, too. And I'm sure people were having bad dates before me. The OP's complaint is just a more vivid way of saying, "The means by which people can be anti-social are changing."

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