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Google Glass

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Re: Google Glass

#481

Post by mieubrisse »

aeturnum wrote: post #431
Evbn wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's been said forever, it's not really a new threat. Small talk was always pointless.

>Small talk was always pointless. I used to have this view. I like talking about interesting subjects, comparing understandings of complex issues, understanding different viewpoints. However, I realized that small talk is an important part of that. It's a system that lets you and the other party feel each other out without committing social transgressions. It's what lets you guess that someone would say "Hitler was r…

I agree wholeheartedly. Some people seem to like to suggest how very intelligent they are by claiming smalltalk is useless and a waste of their mental cycles, but said people also don't ever talk about how useful it is for easing the guards we put up when meeting someone new. I imagine these people don't often interact with strangers on a casual basis.

Re: Google Glass

#482

Post by timbre »

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…

There's not much augmented reality in glass; only the turn-by-turn directions sort of qualify. I think the key thing about glass is that it's hands-free. As handy as smartphones are, it's remarkable how much of a difference not having to take the thing out of your pocket and push a button makes.

(The reason there's not much AR is that AR is very power hungry (you have to leave the camera on).)

Re: Google Glass

#483

Post by hackmiester »

lutusp wrote: post #349
hackmiester wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, it sounds like you have pretty poor luck... I feel like I am in the minority because I don't think I know anyone who spends time buried in his/her phone like this. Hell, if I could get my friends to respond to my messages within a couple of days of me sending them, that would be a start!

> Uh, it sounds like you have pretty poor luck... Not at all. While still young, I learned to have realistic expectations about relationships. This saved me a lot of pain and heartache. So I've been lucky.

So what you're saying is that I need to go ahead and learn to have "realistic" expectations, so that I might settle for partners who do things I hate?

Re: Google Glass

#484

Post by TrevorJ »

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…

Feel kinda weird about this because I almost never share anything I write, but I wrote a short story that seems to really get at the same things you are describing. Anyway, feel free to read it or not but I figured what the heck:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jJpMEv_YrqR904SrxEI7Gaf0...

Re: Google Glass

#485

Post by eric-hu »

sshconnection wrote: post #438

Dear god, so many haters in here. It's a brand new prototype product, and people are complaining about minor features etc. What is wrong with you people? I thought this was a board full of hackers. If you can't see the massive potential in this, you may be in the wrong place.

This is my reaction too, but I think this is a good sign. Strong polar responses are better than a mildly positive consensus, as pg describes is the case for "sitcom" business ideas ( http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html )

For further evidence, I just point to Apple products. Similar reaction in their announcement threads, similarly polar responses...fairly good market reaction.

Re: Google Glass

#486

Post by krapp »

vacri wrote: post #473
krapp wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

'watershed moment of civilisation'? Really? What profound social changes happened because of the moon shot. Yes, technological achievement, I'm not disputing that. Did it end the cold war? Did it even make a dint on the Vietnam war? In terms of changes to civilisation, the moon shot pales in comparison to the civil rights movements of the same era, along with the end of colonialism. Besides, I like how you classify g…

The civil rights movement was important, but there were places in the world at the time where black people could walk into the same restaurant as whites. The end of colonialism was important, if you were Indian. The Vietnam war was important, but then again, World War 2 was important, and so was World War 1, and so was Hannibal crossing the Alps.

With the moon landing, for the first time human beings were able to view our world objectively, in the third person, by having stood on another one. Seeing the moon landings on television changed people's lives. Seeing photos of the earthrise changed people's lives. It was a global event, it was universal. Yes, it was wrapped up in Cold War politics and no it didn't end any wars but ... we stood on another world for the first time.

If that's not a watershed moment in civilization then what was?

Re: Google Glass

#487

Post by csallen »

ctoth wrote: post #472
silverbax88 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a tech guy in his forties, I find these arguments hilarious - especially when my own generation had the same things said about television ("They won't know personal contact or relationships!") , video games...every new thing is the end of human society as we know it. Until it isn't. I mean, honestly, stop being so myopic. There were people who decried the STEAM ENGINE. There were people - sometimes, legitimate jou…

There are some interesting points both here and upthread, but I'll respond here as this provides a perfect jumping off point: silverbax88 seems to state that the introduction of television was similarly heralded by people bemoaning that it would cut back on social interaction. He then dismisses this, as if the idea were absurd. I also see a lot of Singularatarian types with nearly religious fervor with comments like:…

I don't think anyone is making so extreme a claim that technological changes cannot "cut back" on social interaction. The average amount of time spent socializing certainly fluctuates from time to time and place to place. It's certainly not unimaginable that the introduction of TVs, phones, wearable devices, etc might result in less time being spent socially.

What silverbax88 and others are saying, however, is that there is a limit to this. We are not on a trajectory to a world in which social interaction ceases to exist. In fact, we're not even close.

Consequently, most of these gloom and doom complaints seem overly extreme. If we accept as premises that (a) the world is only changing by a small amount, and (b) it has changed by comparable amounts innumerable times in the past, then our conclusion can only be making a big fuss about this change in particular is extreme.

Which is more likely: That Google Glass is finally the thing that will push social interaction off the edge, or that the people of today (like the people of last decade, and the one before that, and the one before that...) are nostalgic and resistant to change?

With respect to our generation, you said, "...I observed our outside time diminishing as we got older..." Okay, so what? Is this change somehow a bad thing, or is it simply change? Is decrying this change a necessary and useful thing to do, or is it simply nostalgia-fueled alarmism? Of course the people of today will behave differently than the people of yesterday. Why is this surprising? Why is this bad? Why should we care?

Re: Google Glass

#488

Post by rayiner »

vacri wrote: post #480
rayiner wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 1…

The uptake of the web was on its way, but google was an incredible catalyst for it. I remember search at the time and it was woeful - google made it an invisible task that let you get at content much more readily. GPS is great, sure. Don't interpret me as saying that NASA is a minnow. But to be facetious, good luck using GPS without a map :) but doesn't even really advance the state of the art I think we'll have to a…

> The uptake of the web was on its way, but Google was an incredible catalyst for it.

By the end of 1999, Google was averaging 7 million searches per day: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-in-2000.html. This was an increase of from only 10,000 searches per day at the end of 1998. Alta Vista was at 80 million searches per day by the end of 1997. Google had less than 1% of the search market at the end of 1999: http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/blog/posts/search-engin...

Google probably didn't surpass Altavista until well into 2000, which would have been after the bubble popped in March 2000. How could Google be the catalyst for internet uptake when the dot-com bubble peaked before it became popular?

As of 2000, when Google had basically no market share, there were already almost 100 million internet users in the U.S., or about a third of the population. It's grown to 80% of the population now, but that's much more attributable to much cheaper computers, cheaper and faster internet access, and the popularization of smart phones making internet access accessible to lower-income people and children.

> You deride gmail for being a ripoff of ye olde Hotmail, but it's a lot more than just 'a free webmail account you can sign up for'.

What is it other than a free e-mail account you can sign up for?

> There's cutting-edge technology in making shoes, too, but that doesn't make a shoemaking company a 'tech company'.

The steel industry was the "tech" industry of its time. It absorbed all the highly talented engineers, made the billionaires, and developed the technology that defined the time.

Re: Google Glass

#489

Post by 6ren »

uptown wrote: post #137
bobsy wrote: post #14

I didn't realise how bad it looks. The premise looks awesome. The demo video... awesome. The way the product looks on someone's face... this isn't the finished product right? I think Google should look at designer glasses and outsource the design to someone who knows what they are doing.

I still don't get why everybody is so upset over the aesthetics of these things? Nobody is going to force you to walk around with these on at all times. Like anything else, you'll choose when to put them on and use them. The alternative today is to walk around with your arms up holding your phone in front of you. Is that any better? The long-long term version of this looks like contact-lenses. We're just not there ye…

If the first iPhone was embarrassing to use, would it have hindered or enhanced adoption?

Jonathan Ive will design a nice version, Apple will own the market, and google will aghast "but... we were first...".

Google glasses look cool as an object - it's just that they look bad when worn. For a start, make them symmetrical (even if the "other" projector is fake).

Re: Google Glass

#490

Post by ceol »

Bakkot wrote: post #361
blazingfrog2 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak to human beings daily. I've known dozens, or maybe hundreds, of human beings who have never been so rude as to pay more attention to their devices than to me when in the middle of a conversation. I don't know you but, if you're not 20 years old, like the parent, you're talking apple and oranges.

I'm 20 and can never recall having had the experience the OP describes.

I'm 23 and laughed when the OP talked about "remembering junior high" and how "people never did this shit back then, because they couldn't." Yeah, you probably couldn't find a middle schooler with a smart phone back in 2005 (the year the OP was in 8th grade), but you damn well know they were playing with Game Boy Advances and, later, Nintendo DSs. They were on Myspace and Livejournal. They were exploring EverQuest and Battlefield 1942.

It seems the OP is suffering from a severe case of nostalgia to think a mere 8 years ago people were somehow immune from being antisocial.

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