A future made of Glass • Hacker News Board

Re: A future made of Glass

#31

Post by ambiate » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:54 PM UTC

The 'Glass experience' is nothing more than a scripted over-courteous event. As a developer with social anxiety, my Glass experience was spending quality time with my wife as we ventured throughout LA.

Unboxing is not interesting to me. Overly-cheery reps are not an experience. Touring a near-empty facility rivals staring at pictures online. My wife's comment summed it up: "You just looked disappointed the whole time."

Yet, don't discredit the device. There are amazing chances to improve people's lifestyles. There will be niches to help navigate people through life in otherwise impossible-to-assist situations. The to be educated/educators, handicapped, autistic, businesses and many others may find new approaches to life through a device like this.

Re: A future made of Glass

#32

Post by bluthru » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

This goal seems far less noble since unveiling Google Glass.

Re: A future made of Glass

#33

Post by nrivadeneira » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

gknoy wrote: post #23

mjn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's the fundamental disagreement, because that's a future I don't really want to live in. I don't like HUDs in videogames for the most part. And I don't want a bunch of shallow behaviorism everywhere, whether it's called gamification or quantified-self or life-as-an-A/B-test. The actual device itself I don't have any particular aversion to. However so far all that does seem pretty easy to avoid, at least in…

I find your perspective to be refreshingly different than my own. I love the idea of a HUD - even it it's something I don't use often. What I had not thought about was the privacy implications, and the more I think about it, the less happy I feel about people with it on all the time. Part of me feels this fear is irrational, as I don't have a problem with people taking video with their cell phones. However, this deep…

I don't know if I'm in the minority, but I don't really care if people have Glass on around me. People have cameras with them at all times these days due to smartphones. The fact that it's not attached to their head is not what's stopping them from taking photos and video at inappropriate times. I don't see myself beginning to take unsolicited photos any more than I would have with my phone (aka never) just because I have Glass on. I imagine the same goes for most people you have any sort of meaningful interaction with.

Re: A future made of Glass

#34

Post by Madness64 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

MaybiusStrip wrote: post #30

Wordy prose, rampant grammatical mistakes, a poorly constructed argument... my classmates in junior-high wrote more convincingly. I can almost hear the author patting himself on the back for writing that last sentence. If the future is making existing solutions to first world problems slightly more convenient, I'm not interested in being a part of it.

Would love to see if your prose in French is better than mine in English ;)

Re: A future made of Glass

#35

Post by davmar » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:00 PM UTC

i think glass will find more adoption with commercial uses than with consumers. military, construction workers, police, racecar drivers, pilots, etc. those people actually can use a HUD for more than just checking twitter comments and they won't look weird wearing it.

for consumer uses, i hope the future is not glass. people should interact with people. today our phones can go in our pockets and we can talk face to face. with glass, we'll talk in this order: face -> glass -> glass -> face.

i do want important info to be surfaced when i need it, but i don't need it as a HUD. a voice in my ear, or perhaps even something as futuristic as just "knowing" that i need to make a left at the next light since the computer has informed the right part of my brain of that.

but please, i don't want to have to compete with glass for your attention.

Re: A future made of Glass

#36

Post by kmicklas » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

darasen wrote: post #20

What I don't get: In a time when we are very aware of government tracking programs we are being asked to strap a GPS and camera to our heads so that Google can track us constantly?

Is that really any different than carrying around a cell phone all day?

Re: A future made of Glass

#37

Post by kmicklas » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #24

darasen wrote: post #20

What I don't get: In a time when we are very aware of government tracking programs we are being asked to strap a GPS and camera to our heads so that Google can track us constantly?

Agreed. I was ambivalent about Glass before Snowden's leaks. Now there's absolutely no way. Glass is little more to me now than a white-labeled data front-loader for the NSA. Which is a shame in a way. If Glass turns out to be compelling it might have been the reason for me to sign up for a Google account. Now, no way.

Tin foil much? Just wait until someone puts Linux on it (i.e. not Android).

Re: A future made of Glass

#38

Post by lnanek2 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

nrivadeneira wrote: post #9

I'm always amazed at how much anti-Glass sentiment I see in the tech community. I personally think it's going to be amazing. The best analogy I can think of is the heads-up display (HUD) in video games. The current use cases shown (texting, weather, pictures, etc.) are insignificant in comparison to the potential for combining with other wearable computing devices such as Fitbits, Fuelbands, Thalmic MYO's, etc. Of co…

As a developer, writing for an expensive accessory like Glass is already a crap shoot. Writing for people who have two expensive accessories? There's almost no point.

Re: A future made of Glass

#39

Post by alphakappa » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #14

alphakappa wrote: post #3

I have to respectfully disagree that this is the future. Is the future comprised of devices that you have to consciously wear on you all the time (I can barely stand to wear the prescription glasses I'm supposed to wear, let alone glasses that will occasionally provide me with some utility) On top of it, is the future of HCI in devices that you have to talk to? (Siri, Glass) Not only do I have a very hard time gettin…

Why don't you interact with computers in your native language?

Because English is essentially my primary language.You just wouldn't know that from my accent.

Re: A future made of Glass

#40

Post by michaelwww » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:13 PM UTC

kmicklas wrote: post #36

darasen wrote: post #20

What I don't get: In a time when we are very aware of government tracking programs we are being asked to strap a GPS and camera to our heads so that Google can track us constantly?

Is that really any different than carrying around a cell phone all day?

I don't have my cellphone camera pointed at everything I'm looking at. As an experiment, you could hold your cellphone up and point the camera at people you talk to and see how many like it. Sneaking a peak a woman's bosom could have more serious consequences than her saying "my eyes are up here."