In late February, the New York Times reported that Google will release its Android-powered, heads up display Google Glasses before the end of 2012. Different stories exist around the functionality and look of Google Glasses, being built in the secretive GoogleX offices. But thanks to observations from people like 9 to 5 Google blogger Seth Weintraub and the New York Times' Nick Bilton, we think they’ll have these characteristics:
- Small camera providing real-time data about a person’s environment (also takes pictures)
- Head tilting-driven navigation system
- Non-transparent heads up display on one lens
- Voice input and output capabilities
- The downside? Google Glasses are rumored to look more like “terminator glasses” than everyday eyewear.
Why are Google Glasses a big deal? Because they may be the beginning of the end of gadgets. Today, gadgets like smart phones, tablets, and MP3 players are built from the ground up to serve specific technological purposes. A smart phone exists to make calls. A MP3 player exists to play music. In the future, we'll see more of the opposite: everyday objects that already exist (like glasses) or spaces (like a room) that have technology built into them. As the functionality of gadgets becomes built into these everyday objects, the gadgets themselves start to become irrelevant.
Last year Microsoft released this "Productivity Future Vision" video that paints a picture of a future in which technology is seamlessly integrated into every moment of our lives.
In the future, what we now call “gadgets” are built into every moment. Technology isn’t a separate entity that needs to be turned off or on. It blends into our environments and moves with us. It knows where we are at all times because it’s already there.
Depending on who you ask, this is either really scary or awesome. In Microsoft’s video, this new era of technology integration improves the world by dramatically increasing our productivity. It eliminates the wait, power-down and travel time between different gadgets and “real life,” just like Google Glasses. In the future, you don’t enter a room, open your laptop, turn it on, open a browser, and type your search. You just enter a room and start doing whatever you planned to do. That saves physical energy and, perhaps more importantly, brain power.
That means more time and energy for innovation in all fields. When Google Glasses or future iterations become good enough to replace smart phones and tablets, you won’t be running around the house looking for your iPhone. You’ll be wearing it. And by that time, it may be in the form of contact lenses or even an embedded chip.
But is it all that rosy? Even tech optimists like me have some reservations. Forbes contributor E.D. Kain, for example, tries to bring us back to reality by reminding us that social media plays a small role in comparison to violence and killings in international conflicts. Kain puts his concerns this way in a post last November:
“...I can’t help but think that for every advance there is a trade-off. For every step forward in mobile and social technology a privacy concern is raised. For every new tool that helps consumers work together in the P2P economy, the potential for similar advances in government surveillance technology increases. For every hacker and upstart entrepreneur there is a new law waiting to be written to clamp down on innovation.”
Another concern is the potential to increase the wealth gap with more widely-used and advanced technology around the world. If the “haves” are the first to acquire the new products that could cataylze productivity and innovation, will the “have not’s” be left in the dust? A friend of mine and tech blogger Anson Alexander had a good counterpoint to share about that:
“As technology improves, so does the ability of people in remote and less wealthy parts of the world to self-educate and access information that they traditionally would not have access to. I know that in Africa, satellite internet access has connected many people to grids that normally would not have internet access because they don't have the 'cable' infrastructure to hard-wire into the internet.”
As long as technology is affordable and scalable, it can improve the standard of living across the board. A look at the growing mobile phone market in the developing world supports that, too.
It’s hard to tell what effect Google Glasses will have, especially since very few people have seen them. They might not be great at first. But it’s a bold step in a new direction, and hopefully a new era of productivity and innovation.
