Life in the real world can be so ordinary compared to the wonders and visions available through the modern miracle of cyberspace. But fear not, there's an app for that too, and its made by Google, rather than Apple.
According to a report in Thursday's New York Times, some of the
company's top brains are working on a new type of glasses that will
project content in the user's field of vision and which could be used
to automatically offer facts about the places, people and experiences
encountered in everyday life.
The gadget may sound like the alcohol-fuelled visions of a bored
science-fiction fan, but according to the report, it is actually in
an advanced state of development at Google X, the company's top
secret lab facility at its Mountain View headquarters.
Powered by a version of Android that is currently the world's most
popular mobile operating system, the goggles will be equipped with
GPS and motion sensors, as well as a camera and audio ports. The
glasses look similar to the Thump glasses made by Oakley, which
double as an MP3 player with connected earbuds. The user interface is
said to be driven by head gestures.
The glasses would be able to augment your experiences by
connecting over the internet to Google's all-knowing servers. They
would give you information about places, shopping deals or sports
games, for instance.
They could use facial recognition technology to help you remember
people, while advertisers will be able to pump you with ads wherever
you go. They also could be used for augmented reality games "that use
the real world as the playground," the report said.
The company already has most of the technology to make this
happen. A program called Google Goggles, for instance, is able to
recognize images snapped on a camera and provide relevant information
about them. According to PC World, the glasses will cost between 250
and 600 dollars for a pair with one computerized lens.
You might expect the gadget-worshipping blogosphere to be going
gaga over Google's latest invention. But some of the initial
reactions are ones of creeped-out skepticism, that maybe this whole
mobile internet thing has really gone too far this time.
"We all knew this augmented reality product was eventually coming,
but it is now looking literally like a disaster (or more) waiting to
happen," wrote Damon Brown in PCWorld. "Glasses are actually the
final piece to Google's mission: To know what a user doing every
single moment of the day," Brown writes.
Information Week pointed out potential problems of liability,
radiation health risks and battery issues, and the device will have
clear privacy challenges.
"Like so many of our 'living in the future' gadgets and
connections, the possibilities are both amazingly exciting and a bit
troubling all at once," wrote Kate Cox of the game site Kokatu.
"Perhaps we'll all end up as brainless addicts, like they did in Star
Trek."
Still, Cox was pretty excited about what the glasses would mean
for games. "If you literally saw the Joker disappearing around the
corner ahead of you, would you chase him?"
There are also the safety challenges of, say, driving while
wearing the glasses. But maybe these can be overcome easily. We can
all just switch to the self-driving cars that Google is also hoping
to introduce in the not too distant future.
