I'd expected a lot more from Google Glass. The hype around this wearable device â€" a pair of glasses which incorporate a little screen in the top right of your right eye's field of vision â€" has been colossal since the release of the first teaser video in April 2012.
Glasses that let you see a map without using your smartphone! Hands-free Googling! Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who had been spotted wearing them in a carefully careless manner on the New York subway, suggested that using a smartphone was "emasculating", and the company sold around 10,000 to "explorers" who are, right now, its guinea pigs. It's the future â€" or is it?
I'd thought so, until I had a tryout with a pair. My reaction? They're great for particu lar uses, but you're going to struggle to find a use for them all the time. They're not going to replace looking at your smartphone any time soon. Emasculation may be here to stay, Mr Brin.
I'm a fan of wearable computing. I own a Pebble watch, and love it. If someone calls or texts my smartphone, the number and/or the message pops up, with no need to take the phone out of my pocket. I've tried ski goggles which displayed my speed and altitude, as well as a map of the ski resort showing runs and lifts. Back in the 1990s, when virtual reality was all the rage, I tried some of the early models made by a company called Virtuality which incorporated little displays to show you a virtual world, just like Google Glass does (except Virtuality's didn't show anything else).
So I was expecting a lot from Google Glass. Perhaps too much.
The device, lent to me by one of the explorers (whom I won't name, as Google has been known to disable devices), is pleasantly light. You can wear it without lenses, so you just have the frame, and a little lens above your eye. It doesn't feel strange, though of course weirdness is in the eye of the beholder. And I wear that Pebble, so don't ask me for style tips. The frame is made of titanium, which you can happily bend to fit your face without breaking.
Getting started
You turn Glass on by tilting your head up, or tapping the side of the frame. This activates the tiny screen. It then just shows the time, and the phrase "OK Glass", which seems to float about six inches in front of the right of your face.
Say "OK Glass", or tap the side again, and you get a menu â€" options such as "Google … ", "take a picture", "record a video", "get directions to … ", "send a message to … ", "make a call to … ", "hang out with … " â€" the latter being a s hared video feed. All require a smartphone connected via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to function. Otherwise Glass is just a fancy low-res camera.
The menu is too long to fit onto the screen, so you have to learn to tilt your head up or down to see the others (though after time you'd remember them).
You then say aloud what you want: "Get directions to King's Cross", or "Google 'how high is the Empire State Building'". The voice recognition is accurate, though it misfired a few times on the Empire State Building, which we tried a few times for our film. The results are read back to you by a microphone just beside your ear using bone conduction, so it's almost inaudible to outsiders.
Of course, you won't have been inaudible. By this stage you've already given your instructions to the crowded train carriage. You're also wearing something that makes you look like something from Star Trek's Borg, with no lenses. Normal people don't do this. If you were worried about what people think of you using this technology, you might not have left the house.
Taking pictures and videos is easy. You don't even have to say: "OK Glass, take a picture". You can just press a button on the top of the sidepiece, or hold it down for video. There's no warning to anyone around you that you're doing so, no red light, no audible click. That seems like a potential privacy concern, and very different from the situation that has pertained ever since mobile phones became camera phones.
The best use for Glass, said the explorer who lent it to me, is for maps. You don't have to pull your smartphone out of your pocket when you're walking around somewhere unfamiliar. All you do is ask for directions, and it updates the display.
OK Glass, that's great. But is it worth the estimated $500 (£330) to $1,000 cost? It's hard to see, especially considering the nitty-gritty of trying to make the device work nicely with a smartphone, which consumed about half an hour of our time as we tried to join Wi-Fi networks (it can't join password-protected ones) and link over Bluetooth (it kept dropping the connection).
The right swipes
There's also the perplexity involved in finding your way around the system. Go deeper than the main menu and you can view the pictures you've taken, searches you've made, directions you've taken, all shown chronologically. You can change settings. This is all done by swiping the sidepiece with a finger â€" back or forward, and then up or down. Swipe the wrong way, however, and you've deleted a video without warning. Oops. There's a lack of obvious controls in the interface. Adding apps is going to remain a geek's pastime for some time.
I can see niche markets that will embrace Glass. Anyone whose job requires having both hands free or look ing up details (from a manual?) will find them a boon. Surgeons have already found uses for them. I can imagine delivery drivers and repair mechanics getting plenty of use from them too, for taking a picture of a signature at an address, or of a faulty part and its replacement. The potential there is huge.
For the ordinary person, though, I can't quite see it. Most people don't walk around needing to Google things. We use our phones for tasks. The idea of Glass seems to be that rather than us shaping the tool â€" pulling out a camera (phone) to take a picture or video, or doing a search or sending a text when we need to â€" the tool tries to shape us, reminding us that we should be Googling at all times, taking part in Google Hangouts, getting directions from Google Maps.
There are Twitter and Facebook apps, and one from the New York Times, but in a world where we're already in a state of constant distraction, this seems like a step too far for no obvio us return. Glasses used to be something that helped you see the world better. For the average person, Google Glass feels like something that would make you see the world less, and replace it with a world seen through a giant corporation's interests, funnelled through a tiny screen suspended above one eye.
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