

Google Glass on Saturday Night Live - stevewilhelm
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-randall-meeks/n36353/

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cs702
This mocking of Google Glass as something that only "geeks" would ever use,
because it is awkward and fails too frequently in embarrassing ways, suggests
the product and technology have a very long way to go before they cross the
chasm into anything resembling mass-market appeal.

While I think that ever-more-personal Internet-powered products like Google
Glass ARE the future, I can't help but see some parallels with Apple's
original tablet computer, the Newton MessagePad, which never quite recovered
from the drubbing it took in a Doonesbury comic strip, because its handwriting
recognition software was awkward and failed too frequently in embarrassing
ways.[1]

\--

[1] Here's one of the Doonesbury comic strips mocking the Newton MessagePad:
[http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/db9...](http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/db930827.gif?w=900&h=294)
and here's a NewsWeek article from 1993 discussing it:
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1993/10/10/the-
handwri...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1993/10/10/the-handwriting-
on-the-wall.html)

~~~
fyi80
Or someone who has never used it, mocking its imagined failures, shows that
when people gets there hands on it, they will see it wildly outperforming
expectations and achieve mass-market appeal.

~~~
OGinparadise
Fine. Why would a normal person need this, especially since this is _in
addition_ to his/her smartphone?

Instead of looking like a dork all the time with G glasses on, why not look at
the phone for a restaurant or directions and then put it in your pocket
/purse? How hard is to pull the phone again 5 minutes later if you aren't
sure?

~~~
xnxn
I'm on the treadmill and I just missed a call. I'd really like to know who
it's from. That info could be on my HUD, but instead I have to grab my phone,
hit the power button, swipe to unlock it, and swipe down from the notification
bar.

I'm at a party, and a friend is demonstrating his juggling skills. I could
snap a quick picture or take a video in a heartbeat if I had Glass. Since I
don't, I have to go through the smartphone activation checklist again; take
phone out of pocket, power button, swipe. Launch the camera app. Aim. But now
I've missed the moment. I'm holding a brick in the air while the rest of my
friends are applauding.

Damn, my car won't start - and unlike my dad, I've never been much of a
mechanic. If I had Glass, I could give him a call and he could see through my
eyes from 1000 miles away. Instead I'm cradling my phone on my shoulder while
I'm leaning into the engine, looking for a relay box. I don't know what that
is, or what it looks like. He says it should be somewhere on the left? Now I
know how he feels when I'm guiding him through installing printer drivers.

I see a lot of use cases for a device like Glass. So I think you have it
backwards - in the near future, the dorks are going to be the ones fumbling
with their phones.

~~~
kenjackson
What you note can be fixed on modern smartphones.

 _I'm on the treadmill and I just missed a call. I'd really like to know who
it's from. That info could be on my HUD, but instead I have to grab my phone,
hit the power button, swipe to unlock it, and swipe down from the notification
bar._

Put more notification info on the lockscreen.

 _I'm at a party, and a friend is demonstrating his juggling skills. I could
snap a quick picture or take a video in a heartbeat if I had Glass. Since I
don't, I have to go through the smartphone activation checklist again; take
phone out of pocket, power button, swipe. Launch the camera app. Aim. But now
I've missed the moment. I'm holding a brick in the air while the rest of my
friends are applauding._

On WP there is a dedicated camera button that you hold for half-a-second and
it immediately launches the camera.

 _Damn, my car won't start - and unlike my dad, I've never been much of a
mechanic. If I had Glass, I could give him a call and he could see through my
eyes from 1000 miles away. Instead I'm cradling my phone on my shoulder while
I'm leaning into the engine, looking for a relay box. I don't know what that
is, or what it looks like. He says it should be somewhere on the left?_

You can use your phone for this today. In fact in many ways its better,
because you can wrap your arm around corners that you can't reach your head.

I'm sure we will figure out great use cases in the future, but I don't think
these are them.

------
stevewilhelm
Voice commands and adorning one's face are both very physiologically charged
acts.

Combining both in one device and topping it off with this photo,
<http://s831.us/ZJFtkm>, Glass was just begging to be lampooned.

~~~
defen
Is that a real, not-photoshopped image?

~~~
stevewilhelm
It's the real deal from the Google announcement of the Glass Collective.
<http://s831.us/YozC2O>

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tovmeod
We're sorry, but the clip you selected isn't available from your location.
Please select another clip.

~~~
DigitalTurk
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcpWxF9hbI>

~~~
appplemac
Much better, thank you.

------
alexqgb
John Pavlus, writing for the MIT Technology Review, made an outstanding point
about wearable computing, and the basic problem with treating the body (which
needs interfaces) as an interface itself.

[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514136/your-body-
does-n...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514136/your-body-does-not-
want-to-be-an-interface/)

~~~
jessriedel
I really don't get what the claim of the second half of the article is

> When you drive a nail with a hammer, you feel as though you are acting
> directly on the nail, not “asking” the hammer to do something for you. In
> contrast, “present at hand” describes a tool that, in use, causes you to
> “bump up against some aspect of its nature that makes you focus on it as an
> entity,” as Matt Webb of BERG writes. Most technological “interfaces”–models
> that represent abstract information and mediate our manipulation of it–are
> “present at hand” almost by definition, at least at first. As Webb notes,
> most of us are familiar enough with a computer mouse by now that it is more
> like a hammer–“ready to hand”–than an interface standing “between” us and
> our actions.

A mouse became “ready to hand” just like a hammer did. Have you every seen a
child with a hammer or other tool? It's “present at hand” for them until they
master it. So the real question is not "how is Glass different than hammer?",
it's "how is Glass different than a mouse?"

> Still, a mouse is also like a hammer in that it is something separate-from-
> you that you can pick up and set down with your hands. What if the “mouse”
> wasn’t a thing at all, but rather–as in the Fjord example of “staring to
> select”–an integrated aspect of your embodied, phenomenal experience?

Do we really think that the thing that makes a mouse a good interface device
is that it's a solid object? Look, I get the idea that if you try to overload
bodily actions with new results on top of the existing ones (i.e. making
thinks "selected" when you just wanted to look at them) you'll obviously get
problems. But does anyone really think that, say, rubbing your fingers
together would be some horrendous input method merely because it doesn't have
a physical object? No, not as long as you rarely had need to rub things in
real life at the same time as you were using the device.

~~~
alexqgb
"But does anyone really think that, say, rubbing your fingers together would
be some horrendous input method merely because it doesn't have a physical
object?"

It's a good question, but I don't think the answer is as clear as you make it
out to be. Elsewhere, Pavlus has written about Brett Victor, and some of what
he's saying here is an extension of Victor's ideas about interface design.

[http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

My own view of the camera in Glass is that it's the lynchpin for a good
gestural interface. But when I imagine how this would work, I instinctively
prefer the idea of using a pen (or something similar) to my empty hands.
Perhaps it's because I've done a lot of painting and drawing, but I actually
feel that the tool makes me more expressive, not less. In other words, it
brings a level of precision to gestures that unaided hands don't supply - not
unlike the way a conductor uses a baton when, strictly speaking, he could get
by with just his arms and hands.

~~~
jessriedel
Can we at least agree that this is a minor effect compared to overloading?

------
zw123456
I still think that Google Glass is the next Segwey. It just is, sorry.

------
OGinparadise
This is comedy, of course they exaggerate things so you can't take it
literally. But they are spot on looking weird and talking to 'yourself.'

This is a great niche product, IMO, other than that it will suffer an
embarrassing death. Most people do not need up to the second information while
out and even those that do (say drivers) will probably be distracted by them.

Brin did make a fool of himself when he said that phones are emasculating,
essentially saying that using Glass is cool. I guess that's an opinion, but I
disagree. Unless it's part of your job, you'll look like a pretentious, know-
it-all @sshole. And unless you're careful you can subject yourself to physical
harm, like if used in bathrooms, bars, getting in people's faces with it etc.

This got a lot of press because tech bloggers, professional "early adopters"
and wannabe cool techies are bored, they needed a new product to hype to death
and to show how hip they are. It's been a while since a new gadget came out.

~~~
nijk
Or maybe Brin made an effort to learn English when he came to this country.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=emasculating>

~~~
OGinparadise
Maybe, to use the part that is convenient to him
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emasculation> . I would feel emasculated with
dorky glasses on.

~~~
myko
> Maybe, to use the part that is convenient to him

Yes, why would he assume he meant it in the way that actually makes the most
sense. We should assume he just meant something boneheaded instead.

