
Ask HN: Wearable/Ubiquitous computing. How will will it affect our daily lives? - srlake
With sensors, processors and display devices becoming increasingly integrated in the world around us, I believe that the barriers between physical computing devices and our daily lives will be broken down.<p>How do you think this integration of technology into our lives will progress from where we are today? Google Glass is one next step, but how will we use it? What comes next? How do you imagine our (technological) world 5 years from now?
======
mlbailey
Id like to see a decrease in the number of external devices we rely on.
Progressing towards an input/output device that is integrated into or onto the
body somehow is what Im waiting for!!

~~~
dholowiski
I had always hoped that cochlear implants would go mainstream. Imagine a
bluetooth cochlear implant...

------
andrewcross
One thing I'd love to see is an improvement in personal analytics. Fitbit is a
good start, but the data is only useful up to a certain point.

------
vitovito
I would encourage you to not think about things in terms of "imagine our
(technological) world 5 years from now" and instead in terms of "imagine our
(quality of life) world 5 years from now," because the issue for five years
from now is the same issue from ten years ago: there's no "why."

Ten years ago, wearable computing and versions of Google Glass existed in
hobbyist garages and university labs. Steve Mann's been toting around a
wearable computer for thirty or forty years now. Half a dozen graduate schools
had wearable computing programs, usually funded by Nokia or Intel. Here was
mine:

<http://mavra.perilith.com/~vito/photos/wearable1.jpg>

But, all of the wearable programs were research-level technology explorations
into theoretical utility. No-one was looking at use cases for normal people.
Related programs, like lifelogging pioneers such as Gordon Bell, had the same
problem: the question was always "can we" and never "why."

I stopped experimenting with wearable computing in 2006, and left these rants
on the wear-hard mailing list:

"Will the next Jeff Hawkins please stand up?"
<http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard-06/2006492.html>

"It's the year 2006. But where are the better UIs? I was promised a better UI.
I don't see any better UIs. Why? Why? Why?"
<http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard-06/2006494.html>

"You're trying to do something new and better and just tweaking an existing
modal UI isn't going to cut it." <http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-
hard-06/2006498.html>

I did two more things in 2006: I presented a proposal to the R&D department I
worked in to invent something like the iPhone, and I designed an aural PDA as
part of my college coursework, and then I was done.

I recently got back into it this past Spring, when I had an epiphany around
"why," which I've talked about in previous comments. I still think ubiquitous
computing can dramatically improve our quality of life, but I don't think
it'll happen through heads up displays and chording keyboards.

This PDF of a presentation I gave in May touches on it a little:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/vitorio/Automated%20Storytelling%20M...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/vitorio/Automated%20Storytelling%20May%202012.pdf)

Google Glass is being designed by the same people that I ranted against in
2006. There's a very humane, social, intimate aspect it's lacked so far, with
the exception of one photograph, which Robin Sloan talks about here:

<http://www.robinsloan.com/note/pictures-and-vision/>

Everything about Google Glass is fraught with legal peril, because videotaping
and audio recording laws and wiretapping laws and personal privacy laws are
different from state to state. I've discussed this before, here, too:
academics stick to still photos for this reason, unless it's their own family
inside their own house (Deb Roy) or for military use.

I continue to believe that wearable computing, ubiquitous computing, ambient
intelligence, ambient information, quiet computing, lifelogging, quantified
self, internet of things, natural interfaces, immersive i/o, etc., are all
facets of the same "next step" in technology, and that "storytelling" is the
way it will make sense to us, and we will make sense of it. Normal people
don't want a bar graph; they want to know they did a good job today, and
they're definitely making progress toward their goal, and if they get off the
computer and leave in the next two minutes they'll beat traffic and have time
to pick up flowers for their wife on their way home. And it will be a million
sensors and real-time 24/7 video and audio recording and teraflops of traffic
prediction and monitoring of your wife's mood, and all you will know -- all
that will _matter_ \-- is that you two haven't fought in three years and she
thinks you are just so thoughtful.

