Ever since Google Glass came out, I knew there was something about it that bothered me, something apart from its odd “geek chic” appearance. There was something fundamental off about the whole approach, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.<\/p>\n
I didn’t have a problem at all with wearable augmented reality itself. Eventually we are all going to become used to the everyday reality around us becoming visibly augmented. Well within a generation, we won’t even think about this anymore, other than to be astonished that anybody could go through the day without such a thing, much as young people today are astonished that their elders somehow grew up without the benefit of the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n
No, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.<\/p>\n
Finally, in the last few days, I realized what my issue was: The Graphic User Interface.<\/p>\n
Every SmartPhone, tablet, notebook computer and eBook reader has a GUI. The GUI is what tells us what to do next. Some collection of buttons, icons, things to click on or poke at, these constitute our on-line manual. The very first thing we see when we look into these screens is a built-in set of instructions.<\/p>\n
And this makes sense, because when we look at such devices, they have our attention.<\/p>\n
But an augmented reality display is different. It’s not supposed to have your attention. The person you are talking to, or the street you are crossing, or the play you are watching — these are supposed to be the focus of your attention, rather than some device you happen to be wearing on your face.<\/p>\n
And I realized that the future of wearable augmented reality must be one that gets completely out of your way until you need it, one that presents no default GUI at all.<\/p>\n
This will require a radical rethinking of how we interact with computers. Without that radical rethinking, wearable A.R. will never become more than an oddity.<\/p>\n
The problem with Google Glass is not that it is too revolutionary, but rather that it isn’t nearly revolutionary enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever since Google Glass came out, I knew there was something about it that bothered me, something apart from its odd “geek chic” appearance. There was something fundamental off about the whole approach, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I didn’t have a problem at all with wearable augmented reality itself. Eventually … Continue reading “Clearer than Glass”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}