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Could Smartglasses Be the Next Big Tech Bust?

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


ScientificAmerican.com just ran an article on smartglasses. Not just the famous Google Glass, but a whole crop of smartglasses that are supposedly going to change everything: Big things afoot for the face in Tech Land.

I dunno, this technology just doesn't make sense to me. I could be wrong, along the lines of DEC chief executive Ken Olsen's infamous quote that there was no reason for anyone to have a personal computer at home. I concede that there could be a few neat uses for these gizmos, perhaps in a surgical suite, on the factory floor or to guide a disoriented Alzheimer’s patient on the walk home.

Beyond special needs, I just don’t get it. I wear glasses and most people at work don't anymore. And the millions or billions that have been spent on surgery to get rid of eyewear for good suggest that a computer fashioned as a glasses-like device, no matter how small, is a non-starter. Sit at a window table in any restaurant when the light is just right and watch the women (and men) check themselves out in the plate glass. Donning headwear with a little chip attached is not what people are hankering for.


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I'm no Luddite, but it seems that technology works best when it integrates without any visible seams into an existing social and commercial ecosystem. The smartphone is a good example, letting you run your life from something that fits in your pocket. My guess is that's as far as people really want to go when internalizing microchips. There's no deterministic geek dialectic that mandates a sequential staging from mainframe to mini, followed by the desktop, then a handheld device and later Google Glass and ultimately perhaps a neural implant.

People want a computer as a companion or an assistant. They don’t necessarily want one in their face. R2-D2 is cute. The person in the next seat on the bus talking into a pair of smartglasses or blinking his right eye furiously into a lens sensor to transmit a Morse-code-like text message just plain isn’t.

Source: Antonio Zugaldia/Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

Gary Stix, Scientific American's neuroscience and psychology editor, commissions, edits and reports on emerging advances and technologies that have propelled brain science to the forefront of the biological sciences. Developments chronicled in dozens of cover stories, feature articles and news stories, document groundbreaking neuroimaging techniques that reveal what happens in the brain while you are immersed in thought; the arrival of brain implants that alleviate mood disorders like depression; lab-made brains; psychological resilience; meditation; the intricacies of sleep; the new era for psychedelic drugs and artificial intelligence and growing insights leading to an understanding of our conscious selves. Before taking over the neuroscience beat, Stix, as Scientific American's special projects editor, oversaw the magazine's annual single-topic special issues, conceiving of and producing issues on Einstein, Darwin, climate change, nanotechnology and the nature of time. The issue he edited on time won a National Magazine Award. Besides mind and brain coverage, Stix has edited or written cover stories on Wall Street quants, building the world's tallest building, Olympic training methods, molecular electronics, what makes us human and the things you should and should not eat. Stix started a monthly column, Working Knowledge, that gave the reader a peek at the design and function of common technologies, from polygraph machines to Velcro. It eventually became the magazine's Graphic Science column. He also initiated a column on patents and intellectual property and another on the genesis of the ingenious ideas underlying new technologies in fields like electronics and biotechnology. Stix is the author with his wife, Miriam Lacob, of a technology primer called Who Gives a Gigabyte: A Survival Guide to the Technologically Perplexed (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

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