WEBVTT - The Google Glass Story 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.280 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.920 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I am a senior 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:22.360 writer with the website how stuff works dot com. And 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.280 as always, I like to talk about technology, especially on 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.520 this show. That's why it's called tech Stuff, and I'm 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:32.920 going to talk about subject that I've touched on in 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:35.520 past episodes. In fact, we did a full episode about 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:38.960 this subject. I'm talking about Google Glass. And while we 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.839 did do an older episode about this, I felt like 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:46.720 we could really use a chance to revisit this and 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.640 and kind of talk about in the more modern style 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:52.320 of this show. You might remember, the old version of 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.120 tech Stuff was more conversational and this one's less, so 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:59.560 it's more narrative. Well, Google Glass was a big augmented 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.480 reality the project or an a our project out of 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:05.480 Google's R and D labs, the Google x labs, that's 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:09.479 the super secret research and development branch of Google. And 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:11.880 it probably was a little bit ahead of its time. 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:15.000 In fact, it really was ahead of its time, and 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.679 it was purposefully ahead of its time. That was part 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.000 of the problem. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.680 might have suffered from some poor design and implementation, or 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.760 at least some choices that perhaps puzzled people. I wouldn't 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:30.800 go so far as to call them poor myself. I 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.119 actually really liked Google Glass. Maybe it was just too 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.480 darned expensive. It's pretty pretty costly. But whatever the reason, 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.880 and we'll explore all of them. It's no longer a 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.560 consumer product that you can buy from Google. So today 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:48.560 we're gonna talk about Project Glass, how it got started, 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:51.720 the technology behind it, and the failed experiment to turn 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:54.480 it into a consumer product, and where is it now. 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.200 The reason I decided to cover this is because the 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.600 week I'm recording this episode, The Telegraph ran an article 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.800 about some of the biggest flops in technology, and some 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.240 of the usual suspects were in there, like the Nintendo 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:12.000 Virtual Boy was one of the major flops listed. There 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:15.640 are also some heartbreaking intreats in there. The Sega Dreamcast, 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.639 for example. I know that's another video game component there, 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:23.200 a console. In this case, it was legitimately a really 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:25.720 good video game console. It just didn't do very well 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.720 in the market, but I still have one and it 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.800 was really really good. Then there was Google Glass that 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.040 was also one of the ones that the Telegraph listed 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:39.320 another heartbreaker. So what's the story behind it? Well, I 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:44.200 can't talk about Google Glass without first talking about augmented reality, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:47.560 can I? You know me? You know I can't. I 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.160 am physically incapable of doing that. I'm sure many of 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:53.959 you are familiar with the concept of augmented reality or 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:56.280 a R. But just in case, I'm going to give 0:02:56.320 --> 0:03:00.600 you a quick refresher. So Thomas Couddle gets the credit 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:04.080 for coining the phrase augmented reality in nineteen nine. He 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.880 was specifically talking about the system that would allow you 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:10.720 to see where wires needed to be laid out and say, 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.640 the fuselage of an airplane. So if you've ever been 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.480 able to walk into an airplane where it's been stripped 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.080 down so you can see the guts of it. Uh. 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.040 I was recently at an airplane museum where I got 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.400 to do this. I walked through what had been a 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:29.720 former seven forty seven and now included a section where 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.240 everything got stripped away so you could see essentially the 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.320 bones the skeleton of the seven forty seven, and part 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.440 of that included conduits through which wires would run. Well, 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:42.640 when you're building one of these airplanes, you need to 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.880 know where those wire conduits have to be so that 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.440 you can make sure they fit into the overall design. 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.240 Caudal worked on systems that would give a digital overlay 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.280 as engineers would look at this airplane design so that 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:59.720 they could lay the cables the proper way, make sure 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.360 that they were aligned so that they weren't going to 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:07.480 end up messing up the design some other way. And really, 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:12.120 augmented reality is just the integration of digital information into 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.800 the real world around us. And you can do this 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.680 in lots of different ways, but typically we talk about 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.360 augmented reality in terms of overlaying some sort of visual 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:26.720 digital information, like a digital display through which you can 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:29.800 see a view of the real world, and thus you 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:33.359 can have some augmented information on top of that view 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.960 of reality. So a good example of this might be 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.040 a fighter pilot who has a helmet that includes a 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.400 digital heads up display or h u D on the 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.120 visor of the helmet itself, so you might be able 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:51.040 to visualize things like uh Allied aircraft and you'd be 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:54.200 able to see it and it would be identified within 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.800 your visor so that you get information about that. That's 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.520 a simple example, simple in the sense that you can 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:04.120 easily imagine it. It's actually quite complicated when you build 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:08.200 the technology. A few high end cars have similar features 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:12.080 that give digitally enhanced information that is projected or otherwise 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:15.719 displayed on the windshield itself, which gives the driver the 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.640 ability to see certain special views. You might be able 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.440 to see, like a infrared view of what is outside 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:25.240 the car, or a projection of things like the outside temperature, 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:26.919 that sort of stuff. But it tends to be in 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.520 those luxury cars. You don't see it in a lot 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:34.880 of the lower production cars, even even the nicer ones. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:41.239 It's pretty rare. You just you also have I'm guessing 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:46.080 an augmented reality device on you. More likely than not 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.839 most of you, I'm sure have smartphones. So if you 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.640 have a smartphone, you have a device that is probably 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.000 capable of running augmented reality apps. There are tons of 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.760 different apps in the a R space for all of 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.800 the major smartphone platforms, iOS and Android being the two 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.159 big ones, but there are ones for other ones as well, 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.160 And typically the way these work is that you hold 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.359 your phone up. Your phones back facing camera pulls in 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:14.279 a view of the world around you, so it's like 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:16.880 you're getting a live view It's like your your phone 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.359 is a monitor for you to look at a live 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.039 camera feed of the world around you, but then the 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.200 app allows other digital information to be overlaid on top 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:27.400 of that view. So it might be something as simple 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.000 as directions of where to go. Let's say you've programmed 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:33.919 your phone saying I wanna get to this one particular 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.440 coffee shop and it's about six blocks away, and you 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:39.800 hold your phone up and it tells you, all right, 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:41.960 you need to go three blocks straight ahead, then you're 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.440 gonna take a right. That's a pretty simple again concept 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.480 for augmented reality, but it could do other stuff too, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:51.880 Like you might be able to hold it up to 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.039 a sign that's written in a language you can't read, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:56.719 and it might be able to read it and translate 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.360 it for you. We're seeing a lot of translate apps 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.240 that in Core break this kind of augmented reality, and 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.560 it's pretty awesome, at least in my my opinion, is 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.480 pretty awesome. But there are tons of different ways to 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.800 implement augmented reality and just as many different use cases 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.400 for a R. And it ranges from just entertainment to 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:23.840 productivity to industrial use and beyond medicine. Lots of different 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:28.720 potential uses for a r now. Google Glass started as 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:32.160 a head mounted computer device that would incorporate augmented reality 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.200 features into a display that you could look through and 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.200 still see the world beyond. And while the project was 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.520 first teased in a video in two thousand twelve, the 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.560 origins for this project go back much further than that. 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.560 And first, before there was even a Google, there was 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:53.240 a guy named Thad Starner. I've actually had the good 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.760 fortune to meet Mr Starner because he works at Georgia 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.160 Tech as a professor there, and I visited Georgia Tech. 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:05.480 I've visited the wearable computing labs, and I've chatted with him. 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.960 He's an interesting dude. And Georgia techt just down the 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:11.520 street from how stuff works, so it's not hard for 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.080 us to get over there. Well, he also served as 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:16.600 a technical lead for Google Glass. In fact, I believe 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.080 he served as technical lead longer than anyone else in 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.520 that position for that particular project. And it was Startner's 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.640 work in wearable technology and augmented reality that you could 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:31.760 say got the ball rolling. So you remember I mentioned 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.720 a guy named Caddle got the credit for coining the 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:40.080 phrase augmented reality. Well, Starner says that he really coined 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:44.640 that phrase independently of Caudle also in through a fellowship 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.160 proposal he wrote, and he thinks that that might be 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.360 the first appearance of augmented reality. He wanted to use 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.840 the phrase artificial reality when he was originally talking about 0:08:55.840 --> 0:09:00.000 this concept. However, someone else was already using that term. 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.800 That someone was Timothy Leary, and if you don't know 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.800 who Timothy Learry is, you should look that up. Leary 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:09.000 was specifically talking about the kind of reality you experience 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:12.960 when you have partaken in mind altering substances. So it 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:18.840 wasn't exactly the context that Starner wanted to imply when 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:21.920 he was talking about his technology, so he didn't adopt 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:26.120 artificial reality, and he went with augmented reality instead. In 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:33.040 which was years before Google ever even existed. Starner created 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:37.520 a wearable display, so it was a display that attached 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.400 to his glasses, and really he worked with other people 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.400 to design this. He didn't build it by himself with 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.240 his own two hands, but he worked with designers to 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.880 create a computer system that incorporated a display that could 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.120 clip onto his glasses. And it was pretty big and bulky, 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.520 and it was not transparent. It was like having a 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.920 small computer monitor mounted on your glass is uh. And 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.640 he started to wear this all the time wherever he went. 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:10.160 It was kind of an experiment in finding out how 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:14.200 you might use wearable computers, what elements are important, which 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.840 ones are not important, how do you incorporated into your 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:21.720 daily life. So he would wear this all the time, 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:25.000 and it very often would prompt people to ask questions 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:27.720 about this weird thing that he had on him on 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:33.120 his face mainly. Eventually there was a build of this 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.720 that started going by a name called the Lizzie. It 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.360 was a wearable computer, complete with input devices and with 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:46.679 that head malond display that again was kind of unsightly originally. Anyway, 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:53.520 this display was able to show a resolution of seven pixels, 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.439 so tiny resolution compared to what you would find today, 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.720 the very low resolution compared to today's screens. It was 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:06.760 also monochromatic, so only one color. And connected to that 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.040 was a one handed keyboard called a twiddler, which I 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.160 wish were a joke, but it is not. So it 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.480 was a little one handed twiddler keyboard. It kind of 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:21.400 reminds me of the keypads on old cell phones where 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:23.480 if you wanted to send a text message and you 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.200 had to hit the letter E. You had to press 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.640 the D E F key twice in a row in 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:30.960 order for you to select E before you moved onto 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.400 your next letter. According to Starner, he could hit type 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:36.880 up to a hundred thirty words per minute using this 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:42.560 one handed keyboard method, which is crazy fast. It's crazy 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.200 fast even if you're using two hands on a regular keyboard. 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:50.160 So I was really impressed to hear about that. Uh, 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.559 very large and heavy batteries would give the computer more 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:55.920 than ten hours of juice before you need to recharge. 0:11:55.960 --> 0:12:00.280 But I mean these batteries weighed several pounds at Lee East, 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:06.800 so they weren't little unobtrusive things attached to the computer. 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:12.600 It was it was like wearing a hefty backpack. Um, 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.080 so it wasn't exactly comfortable to wear all the time. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.720 And the computer was really serving as a platform, a 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.240 development platform. It was the basis for programmers to design 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.559 wearable computing applications. So it's not like it magically gave 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.560 Starner some sort of crazy computing ability. It was rather 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.120 an early wearable device to help explore the applications and 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:38.000 implementations of wearables without having to worry about creating a 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:42.840 specific product. So this was really exploratory, and when you 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.280 think about it, it was meant to say, we think 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.840 there's something here, but we don't exactly know what it 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:50.960 is yet. We don't know what the final form is 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:53.319 going to be, So I don't have an idea for 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.960 something that's going to be in a package on a 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.080 store shelf that other people can go out and buy. Rather, 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:04.600 I think computing has the capability of transforming our daily 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.040 lives in yet another way. Now keep in mind, this 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.360 isn't nineteen the early nineties. This is before smartphones, so 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.440 smartphones would go on to show us that, yes, indeed, 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:18.320 having a computer device that you can carry around with 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:23.280 you changes things. There's no question of that. The Internet 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.440 itself is a reflection of how much that has changed. 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:31.319 Internet advertising has changed dramatically because of mobile devices and 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:35.000 the popularity of them. So wearable computer has definitely had 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:38.600 the potential to make an enormous impact. But we had 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:43.120 to figure out what sort of implementation made sense and 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.880 what kind of applications would you use it for. Because 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.200 just to have something, just to have it that doesn't 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.960 remain compelling for very long, that would be part of 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:57.199 the problem of Google Glass later spoiler alert. Now, one 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:01.240 of those applications that Starner created or e on, was 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.880 a program that would keep track of everything he said, 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:07.880 whether or not it was straight voice to text, I 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.120 am not entirely certain. I'm sure by some point it 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:14.079 really was. But he would also be able to type 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:18.160 things in using the twiddler, which I remind you it's 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.480 not a joke. So it was kind of like a 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.320 perpetual notes system. He could keep track of things he 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:26.880 was thinking about and talking about, and then he could 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.480 run a search back against that and see if he 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.240 could find anything interesting later on. And he said that 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.560 about cent of the time what he got back was garbage, 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.720 wasn't particularly interesting, insightful, or helpful. But about five percent 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:43.000 at the time it was totally the opposite. It was 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:47.840 something really worth knowing and remembering. So he thought of 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.600 it as something like a memory booster. It wasn't. It 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:55.040 wasn't replacing his memory, but augmenting it. Now, according to 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:59.040 popular accounts, Starner attended a conference in the late nineties 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.800 and and he met to post graduate students from Stanford, 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:07.080 so this would be about those two post graduate students 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:10.880 were named Saragi Brenn and Larry Page, And if you're 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:13.080 familiar with those two, you know those are the co 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.520 founders for Google. In fact, they would found the company 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.360 Google just a few short months after this conference. Now, 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:24.840 Brin and Page thought that Starner's wearable computers were fascinating, 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:27.720 and he gave them a full demonstration of what the 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.920 computer was capable of doing. However, at the time, they 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:35.280 were already focusing on a way to improve search engines 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:39.240 on the web, so they couldn't really dedicate any attention 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.040 to wearable computers they were they were too busy perfecting 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.480 their search engine approach. And this was important because back 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:50.200 in the day before things like Google, the algorithm that 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:53.040 got so sophisticated that it was able to ignore a 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:54.920 lot of the tricks people were using to try and 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:59.640 direct traffic to their sites. Web search engines were just okay. 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:03.640 Most of them were looking for instances of keywords appearing 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.280 on a page, which meant that people would try and 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:10.600 full search engines by inserting as many different key search 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.480 terms as possible at the bottom of a page, even 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.920 if the page had nothing to do with that particular concept. 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:21.120 And why would they do this? Because web advertising is 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.240 based off of how many views you get on a page. 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:27.960 Page views are king at least most. Web advertising is 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:29.400 not all of it, but a lot of it is. 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:32.360 So if you were able to direct a lot of 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.280 traffic to your web page, that was another page view. 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.280 It didn't matter if what that people founded that by 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.120 the time they got there, if it wasn't what they 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:42.360 were looking for, and if they bounced, you got the 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.640 page view. You don't care where they go afterward. Well, 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.760 Google one of its big missions was to create a 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.960 better search engine that would ignore all of the gamification 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:56.400 of S e O and to try and look for 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.760 the links that are the best representation of whatever it 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.920 is you're searching for. So that's what they're they're real 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.040 focus was on. However, this whole, this meeting between Starner 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:12.040 and Brennan Page may have been the first seed for 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:16.000 Google Glass, and it happened in before Google was an 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.720 official company. Now flash forward a decade. It's two thousand eight. 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:25.879 Google by this time is a huge company, incredibly successful, 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.280 and it had just launched its own smartphone operating system 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:37.640 called Android. Starner immediately thought that Android had promise as 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.560 more than just an operating system for a smartphone. It 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.840 could be ported over to all sorts of different devices 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:47.840 and used for lots of different stuff, particularly things that 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:52.000 were small and nimble, stuff that wasn't like your traditional 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:58.080 laptop or desktop computer that includes wearables. So he tried 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.560 to get in touch with Brennan Paige. However, the phone 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.440 number he had from ten years previous was no longer 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.879 going to either of them. Big surprise, right, and he 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.920 kind of let lie for another couple of years. In 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.720 two ten he would write an email to Sarah ge 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:20.399 brend and he said, you should probably come out to 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.600 my lab at Georgia Tech and take a look at 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:24.840 the wearables and see where we've gone in the last 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.240 ten years. I think you'd be really interested. And Brandon said, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.040 you know, we're thinking about wearables. We think it's about time. 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.080 And rather than us go there, how about we fly 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:34.919 you and your team out here so you can give 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.400 us a full day of demonstrations. And Starner said yes, 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.160 and next thing he knew, he became a technical lead 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:48.280 for Project Glass over at Google's X division. By shortly 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.520 thereafter after Starner joined the team, uh Starner Brennan Page 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:54.000 were able to bring over another leader in wearable tech. 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.160 Someone that Starner had worked with in the past, Greg 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.840 Priest Dorman, who had pioneered work with bio feedback systems 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:02.880 in the seventies and into the eighties and then moved 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:07.840 into wearable computing. He's another huge name in wearables, so 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:13.480 he also joined the Google Glass development team. On August 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.040 two thousand eleven, four Google employees filed a patent for 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:22.080 what was called a wearable device with input and output structures. 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:26.160 It's the title of a patent, and like most patent titles, 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.760 it's a little dry and it seems pretty nondescript. The 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:34.040 illustrations accompanying the patent include one that closely resembles what 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:36.520 the final form of Google Glass turned out to be. 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.600 Some of the other illustrations look more like a more 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:42.080 or less normal pair of glasses. Some of them looked 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.639 a little strange or odd. The patent described the general 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:50.240 components for the invention, which you know patents are supposed 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:52.440 to do. In order for you to get a patent 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:54.600 on something, you have to actually explain how the thing 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:56.920 works in the parts that it that are that it's 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.840 made out of. Otherwise you can't. You're not supposed to 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.840 get a patent on it. So what did this cover? Well, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.879 I suppose I can quote directly from the patent itself 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.359 under the claims section. The first and most important of 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:19.720 the claims reads thus late an electronic device comprising a 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.439 frame configured to be worn on the head of a user, 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.760 the frame including a bridge configured to be supported on 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.320 the nose of the user, a brow portion coupled to 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.119 and extending away from the bridge to a first end 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.080 remote there from, and configured to be positioned over a 0:20:37.200 --> 0:20:40.119 first side of a brow of the user, and the 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.439 first arm having a first end coupled to the first 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.920 end of the brow portion and extending to a free end, 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.960 the first arm being configured to be positioned over a 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.520 first temple of the user, with the free end disposed 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.320 near a first ear of the user, wherein the bridge 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:00.920 is adjustable for selective positioning of the brow portion relative 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.680 to an eye of the user. A generally transparent display 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.960 means for affixing the display to the frame such that 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:10.920 the display is movable with respect to the frame through 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:14.399 rotation about a first axis that extends parallel to the 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:18.119 first brow portion, and an input device affixed to the 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:21.440 frame and configured for receiving from the user and input 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.199 associated with a function, wherein information related to the function 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:30.520 is presentable on the display. What the what? Well, I'm 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:34.440 gonna explain what that means, but first let's take a 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:44.000 quick break to thank our sponsor. All right, So what 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:48.600 did that patent speak actually mean? Because it gots so 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.080 weird and dry, and that's typical for patents, by the way. 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:58.840 That's it's a very formulaic approach because you know, patent 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.200 system is is a bureocracy, and you have to conform 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.480 to the methodology of the bureaucracy in order to get 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:10.840 your idea through. Otherwise, if it doesn't conform, you're not 0:22:10.960 --> 0:22:14.760 likely to get a patent award. So what it actually 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.080 means is the invention would fit on your face like 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.920 a pair of glasses that one arm or stem if 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:25.200 you prefer, of these glasses would curve around the brow 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:28.880 above one eye to rest against the side of your head, 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.480 so over one eye, and in early Google glass it 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.360 was always the right eye. There'd be a little protrusion. 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:39.920 That's where at the end of that protrusion, that's where 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:44.159 the screen would be, the clear, transparent sclip screen. I 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.040 guess I can say clear and transparent like I can 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:50.240 say a t M machine. Uh. Then the the other 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:53.080 part of it would wrap around back behind your ear, 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.359 with a part of it resting just behind your ear. 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:00.560 More on that in just a second, But that would 0:23:00.560 --> 0:23:03.320 be the main part of Google Glass. The other section 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:07.440 would just be a dumb frame that exists really just 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:09.840 to provide stability. So you would have a part that 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:11.600 would rest on the bridge of your nose that would 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:17.080 help support the the stem I was talking about. And 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:20.159 on the other side your second ear, because you remember 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:24.920 the patent said first ear and first etcetera, etcetera. First brow. 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:27.800 The other one would be the second one. This is 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:31.680 not important to the invention because nothing of any technical 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.760 technical import is going on on that side. It's literally 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:38.080 just a frame to hold the rest of the technology 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:41.080 in place. So over your right ear you have the 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:44.240 stem of the Google Glass, and in that section you've 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:47.560 got a control area. You've got your battery, you've got 0:23:47.600 --> 0:23:50.960 your speaker, you've got your projector for the screen, you've 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.920 got inside, you've got the processor, you've got the receiver 0:23:55.040 --> 0:23:58.840 for Bluetooth, etcetera. On the other side, over your left ear, 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:01.960 it's just a regular or little stem that fits over 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:04.040