Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I am a senior
Speaker 1: writer with the website how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: as always, I like to talk about technology, especially on
Speaker 1: this show. That's why it's called tech Stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about subject that I've touched on in
Speaker 1: past episodes. In fact, we did a full episode about
Speaker 1: this subject. I'm talking about Google Glass. And while we
Speaker 1: did do an older episode about this, I felt like
Speaker 1: we could really use a chance to revisit this and
Speaker 1: and kind of talk about in the more modern style
Speaker 1: of this show. You might remember, the old version of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff was more conversational and this one's less, so
Speaker 1: it's more narrative. Well, Google Glass was a big augmented
Speaker 1: reality the project or an a our project out of
Speaker 1: Google's R and D labs, the Google x labs, that's
Speaker 1: the super secret research and development branch of Google. And
Speaker 1: it probably was a little bit ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: In fact, it really was ahead of its time, and
Speaker 1: it was purposefully ahead of its time. That was part
Speaker 1: of the problem. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It
Speaker 1: might have suffered from some poor design and implementation, or
Speaker 1: at least some choices that perhaps puzzled people. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go so far as to call them poor myself. I
Speaker 1: actually really liked Google Glass. Maybe it was just too
Speaker 1: darned expensive. It's pretty pretty costly. But whatever the reason,
Speaker 1: and we'll explore all of them. It's no longer a
Speaker 1: consumer product that you can buy from Google. So today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Project Glass, how it got started,
Speaker 1: the technology behind it, and the failed experiment to turn
Speaker 1: it into a consumer product, and where is it now.
Speaker 1: The reason I decided to cover this is because the
Speaker 1: week I'm recording this episode, The Telegraph ran an article
Speaker 1: about some of the biggest flops in technology, and some
Speaker 1: of the usual suspects were in there, like the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Virtual Boy was one of the major flops listed. There
Speaker 1: are also some heartbreaking intreats in there. The Sega Dreamcast,
Speaker 1: for example. I know that's another video game component there,
Speaker 1: a console. In this case, it was legitimately a really
Speaker 1: good video game console. It just didn't do very well
Speaker 1: in the market, but I still have one and it
Speaker 1: was really really good. Then there was Google Glass that
Speaker 1: was also one of the ones that the Telegraph listed
Speaker 1: another heartbreaker. So what's the story behind it? Well, I
Speaker 1: can't talk about Google Glass without first talking about augmented reality,
Speaker 1: can I? You know me? You know I can't. I
Speaker 1: am physically incapable of doing that. I'm sure many of
Speaker 1: you are familiar with the concept of augmented reality or
Speaker 1: a R. But just in case, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a quick refresher. So Thomas Couddle gets the credit
Speaker 1: for coining the phrase augmented reality in nineteen nine. He
Speaker 1: was specifically talking about the system that would allow you
Speaker 1: to see where wires needed to be laid out and say,
Speaker 1: the fuselage of an airplane. So if you've ever been
Speaker 1: able to walk into an airplane where it's been stripped
Speaker 1: down so you can see the guts of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was recently at an airplane museum where I got
Speaker 1: to do this. I walked through what had been a
Speaker 1: former seven forty seven and now included a section where
Speaker 1: everything got stripped away so you could see essentially the
Speaker 1: bones the skeleton of the seven forty seven, and part
Speaker 1: of that included conduits through which wires would run. Well,
Speaker 1: when you're building one of these airplanes, you need to
Speaker 1: know where those wire conduits have to be so that
Speaker 1: you can make sure they fit into the overall design.
Speaker 1: Caudal worked on systems that would give a digital overlay
Speaker 1: as engineers would look at this airplane design so that
Speaker 1: they could lay the cables the proper way, make sure
Speaker 1: that they were aligned so that they weren't going to
Speaker 1: end up messing up the design some other way. And really,
Speaker 1: augmented reality is just the integration of digital information into
Speaker 1: the real world around us. And you can do this
Speaker 1: in lots of different ways, but typically we talk about
Speaker 1: augmented reality in terms of overlaying some sort of visual
Speaker 1: digital information, like a digital display through which you can
Speaker 1: see a view of the real world, and thus you
Speaker 1: can have some augmented information on top of that view
Speaker 1: of reality. So a good example of this might be
Speaker 1: a fighter pilot who has a helmet that includes a
Speaker 1: digital heads up display or h u D on the
Speaker 1: visor of the helmet itself, so you might be able
Speaker 1: to visualize things like uh Allied aircraft and you'd be
Speaker 1: able to see it and it would be identified within
Speaker 1: your visor so that you get information about that. That's
Speaker 1: a simple example, simple in the sense that you can
Speaker 1: easily imagine it. It's actually quite complicated when you build
Speaker 1: the technology. A few high end cars have similar features
Speaker 1: that give digitally enhanced information that is projected or otherwise
Speaker 1: displayed on the windshield itself, which gives the driver the
Speaker 1: ability to see certain special views. You might be able
Speaker 1: to see, like a infrared view of what is outside
Speaker 1: the car, or a projection of things like the outside temperature,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. But it tends to be in
Speaker 1: those luxury cars. You don't see it in a lot
Speaker 1: of the lower production cars, even even the nicer ones.
Speaker 1: It's pretty rare. You just you also have I'm guessing
Speaker 1: an augmented reality device on you. More likely than not
Speaker 1: most of you, I'm sure have smartphones. So if you
Speaker 1: have a smartphone, you have a device that is probably
Speaker 1: capable of running augmented reality apps. There are tons of
Speaker 1: different apps in the a R space for all of
Speaker 1: the major smartphone platforms, iOS and Android being the two
Speaker 1: big ones, but there are ones for other ones as well,
Speaker 1: And typically the way these work is that you hold
Speaker 1: your phone up. Your phones back facing camera pulls in
Speaker 1: a view of the world around you, so it's like
Speaker 1: you're getting a live view It's like your your phone
Speaker 1: is a monitor for you to look at a live
Speaker 1: camera feed of the world around you, but then the
Speaker 1: app allows other digital information to be overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of that view. So it might be something as simple
Speaker 1: as directions of where to go. Let's say you've programmed
Speaker 1: your phone saying I wanna get to this one particular
Speaker 1: coffee shop and it's about six blocks away, and you
Speaker 1: hold your phone up and it tells you, all right,
Speaker 1: you need to go three blocks straight ahead, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna take a right. That's a pretty simple again concept
Speaker 1: for augmented reality, but it could do other stuff too,
Speaker 1: Like you might be able to hold it up to
Speaker 1: a sign that's written in a language you can't read,
Speaker 1: and it might be able to read it and translate
Speaker 1: it for you. We're seeing a lot of translate apps
Speaker 1: that in Core break this kind of augmented reality, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome, at least in my my opinion, is
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. But there are tons of different ways to
Speaker 1: implement augmented reality and just as many different use cases
Speaker 1: for a R. And it ranges from just entertainment to
Speaker 1: productivity to industrial use and beyond medicine. Lots of different
Speaker 1: potential uses for a r now. Google Glass started as
Speaker 1: a head mounted computer device that would incorporate augmented reality
Speaker 1: features into a display that you could look through and
Speaker 1: still see the world beyond. And while the project was
Speaker 1: first teased in a video in two thousand twelve, the
Speaker 1: origins for this project go back much further than that.
Speaker 1: And first, before there was even a Google, there was
Speaker 1: a guy named Thad Starner. I've actually had the good
Speaker 1: fortune to meet Mr Starner because he works at Georgia
Speaker 1: Tech as a professor there, and I visited Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1: I've visited the wearable computing labs, and I've chatted with him.
Speaker 1: He's an interesting dude. And Georgia techt just down the
Speaker 1: street from how stuff works, so it's not hard for
Speaker 1: us to get over there. Well, he also served as
Speaker 1: a technical lead for Google Glass. In fact, I believe
Speaker 1: he served as technical lead longer than anyone else in
Speaker 1: that position for that particular project. And it was Startner's
Speaker 1: work in wearable technology and augmented reality that you could
Speaker 1: say got the ball rolling. So you remember I mentioned
Speaker 1: a guy named Caddle got the credit for coining the
Speaker 1: phrase augmented reality. Well, Starner says that he really coined
Speaker 1: that phrase independently of Caudle also in through a fellowship
Speaker 1: proposal he wrote, and he thinks that that might be
Speaker 1: the first appearance of augmented reality. He wanted to use
Speaker 1: the phrase artificial reality when he was originally talking about
Speaker 1: this concept. However, someone else was already using that term.
Speaker 1: That someone was Timothy Leary, and if you don't know
Speaker 1: who Timothy Learry is, you should look that up. Leary
Speaker 1: was specifically talking about the kind of reality you experience
Speaker 1: when you have partaken in mind altering substances. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly the context that Starner wanted to imply when
Speaker 1: he was talking about his technology, so he didn't adopt
Speaker 1: artificial reality, and he went with augmented reality instead. In
Speaker 1: which was years before Google ever even existed. Starner created
Speaker 1: a wearable display, so it was a display that attached
Speaker 1: to his glasses, and really he worked with other people
Speaker 1: to design this. He didn't build it by himself with
Speaker 1: his own two hands, but he worked with designers to
Speaker 1: create a computer system that incorporated a display that could
Speaker 1: clip onto his glasses. And it was pretty big and bulky,
Speaker 1: and it was not transparent. It was like having a
Speaker 1: small computer monitor mounted on your glass is uh. And
Speaker 1: he started to wear this all the time wherever he went.
Speaker 1: It was kind of an experiment in finding out how
Speaker 1: you might use wearable computers, what elements are important, which
Speaker 1: ones are not important, how do you incorporated into your
Speaker 1: daily life. So he would wear this all the time,
Speaker 1: and it very often would prompt people to ask questions
Speaker 1: about this weird thing that he had on him on
Speaker 1: his face mainly. Eventually there was a build of this
Speaker 1: that started going by a name called the Lizzie. It
Speaker 1: was a wearable computer, complete with input devices and with
Speaker 1: that head malond display that again was kind of unsightly originally. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this display was able to show a resolution of seven pixels,
Speaker 1: so tiny resolution compared to what you would find today,
Speaker 1: the very low resolution compared to today's screens. It was
Speaker 1: also monochromatic, so only one color. And connected to that
Speaker 1: was a one handed keyboard called a twiddler, which I
Speaker 1: wish were a joke, but it is not. So it
Speaker 1: was a little one handed twiddler keyboard. It kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of the keypads on old cell phones where
Speaker 1: if you wanted to send a text message and you
Speaker 1: had to hit the letter E. You had to press
Speaker 1: the D E F key twice in a row in
Speaker 1: order for you to select E before you moved onto
Speaker 1: your next letter. According to Starner, he could hit type
Speaker 1: up to a hundred thirty words per minute using this
Speaker 1: one handed keyboard method, which is crazy fast. It's crazy
Speaker 1: fast even if you're using two hands on a regular keyboard.
Speaker 1: So I was really impressed to hear about that. Uh,
Speaker 1: very large and heavy batteries would give the computer more
Speaker 1: than ten hours of juice before you need to recharge.
Speaker 1: But I mean these batteries weighed several pounds at Lee East,
Speaker 1: so they weren't little unobtrusive things attached to the computer.
Speaker 1: It was it was like wearing a hefty backpack. Um,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't exactly comfortable to wear all the time.
Speaker 1: And the computer was really serving as a platform, a
Speaker 1: development platform. It was the basis for programmers to design
Speaker 1: wearable computing applications. So it's not like it magically gave
Speaker 1: Starner some sort of crazy computing ability. It was rather
Speaker 1: an early wearable device to help explore the applications and
Speaker 1: implementations of wearables without having to worry about creating a
Speaker 1: specific product. So this was really exploratory, and when you
Speaker 1: think about it, it was meant to say, we think
Speaker 1: there's something here, but we don't exactly know what it
Speaker 1: is yet. We don't know what the final form is
Speaker 1: going to be, So I don't have an idea for
Speaker 1: something that's going to be in a package on a
Speaker 1: store shelf that other people can go out and buy. Rather,
Speaker 1: I think computing has the capability of transforming our daily
Speaker 1: lives in yet another way. Now keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: isn't nineteen the early nineties. This is before smartphones, so
Speaker 1: smartphones would go on to show us that, yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: having a computer device that you can carry around with
Speaker 1: you changes things. There's no question of that. The Internet
Speaker 1: itself is a reflection of how much that has changed.
Speaker 1: Internet advertising has changed dramatically because of mobile devices and
Speaker 1: the popularity of them. So wearable computer has definitely had
Speaker 1: the potential to make an enormous impact. But we had
Speaker 1: to figure out what sort of implementation made sense and
Speaker 1: what kind of applications would you use it for. Because
Speaker 1: just to have something, just to have it that doesn't
Speaker 1: remain compelling for very long, that would be part of
Speaker 1: the problem of Google Glass later spoiler alert. Now, one
Speaker 1: of those applications that Starner created or e on, was
Speaker 1: a program that would keep track of everything he said,
Speaker 1: whether or not it was straight voice to text, I
Speaker 1: am not entirely certain. I'm sure by some point it
Speaker 1: really was. But he would also be able to type
Speaker 1: things in using the twiddler, which I remind you it's
Speaker 1: not a joke. So it was kind of like a
Speaker 1: perpetual notes system. He could keep track of things he
Speaker 1: was thinking about and talking about, and then he could
Speaker 1: run a search back against that and see if he
Speaker 1: could find anything interesting later on. And he said that
Speaker 1: about cent of the time what he got back was garbage,
Speaker 1: wasn't particularly interesting, insightful, or helpful. But about five percent
Speaker 1: at the time it was totally the opposite. It was
Speaker 1: something really worth knowing and remembering. So he thought of
Speaker 1: it as something like a memory booster. It wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't replacing his memory, but augmenting it. Now, according to
Speaker 1: popular accounts, Starner attended a conference in the late nineties
Speaker 1: and and he met to post graduate students from Stanford,
Speaker 1: so this would be about those two post graduate students
Speaker 1: were named Saragi Brenn and Larry Page, And if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with those two, you know those are the co
Speaker 1: founders for Google. In fact, they would found the company
Speaker 1: Google just a few short months after this conference. Now,
Speaker 1: Brin and Page thought that Starner's wearable computers were fascinating,
Speaker 1: and he gave them a full demonstration of what the
Speaker 1: computer was capable of doing. However, at the time, they
Speaker 1: were already focusing on a way to improve search engines
Speaker 1: on the web, so they couldn't really dedicate any attention
Speaker 1: to wearable computers they were they were too busy perfecting
Speaker 1: their search engine approach. And this was important because back
Speaker 1: in the day before things like Google, the algorithm that
Speaker 1: got so sophisticated that it was able to ignore a
Speaker 1: lot of the tricks people were using to try and
Speaker 1: direct traffic to their sites. Web search engines were just okay.
Speaker 1: Most of them were looking for instances of keywords appearing
Speaker 1: on a page, which meant that people would try and
Speaker 1: full search engines by inserting as many different key search
Speaker 1: terms as possible at the bottom of a page, even
Speaker 1: if the page had nothing to do with that particular concept.
Speaker 1: And why would they do this? Because web advertising is
Speaker 1: based off of how many views you get on a page.
Speaker 1: Page views are king at least most. Web advertising is
Speaker 1: not all of it, but a lot of it is.
Speaker 1: So if you were able to direct a lot of
Speaker 1: traffic to your web page, that was another page view.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter if what that people founded that by
Speaker 1: the time they got there, if it wasn't what they
Speaker 1: were looking for, and if they bounced, you got the
Speaker 1: page view. You don't care where they go afterward. Well,
Speaker 1: Google one of its big missions was to create a
Speaker 1: better search engine that would ignore all of the gamification
Speaker 1: of S e O and to try and look for
Speaker 1: the links that are the best representation of whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're searching for. So that's what they're they're real
Speaker 1: focus was on. However, this whole, this meeting between Starner
Speaker 1: and Brennan Page may have been the first seed for
Speaker 1: Google Glass, and it happened in before Google was an
Speaker 1: official company. Now flash forward a decade. It's two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: Google by this time is a huge company, incredibly successful,
Speaker 1: and it had just launched its own smartphone operating system
Speaker 1: called Android. Starner immediately thought that Android had promise as
Speaker 1: more than just an operating system for a smartphone. It
Speaker 1: could be ported over to all sorts of different devices
Speaker 1: and used for lots of different stuff, particularly things that
Speaker 1: were small and nimble, stuff that wasn't like your traditional
Speaker 1: laptop or desktop computer that includes wearables. So he tried
Speaker 1: to get in touch with Brennan Paige. However, the phone
Speaker 1: number he had from ten years previous was no longer
Speaker 1: going to either of them. Big surprise, right, and he
Speaker 1: kind of let lie for another couple of years. In
Speaker 1: two ten he would write an email to Sarah ge
Speaker 1: brend and he said, you should probably come out to
Speaker 1: my lab at Georgia Tech and take a look at
Speaker 1: the wearables and see where we've gone in the last
Speaker 1: ten years. I think you'd be really interested. And Brandon said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're thinking about wearables. We think it's about time.
Speaker 1: And rather than us go there, how about we fly
Speaker 1: you and your team out here so you can give
Speaker 1: us a full day of demonstrations. And Starner said yes,
Speaker 1: and next thing he knew, he became a technical lead
Speaker 1: for Project Glass over at Google's X division. By shortly
Speaker 1: thereafter after Starner joined the team, uh Starner Brennan Page
Speaker 1: were able to bring over another leader in wearable tech.
Speaker 1: Someone that Starner had worked with in the past, Greg
Speaker 1: Priest Dorman, who had pioneered work with bio feedback systems
Speaker 1: in the seventies and into the eighties and then moved
Speaker 1: into wearable computing. He's another huge name in wearables, so
Speaker 1: he also joined the Google Glass development team. On August
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, four Google employees filed a patent for
Speaker 1: what was called a wearable device with input and output structures.
Speaker 1: It's the title of a patent, and like most patent titles,
Speaker 1: it's a little dry and it seems pretty nondescript. The
Speaker 1: illustrations accompanying the patent include one that closely resembles what
Speaker 1: the final form of Google Glass turned out to be.
Speaker 1: Some of the other illustrations look more like a more
Speaker 1: or less normal pair of glasses. Some of them looked
Speaker 1: a little strange or odd. The patent described the general
Speaker 1: components for the invention, which you know patents are supposed
Speaker 1: to do. In order for you to get a patent
Speaker 1: on something, you have to actually explain how the thing
Speaker 1: works in the parts that it that are that it's
Speaker 1: made out of. Otherwise you can't. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: get a patent on it. So what did this cover? Well,
Speaker 1: I suppose I can quote directly from the patent itself
Speaker 1: under the claims section. The first and most important of
Speaker 1: the claims reads thus late an electronic device comprising a
Speaker 1: frame configured to be worn on the head of a user,
Speaker 1: the frame including a bridge configured to be supported on
Speaker 1: the nose of the user, a brow portion coupled to
Speaker 1: and extending away from the bridge to a first end
Speaker 1: remote there from, and configured to be positioned over a
Speaker 1: first side of a brow of the user, and the
Speaker 1: first arm having a first end coupled to the first
Speaker 1: end of the brow portion and extending to a free end,
Speaker 1: the first arm being configured to be positioned over a
Speaker 1: first temple of the user, with the free end disposed
Speaker 1: near a first ear of the user, wherein the bridge
Speaker 1: is adjustable for selective positioning of the brow portion relative
Speaker 1: to an eye of the user. A generally transparent display
Speaker 1: means for affixing the display to the frame such that
Speaker 1: the display is movable with respect to the frame through
Speaker 1: rotation about a first axis that extends parallel to the
Speaker 1: first brow portion, and an input device affixed to the
Speaker 1: frame and configured for receiving from the user and input
Speaker 1: associated with a function, wherein information related to the function
Speaker 1: is presentable on the display. What the what? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna explain what that means, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. All right, So what
Speaker 1: did that patent speak actually mean? Because it gots so
Speaker 1: weird and dry, and that's typical for patents, by the way.
Speaker 1: That's it's a very formulaic approach because you know, patent
Speaker 1: system is is a bureocracy, and you have to conform
Speaker 1: to the methodology of the bureaucracy in order to get
Speaker 1: your idea through. Otherwise, if it doesn't conform, you're not
Speaker 1: likely to get a patent award. So what it actually
Speaker 1: means is the invention would fit on your face like
Speaker 1: a pair of glasses that one arm or stem if
Speaker 1: you prefer, of these glasses would curve around the brow
Speaker 1: above one eye to rest against the side of your head,
Speaker 1: so over one eye, and in early Google glass it
Speaker 1: was always the right eye. There'd be a little protrusion.
Speaker 1: That's where at the end of that protrusion, that's where
Speaker 1: the screen would be, the clear, transparent sclip screen. I
Speaker 1: guess I can say clear and transparent like I can
Speaker 1: say a t M machine. Uh. Then the the other
Speaker 1: part of it would wrap around back behind your ear,
Speaker 1: with a part of it resting just behind your ear.
Speaker 1: More on that in just a second, But that would
Speaker 1: be the main part of Google Glass. The other section
Speaker 1: would just be a dumb frame that exists really just
Speaker 1: to provide stability. So you would have a part that
Speaker 1: would rest on the bridge of your nose that would
Speaker 1: help support the the stem I was talking about. And
Speaker 1: on the other side your second ear, because you remember
Speaker 1: the patent said first ear and first etcetera, etcetera. First brow.
Speaker 1: The other one would be the second one. This is
Speaker 1: not important to the invention because nothing of any technical
Speaker 1: technical import is going on on that side. It's literally
Speaker 1: just a frame to hold the rest of the technology
Speaker 1: in place. So over your right ear you have the
Speaker 1: stem of the Google Glass, and in that section you've
Speaker 1: got a control area. You've got your battery, you've got
Speaker 1: your speaker, you've got your projector for the screen, you've
Speaker 1: got inside, you've got the processor, you've got the receiver
Speaker 1: for Bluetooth, etcetera. On the other side, over your left ear,
Speaker 1: it's just a regular or little stem that fits over
Speaker 1: your ear, kind of like a regular pair of glasses.
Speaker 1: There's nothing there, no technical elements inside that side of it.
Speaker 1: It's just dumb plastic. So the part that's right behind
Speaker 1: your ear, that's where the speaker was, that's where the
Speaker 1: audio would come from. Obviously, if you're watching a video
Speaker 1: or you're taking a call, you would need to be
Speaker 1: able to hear things through the glasses. Uh, it's cool
Speaker 1: because this particular speaker wasn't just playing audio blasting it
Speaker 1: out into the real world. It was using bone conduction
Speaker 1: to transmit audio so that you could hear it. Now,
Speaker 1: if you stood close to someone who was wearing google
Speaker 1: glass and they were playing audio, you would hear stuff.
Speaker 1: Because when you get down to it, sound is vibration.
Speaker 1: The sound that you are hearing right now is transmitted
Speaker 1: through molecules vibrating at the frequency that I'm talking at,
Speaker 1: and the amplification as well. The amplitude. So when you
Speaker 1: get down to the fact that sound is just vibration,
Speaker 1: bone conduction makes sense. It is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Sound is transmitting through bone. Your bone conducts sound bones,
Speaker 1: I should say, although in this particular case, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the skull, otherwise known in medical circles as the headbone.
Speaker 1: So the headbone would transmit the sound from the speaker.
Speaker 1: So what's happening is that? Well, I guess it helps
Speaker 1: if we talk about just the regular sense of hearing first, Right,
Speaker 1: These vibrating air molecules enter your ear canal. They cause
Speaker 1: your ear drum or your tympanic membrane if you prefer
Speaker 1: to vibrate. Now, that vibration gets transmitted to a tiny
Speaker 1: set of bones in your inner ear, which act as
Speaker 1: kind of like an amplifier, and they ultimately terminate on
Speaker 1: an organ called the cochlea, which is sort of in
Speaker 1: a spiral shell shape. It's got some fluid in it,
Speaker 1: and it's got some fingerlike nerve endings in it that
Speaker 1: are in this fluid. And when the cochlea is vibrated,
Speaker 1: then this fluid moves around and that stimulates the nerve
Speaker 1: endings inside of it, which then send signals to the brain,
Speaker 1: which then interpret that to be sound. It's pretty cool
Speaker 1: when you really developed thought about it. Well, the neat
Speaker 1: thing about bone conduction is you can bypass the ear
Speaker 1: drum entirely. You can send vibrations through bone, which then
Speaker 1: will reach the inner ear on their own bypassing that
Speaker 1: pathway that all other sound tends to take and vibrating
Speaker 1: the cochlea directly. So there are a lot of sports
Speaker 1: earbuds or or headbands or whatever that have these kind
Speaker 1: of bone conduction speakers some people call bone phones. I
Speaker 1: do not, but some people do. And the Google Glass
Speaker 1: had one of these types of speakers to again transmit
Speaker 1: sound without it blasting out into the general world. Uh.
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting stuff. And this meant that you could watch
Speaker 1: things like videos, or listen to a voicemail or make
Speaker 1: a call using Google Glass, and you could hear through
Speaker 1: Google Glass. You didn't have to hold a phone up
Speaker 1: to your other ear. Now, the invention also incorporated a
Speaker 1: screen that was transparent, so, in other words, you had
Speaker 1: to be able to see through the screen and be
Speaker 1: able to view the outside world through it. It couldn't
Speaker 1: have an opaque backing, so you couldn't silver the back
Speaker 1: of the screen, which presents some challenges. So how do
Speaker 1: you project images so that you can see a display
Speaker 1: and read the digital information? Because again, that's what augmented
Speaker 1: reality is all about, right, It's overlaying that digital information
Speaker 1: on top of a view of the actual world around you.
Speaker 1: So if you can see through the screen, how do
Speaker 1: you display images on that said screen? Well, Claim nine
Speaker 1: on that same patent gives some information on that matter.
Speaker 1: It says the electronic device of Claim one, wherein the
Speaker 1: generally transparent display is a prism of a transparent material
Speaker 1: configured to make an image projected into a side of
Speaker 1: the prism visible at a surface of the prism that
Speaker 1: is at a non zero angle to the side of
Speaker 1: the prism. Now what that means is that on casual glance,
Speaker 1: the prism looks like an elongated cube of clear plastic,
Speaker 1: and it looks like that's all it is. But if
Speaker 1: you were to take a look at it from the top,
Speaker 1: like the top of a pair of Google glass, and
Speaker 1: you were looking down, you would see that there's a
Speaker 1: fine line bisecting from one uh corner of this prism
Speaker 1: down into about the middle of the prism. And you know,
Speaker 1: at this weird little diagonal. This is an angled layer
Speaker 1: inside the prism, and the way it works is it
Speaker 1: allows light to pass through straight from ahead of you.
Speaker 1: So if you're wearing the pair of Google glass and
Speaker 1: you're looking at something, light can pass straight through the prism,
Speaker 1: no problem. But if light were to come from a
Speaker 1: right angle to the right, as in a place where
Speaker 1: a little projector in the Google Glass could project out images,
Speaker 1: it would then redirect that light ninety degrees so that
Speaker 1: it goes into your eyes. In other words, you can
Speaker 1: still see the world in front of you because that
Speaker 1: light can pass through unimpeded. Light coming from the right side,
Speaker 1: which is where the the digital little digital projector is,
Speaker 1: that gets reflected into your eyes, so then you can
Speaker 1: see the digital information overlaid on top of the world
Speaker 1: around you. So the think of it is kind of
Speaker 1: like a mirror, but the mirror only works if light
Speaker 1: is coming at it from a very specific angle. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way like a a one of
Speaker 1: those two way mirrors where you can see through one
Speaker 1: way but not in the other. It's kind of similar
Speaker 1: to that. So I thought that was super neat um.
Speaker 1: It was actually the most fascinating part of Google Glass
Speaker 1: when I was first learning about it way back in
Speaker 1: when I was trying to learn how it worked so
Speaker 1: I could write an article about it, and in fact
Speaker 1: I did right at least a version of how Google
Speaker 1: Glass works. I haven't looked on the website to see
Speaker 1: if that's still my version, because we update these these
Speaker 1: articles on occasion and sometimes that changes the authorship as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, way back in the day, I wrote an
Speaker 1: article about how Google Glass works, and part of it
Speaker 1: was just learning about this prism and I thought it
Speaker 1: was fascinating. In addition, the UH, the design of this
Speaker 1: prism meant that it was slightly above your normal line
Speaker 1: of sight. So this is that part of the patent
Speaker 1: that talked about it being offset from your eye. It's
Speaker 1: it's mounted a bit above where your natural line of
Speaker 1: sight would be, so you would always have it in
Speaker 1: your field of view, but it wouldn't necessarily be in
Speaker 1: focus unless you were to glance upward so that your
Speaker 1: right eye would be looking at the prism directly. This
Speaker 1: was a specific design implemented by Google in order to
Speaker 1: avoid things like people getting distracted by digital images when
Speaker 1: they should be paying into to the world around them,
Speaker 1: and to make Google Glass something that you reference rather
Speaker 1: than something that replaces your view of the world around you.
Speaker 1: Very important if you're doing something like I don't know,
Speaker 1: walking or driving or riding a bicycle, anything where you're
Speaker 1: you're moving through a space, you want to be able
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're not having your attention divided
Speaker 1: so that you end up doing something stupid, like walking
Speaker 1: into an open man hole or into a a telephone pole.
Speaker 1: I have done that before, for real zes, but that
Speaker 1: was because I was looking at a phone. I've been
Speaker 1: that guy. I don't look at my phone when I'm
Speaker 1: crossing streets, but I look at it when I'm walking
Speaker 1: down sidewalks, and I have aid that price on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: You think I've learned by now, and I guess I have.
Speaker 1: I've learned how to replicate that experience almost perfectly. The
Speaker 1: patent also included an important component in Google Glasses control system,
Speaker 1: which was a capacitive touch bar along that one stem,
Speaker 1: the active stem of Google Glass. And I've talked about
Speaker 1: capacitive touch before, but let's quickly go over that so
Speaker 1: that we understand what I'm talking about. So with a
Speaker 1: capacitive touch surface, you have the makings of a circuit, right.
Speaker 1: All that remains is you have to have something to
Speaker 1: close the circuit. You have to have something conductive make
Speaker 1: contact with a capacitive surface, so that a complete circuit
Speaker 1: can form, and when a complete circuit does form, there's
Speaker 1: a voltage drop at the location of the touch. So
Speaker 1: if I have a giant touch screen in front of me,
Speaker 1: and it's a capacitive touch screen, and I reached down
Speaker 1: with one finger and make contact with that screen, I
Speaker 1: complete a circuit, and there's a voltage drop at the
Speaker 1: point where I touched it. Software on the device is
Speaker 1: able to interpret that as being a an actual command
Speaker 1: of some sort, and it might be selecting a program.
Speaker 1: It might mean turning volume up or down. It might
Speaker 1: mean swiping right because that dude you're looking at on
Speaker 1: tender is pretty hot and you kind of want to
Speaker 1: know what what's his deal man, so you want to
Speaker 1: swipe right on that. Lots of different applications. They are
Speaker 1: also resistive touch screens that work on a slightly different principle.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that you have to actually use
Speaker 1: pressure when you're making contact, because it's not enough to
Speaker 1: touch it. You actually have to press so that you're
Speaker 1: you're slightly deforming the layers in order to create a
Speaker 1: circuit within the display itself. But that's a totally different
Speaker 1: type of touch screen. Now, in the case of Google Glass,
Speaker 1: the capacity panel is a means to cycle through the
Speaker 1: various features that are on the glasses. It's all so
Speaker 1: a way to execute other basic commands. So Google would
Speaker 1: go a step further than this. You wouldn't have just
Speaker 1: touch commands. That was just one way you could interact
Speaker 1: with Google Glass. They also incorporated some motion controls and
Speaker 1: voice commands. So, for example, if you want to turn
Speaker 1: your screen on and you want to wake up Google
Speaker 1: Glass from its power saving mode, you could choose an
Speaker 1: option where by tilting your head backward at a fairly
Speaker 1: good rate, it would wake up Google. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like saying sup to someone. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: take a photo, you could start with the phrase okay Google,
Speaker 1: which probably sounds familiar to you if you have an
Speaker 1: Android device or a Google Home and if I just
Speaker 1: activated it, I am sorry. You could then follow up
Speaker 1: with take a picture, so you could give a voice
Speaker 1: command to your Google Glass to take photos. I can
Speaker 1: speak from experience that people thought that this was the
Speaker 1: coolest thing ever. When Google Glass was brand new and
Speaker 1: only a few pairs were out in the wild. In
Speaker 1: uh September of after I had a pair of Google Glass,
Speaker 1: and yes I did have a pair of them. Technically,
Speaker 1: the company purchased them. I was just the representative who
Speaker 1: got to be the one to use them. When I
Speaker 1: had them, I took them to dragon Con, which is
Speaker 1: a big science fiction and fantasy convention here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and I would ask people, may I take your picture?
Speaker 1: You know, because there are a lot of people in costume,
Speaker 1: a lot of great causeplay at dragon Con, and most
Speaker 1: of the time people say yes absolutely. That's why I
Speaker 1: got dressed up. And then I would say, okay, Google,
Speaker 1: take a picture, and they would look at me confused
Speaker 1: because they had never seen Google glass do that before.
Speaker 1: And then the little light would flash on the Google
Speaker 1: glass because that would indicate that a photo had been taken.
Speaker 1: Google wanted to have a physical indicator to let people
Speaker 1: know when a camera was active, and then immediately they
Speaker 1: would freak out about the fact that I was wearing
Speaker 1: the future on my faith, and I would invariably have
Speaker 1: to take another photo because the first would mostly be
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a dog, look confused. That's what
Speaker 1: almost all of the first photos looked like from that
Speaker 1: Dragon Con, because I was talking to a pair of
Speaker 1: glasses and they thought I was talking to them and
Speaker 1: they were wondering, why am I saying this? These days
Speaker 1: everyone would totally understand what was going on at the time,
Speaker 1: it was pretty new. Now, to avoid making the headset
Speaker 1: too heavy or too hot, the designers decided that Google
Speaker 1: Glass would have to be a peripheral piece of technology. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they didn't want it to be loaded
Speaker 1: down with processors and with various connectivity chips like cellular connectivity, WiFi,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff. Um, So you would
Speaker 1: pair it to another device, like a smartphone, for example,
Speaker 1: and the smartphone would act as your link between the
Speaker 1: glasses and the outside world. For the most part. You
Speaker 1: can also do WiFi, I think, but obviously WiFi is
Speaker 1: not pervasive, so if you're anywhere where there's not why Fi,
Speaker 1: you would need to have almost like a modem, and
Speaker 1: your smartphone would act as your modem with a Bluetooth
Speaker 1: connection allowing for the communication between your glasses and the phone. Now,
Speaker 1: that simplified the components that needed to go into the
Speaker 1: glasses themselves, and that allowed the designers to make it
Speaker 1: a little bit lighter and not worry about so much
Speaker 1: heat generation. It also meant that there was less of
Speaker 1: a drain on the battery, Which was perhaps the biggest
Speaker 1: challenge for the team was designing a battery that would
Speaker 1: be light enough and yet powerful enough to do what
Speaker 1: they wanted it to do. They needed it to not
Speaker 1: make the glasses uncomfortable to wear or really unwearable for
Speaker 1: any length of time, but they also wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure they had enough juice to get a decent amount
Speaker 1: of use out of it before you had to re
Speaker 1: recharge it. They also got around this by having Google
Speaker 1: Glass go into sleep mode pretty quickly, so that anytime
Speaker 1: you were not actively using it, it could conserve power,
Speaker 1: and that way you could get maybe another hour out
Speaker 1: of it. It drained pretty fast back when I got one.
Speaker 1: Earlier wearable computers would require those massive batteries I talked
Speaker 1: about before, the ones that weighed four or five pounds. Now,
Speaker 1: you don't want something like that on your glasses. It
Speaker 1: would just be uh excruciating. So this was a huge
Speaker 1: challenge and remains a huge challenge in wearables to this day,
Speaker 1: is figuring out the balance between the features you want
Speaker 1: to include and how much can a battery provide before
Speaker 1: you're going to have to start recharging it every few minutes.
Speaker 1: While the paperwork was being drawn up with the patents,
Speaker 1: Starner and others were in Google's labs building this actual
Speaker 1: hardware and testing it constantly. Whenever they were in the lab,
Speaker 1: they were wearing these devices. Whenever they were doing the
Speaker 1: regular jobs, they were wearing these They were testing them.
Speaker 1: They were trying them out, they were adding new features,
Speaker 1: taking old ones out when they didn't work, building apps
Speaker 1: just for their own use, to kind of really test
Speaker 1: the limits of what this technology could do. And then
Speaker 1: at the end of the day they would put them
Speaker 1: up and go home because they weren't ready for the
Speaker 1: world to see Google Glass yet. They didn't want to
Speaker 1: go out and start using it outside where people might
Speaker 1: wonder what the heck is going on, and then next
Speaker 1: thing you know, everyone's talking about it. So in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, Google employees submitted the patent for the head
Speaker 1: mounted display. The Patent Office would eventually grant that patent
Speaker 1: in on February two thirteen, which actually is not that
Speaker 1: long at all. That's pretty fast in many cases for
Speaker 1: between a patent application and when it's actually granted, Um,
Speaker 1: a couple of years is nothing. But then Google let
Speaker 1: the cat out of the bag. In between those two dates,
Speaker 1: in April two twelve, Google released a concept video, and
Speaker 1: this was a video that was shown from a first
Speaker 1: person view, so you were in the shoes of a
Speaker 1: guy wearing some sort of device that had something to
Speaker 1: do with Google. And the reason why I'm vague is
Speaker 1: because the video was pretty vague. It was just giving
Speaker 1: you an idea of what this experience might one day
Speaker 1: be like. Clearly, it was a head melted display of
Speaker 1: some sort with a heads up display element to it,
Speaker 1: and it allowed this guy to send messages, to make
Speaker 1: phone calls, to take images, to share live video with
Speaker 1: someone else. So, in other words, the camera on this
Speaker 1: device could feed video directly to somebody somewhere else in
Speaker 1: the world. Ah, and you could even alert the person
Speaker 1: of what was going on in the world around them.
Speaker 1: So at one point, he's on his way to an
Speaker 1: appointment and he wants to take the subway, and as
Speaker 1: he gets close to the subway, a little alert points
Speaker 1: up and it says their delays at the subway station,
Speaker 1: and he's like, ah, shucks, and so he decides to
Speaker 1: walk instead. So some of the stuff would get worked
Speaker 1: into Google Glass, some of it wouldn't be directly worked
Speaker 1: into Google Glass, but they could fudge it through other means.
Speaker 1: Um But it was an interesting video and it got
Speaker 1: a lot of people talking. It generated a lot of buzz. Now,
Speaker 1: you might think, like with the subway example, was that
Speaker 1: a case of machine vision understanding that the subway the
Speaker 1: guy is walking to is a particular one in a
Speaker 1: particular system, and that that one is one that's being
Speaker 1: affected by delays. Uh That was not worked into Google
Speaker 1: Glass because the camera cannot be perpetually on. If it were,
Speaker 1: the battery would drain very very quickly. Instead, what you
Speaker 1: could do is you could incorporate UH GPS from a
Speaker 1: smartphone as well as a person's calendar if they've added
Speaker 1: an appointment to their calendar, and if the phone makes
Speaker 1: a quote unquote guess that you are on your way
Speaker 1: to set appointment, and it notices you're getting closer to
Speaker 1: a subway station because of your GPS coordinates, it could
Speaker 1: then send you an alert saying, oh, we've got this
Speaker 1: message saying that that particular subway station is experiencing delays. Now,
Speaker 1: from your perspective, it's almost like Google Glass looked at
Speaker 1: the subway and then said, hey, buddy, let's let's walk.
Speaker 1: You're never gonna get there if you try and get
Speaker 1: on the train, But in reality, it could be stuff
Speaker 1: that's happening on the background. The nice thing is it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter how it happens. What matters is the experience.
Speaker 1: Does the experience make sense? Is it compelling? Because if
Speaker 1: it is, it doesn't matter if it was because of
Speaker 1: machine vision or if it was because of a combination
Speaker 1: of GPS and calendar apps and other information. The result
Speaker 1: is the same either way. Other than the fact that
Speaker 1: in the way I just described, it's not draining your
Speaker 1: Google Glass batteries super fast by having the camera on
Speaker 1: all the time. The video got a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: People were excited about it. People wanted to know more,
Speaker 1: but Google did not show off Google Glass at that
Speaker 1: particular moment. They did show it off not too long
Speaker 1: after that. They did, and they did admit they were
Speaker 1: working on an augmented reality project and they wanted to
Speaker 1: get feedback from people about how they would use it
Speaker 1: and what they thought about this concept. A couple of
Speaker 1: months later, they held the Google Io Developer Conference. I've
Speaker 1: been to one of these. They're very very nerdy. It
Speaker 1: is interesting. It gets incredibly technical, very fast, because it's
Speaker 1: meant for people who are developing apps for Google platforms.
Speaker 1: The event took place in San Francisco's Moscone Center, and
Speaker 1: high above the center was a blimp with several skydivers
Speaker 1: and wingsuits and parachutes, and each person in that group
Speaker 1: was wearing a pair of Google Glass. And in the
Speaker 1: middle of a totally different presentation, Sarah a Brand runs
Speaker 1: up on stage and he says, I'm sorry to interrupt,
Speaker 1: but we've got a time sensitive event going on right now,
Speaker 1: and he switches to video showing the blimp above the
Speaker 1: Mousconi Center. Then they switch to a camera inside the
Speaker 1: blimp itself and you see the team there, and you
Speaker 1: see that each member of the team is wearing a
Speaker 1: pair of Google Glass. They start a Google hangout using
Speaker 1: their Google Glass, and then you can see the screens
Speaker 1: from each of their perspectives. So now you're getting a
Speaker 1: first person view of these people who are inside the blimp.
Speaker 1: And eventually, once the blimp is in the right location,
Speaker 1: they make a jump. They jump out of the blimp,
Speaker 1: they fall, they launched their shoots, they land on the
Speaker 1: roof of the Muscony Center. They hand over a package
Speaker 1: to a person riding a mountain bike and he's also
Speaker 1: got Google glass on. He rides over to the edge
Speaker 1: of the building, switches over into repelling gear, repels down
Speaker 1: the side, gets inside the Mousconi Center, gets on a
Speaker 1: different mountain bike, rides over into the conference room, down
Speaker 1: the aisle, straight over to the stage, and bring Serage
Speaker 1: brand package that has inside of it a fresh pair
Speaker 1: of Google glass. It was a heck of a demo.
Speaker 1: I watched it live, not in the Mosconi Center. I
Speaker 1: was watching it remotely. I was not at that particular
Speaker 1: io event, and my jaw was on the floor to
Speaker 1: see this display of wearable technology in such a cool application.
Speaker 1: You know, this this Google hangout that's showing me what
Speaker 1: it's like to skydive from a first person perspective. And
Speaker 1: then this journey from the seat the roof of the
Speaker 1: building down into the center itself. It was an effective demonstration. Now,
Speaker 1: in August, Google would receive a patent. Now this was
Speaker 1: not the same one for the head mounted display patent
Speaker 1: that one wouldn't be granted until two thirteen, But this
Speaker 1: was a patent for a process and the title of
Speaker 1: the patent was unlocking a screen using eye tracking information.
Speaker 1: So this would requireing some sort of camera facing back
Speaker 1: toward a person's eye, and it would look at motions
Speaker 1: of the eye and interpret that as various commands, including
Speaker 1: unlocking a device. So you may have had a smartphone
Speaker 1: at some point that allowed you to create a pattern
Speaker 1: by tracing something on a screen. An old Android one
Speaker 1: I used to use had a a grid of dots,
Speaker 1: and you would connect dots in a particular pattern, set
Speaker 1: that as your pattern of choice, and every time you
Speaker 1: want to unlock the phone from that point forward, you
Speaker 1: had to retrace that pattern. But you could do the
Speaker 1: same thing with eye tracking if you had a virtual
Speaker 1: display of dots and you stared at one dot until
Speaker 1: the camera had picked up and acknowledged yes, you're looking
Speaker 1: at the correct one, and then you just move your
Speaker 1: eye from dot to dot, and this is like moving
Speaker 1: your finger from dot to dot, and you could unlock
Speaker 1: a screen in that way. That's just one particular approach
Speaker 1: that you could use to unlock a screen use eye tracking.
Speaker 1: This particular type of feature would not be included with
Speaker 1: Google Glass, but it shows the kind of stuff they
Speaker 1: were thinking about while they were putting all this together.
Speaker 1: Yet Another pattern revealed what Google hoped to do with
Speaker 1: Project Glass, and it used gestures. So these would be
Speaker 1: hand gestures, actual hand gestures you would make in front
Speaker 1: of your face lack of crazy person in order to
Speaker 1: send commands to your Google Glass. So let's say you
Speaker 1: see something on the street and you like it, it
Speaker 1: could happen. Maybe you see a poster for a band
Speaker 1: that you like and it's they're coming up with a
Speaker 1: a show nearby. You could make a little heart shape
Speaker 1: with your hand. Awe, so cute, you Millennials, And then
Speaker 1: this would end up being picked up by the camera
Speaker 1: and interpreted as liking the thing you are looking at.
Speaker 1: Maybe it posts to a social media page saying, Jonathan
Speaker 1: likes the fact that they might be bians is going
Speaker 1: to be in Atlanta the Variety Playhouse playing a show,
Speaker 1: and yes, I would like that. I love they might
Speaker 1: be giants and the Variety Playhouse is a delightful venue.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would go so far as
Speaker 1: to make the little heart shape of my hands, though
Speaker 1: I do have my limits. But this shows another way
Speaker 1: of how Google was thinking about interactions with its technology
Speaker 1: and ways that you could control it beyond just using
Speaker 1: a capacity, touchscreen or even voice commands. That also would
Speaker 1: not find its way into Google Glass, but it might
Speaker 1: find its way into some future Google product. Now, next
Speaker 1: we'll explore a bit with Google Glass, and we will
Speaker 1: pay handsomely for it. But before I jump into that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. In
Speaker 1: a Google would open up an extremely limited program called
Speaker 1: Glass Explorers. So I guess actually it was dragon Con,
Speaker 1: not dragon Con, which totally makes sense. I can't tell
Speaker 1: those years apart dragon Con to dragon Con, they all
Speaker 1: bleed together. But this, this program, the Glass Explorer's program,
Speaker 1: was a pilot testing program. It was really a beta
Speaker 1: test for the technology itself, and you had to apply
Speaker 1: to be in it. You actually had to fill out
Speaker 1: an online form to explain how you would use Google
Speaker 1: Glass and why you think you would be a good
Speaker 1: candidate for the Glass Explorer program. And not only that,
Speaker 1: but you had to pay for it. You couldn't just
Speaker 1: get a pair. They cost one thousand, five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: dollars for a pair of Google Glass. Now, the application
Speaker 1: process was pretty simple, but it meant that Google could
Speaker 1: very quickly go through these this huge number of applications
Speaker 1: in the site, which one sounds like good choices and
Speaker 1: which ones don't. Now. In my case, our company bought
Speaker 1: the pair of Google glass. I applied for them, but
Speaker 1: it was a company purchase, so I don't actually own
Speaker 1: those Google glass anymore, but I was able to buy something.
Speaker 1: Not going to tell you a funny little story that
Speaker 1: happened to me, And this is all because Jonathan doesn't
Speaker 1: pay enough attention when he fills out online forms. So
Speaker 1: in the United States, there were a couple of different
Speaker 1: places you could pick up a pair of these glasses
Speaker 1: once you ordered them, and you had to physically go
Speaker 1: to these locations. Google did not want to send anything
Speaker 1: to anyone because they didn't want to deal with a
Speaker 1: case of someone intercepting a shipment and stealing it or
Speaker 1: selling it or breaking it apart or whatever. They wanted
Speaker 1: to keep a tight rein on who actually got their
Speaker 1: hands on these Google glass So as part of that,
Speaker 1: you had to go to one of these physical locations
Speaker 1: to pick up your pair. They did not have one
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, which is where I live. They had them
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, and New York. Out
Speaker 1: of those, New York is the easiest for me. To
Speaker 1: get to New York is a couple of hours flight
Speaker 1: from Atlanta. If I want to go to San Francisco
Speaker 1: or Los Angeles, you're talking four or five hours each way.
Speaker 1: So I decided I would pick up my Google Glass
Speaker 1: in New York, and I filled out the form and
Speaker 1: I indicated the day and location where I wanted to
Speaker 1: pick it up. But then I realized something I had
Speaker 1: double booked myself. Something else was happening the day that
Speaker 1: I had chosen, and Google Glass would allow you to
Speaker 1: change your delivery date one time only. That's it. So
Speaker 1: if you messed up, you can change it once and
Speaker 1: that's all you could do. So I go back on
Speaker 1: there and I'm like, well, I can't take this day
Speaker 1: that I thought I was gonna do. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: this other day. So I chose a different day. I
Speaker 1: did not realize, however, that by choosing a different day,
Speaker 1: my choice of destination got reset to the default, which
Speaker 1: was Los Angeles. So instead of rescheduling to flight in
Speaker 1: New York, I rescheduled to fly to l A. So
Speaker 1: I actually had to fly to Los Angeles, go to Venice, California,
Speaker 1: which is where Google has an office, and pick up
Speaker 1: my pair of Google Glass. Bright side of it is
Speaker 1: the day after I got my Google Glass, I got
Speaker 1: to really try it out at the happiest place on
Speaker 1: Earth because I went to Disneyland and I brought my
Speaker 1: Google Glass with me. So funny, stupid story about Jonathan
Speaker 1: not paying attention. Moral of the story is pay attention
Speaker 1: on your online forms, especially if you have to resubmit anyway.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, I still wore eyeglasses. I've had
Speaker 1: lazing eye surgery since then, but back in when I
Speaker 1: got the Google Glass, I store still wore eyeglasses, and
Speaker 1: Google Glass at that point had not been outfitted to
Speaker 1: work with existing pairs of glasses. You could either wear
Speaker 1: Google Glass or you could wear a pair of glasses,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't really do both unless you worked for
Speaker 1: Google like Sarah a brand, and you could have someone
Speaker 1: might make a custom pair for you, so instead I
Speaker 1: would have to wear contact lenses. This was one of
Speaker 1: those early complaints about the Google Glass program. A lot
Speaker 1: of people wanted to be able to attach the Google
Speaker 1: Glass part to an existing pair of glasses, and there
Speaker 1: was just no way you could do that. In May,
Speaker 1: Google opened up the Explorer program and allowed more folks
Speaker 1: to join, and there were talks of special Google Glass stores,
Speaker 1: including floating barges off the coast of places like San
Speaker 1: Francisco and New York. And these were meant to be
Speaker 1: interactive text spaces and perhaps even a high end luxury
Speaker 1: show room for Google Glass. But by June, so mayen
Speaker 1: this is all in the news, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: barges have been kind of coming together over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. But in June, the plans for the
Speaker 1: barges were I guess scuttled is a good word if
Speaker 1: we're talking about barges. The plans were uttle. The barges
Speaker 1: weren't scuttled immediately, but the plans were. They never saw service,
Speaker 1: they never came online, they never became stores. Uh. They
Speaker 1: did raise a lot of interest as people watched them
Speaker 1: take form on a daily basis, but they disappeared with
Speaker 1: about as much of a whimper as could be. They
Speaker 1: were never really explained, and so they kind of started
Speaker 1: to become something and then went away before anyone could
Speaker 1: really figure out what exactly they were going to to
Speaker 1: turn into. In January, Google pulled the plug on the
Speaker 1: Explorer program because ultimately it had been a failure, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily for the reasons you might think. So let's
Speaker 1: rewind a little bit. It's two thousand twelve and Project
Speaker 1: Glass has a divided team. You've got two main camps
Speaker 1: of engineers who are disagreeing about a fundamental aspect of
Speaker 1: Google Glass. One team thinks this should be a persistent
Speaker 1: wearable device, meaning you put it on and you wear
Speaker 1: it all day long. It's like a fashion accessory, it
Speaker 1: belongs as part of your outfit. The other team disagrees
Speaker 1: and says no, this should be something that you're using
Speaker 1: for specific use cases. So a situation comes up when
Speaker 1: you would need Google Glass. That's when you put it on,
Speaker 1: and then when that's over, you take it off again.
Speaker 1: The two can't agree with which direction they should go in.
Speaker 1: Sarah ga Brenn, who's excited about the technology but impatient
Speaker 1: to wait and get all of this sussed out, has
Speaker 1: an idea. Instead of relying on a relatively small group
Speaker 1: of engineers and developers, why not create a beta testing program,
Speaker 1: invite a wider group of people to use it in
Speaker 1: the real world, and take that information as a way
Speaker 1: of developing it further. So, in other words, you open
Speaker 1: this up. You get a lot more information from a
Speaker 1: lot more people using it in a lot of different situations,
Speaker 1: and you see where it works and where it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and you make changes. If it works in one case,
Speaker 1: maybe you pursue that a little more. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: work in another, maybe you change gears or you try
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to make it work in
Speaker 1: that situation. But the point was opening it up to
Speaker 1: more people meant more information, and more information meant that
Speaker 1: they could make better decisions. And this was not a
Speaker 1: bad idea. It could teach Google how people would use
Speaker 1: the technology and where they should concentrate on building out features.
Speaker 1: It was really just a larger part of the overall
Speaker 1: Google Glass experiment, only there was a small problem. The
Speaker 1: unveiling of Google Glass made it a prestige item. The
Speaker 1: way they showed it off and the way they rolled
Speaker 1: it out meant that it became an object of exclusivity.
Speaker 1: You had to apply to be in the club for
Speaker 1: one thing, so people were either in it or they weren't.
Speaker 1: You had to pay for it, which meant that you
Speaker 1: needed to have a pretty good amount of discretionary income
Speaker 1: if you're going to buy something like this. Wearing Google
Speaker 1: Glass didn't just say I'm interested in technology. It also
Speaker 1: said I have the money to blow on something that
Speaker 1: hasn't even become a product yet. And it also said
Speaker 1: I'm in a club and you aren't. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, people began to express concerns about privacy issues.
Speaker 1: I mean, how could someone feel like they could maintain
Speaker 1: any sort of sense of privacy if they're going out
Speaker 1: in public and other people have cameras mounted on their
Speaker 1: faces all the time. I mean, that's what Google glass was.
Speaker 1: In part. It was an external camera pointing outward at
Speaker 1: the world from the perspective of the person wearing it. Now,
Speaker 1: Google Glass had included a light to indicate whether the
Speaker 1: camera was on or not, so that way people could
Speaker 1: see if perhaps video was being recorded or streamed live
Speaker 1: over the internet, or if photo was being taken, and
Speaker 1: if the light was off, then presumably it wasn't. Now
Speaker 1: I would encounter strangers who would see me wearing these
Speaker 1: glasses and they thought it was the most amazing thing ever.
Speaker 1: And the day I received my parent Los Angeles, it
Speaker 1: was like I was being treated as a celebrity. People
Speaker 1: were stopping me to ask about the Google Glass. They
Speaker 1: wanted to learn more. They were fascinated by the technology.
Speaker 1: They wanted me to take pictures of them using it.
Speaker 1: But then I got home and I got around my friends.
Speaker 1: My friends were different because I hung out with my
Speaker 1: friends all the time. They knew me. But now I've
Speaker 1: got a camera on my face pointed at them, and
Speaker 1: more than once I had friends asked me if I
Speaker 1: might take off the Google Glass while I had a
Speaker 1: conversation with them, because they didn't feel comfortable with the
Speaker 1: thought of a camera looking at them, even if the
Speaker 1: camera was demonstrably off. If they knew for a fact
Speaker 1: I wasn't using Google Glass, it was still uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: this was a problem that was widespread. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: anecdotal in my case. So people who were in this
Speaker 1: program um began to be called a new name. The
Speaker 1: official name was Glass Explorer, but the new name was Glasshole.
Speaker 1: That hurt. The technology was not ready for a full
Speaker 1: consumer product. It was never intended to be that. It
Speaker 1: was meant to be a test bed for this technology.
Speaker 1: And if you've got involved in the program, and if
Speaker 1: you were honest with yourself about what you were doing
Speaker 1: and what the product was for, what the Google Glass
Speaker 1: was for You should have been fine with that. You
Speaker 1: knew from the get go that this was a testing
Speaker 1: phase of the technology, not something that was ready for
Speaker 1: prime time. But people began to get frustrated with glasses
Speaker 1: limited utility. They'd say, like, after a couple of months,
Speaker 1: they just stopped wearing them because really, I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got a camera in your pocket already, why do you
Speaker 1: need another one. They weren't putting Google Glass through more
Speaker 1: and more uses, which meant that the program was becoming
Speaker 1: decreasingly important over at Google. They were getting less data,
Speaker 1: which is what they needed in the first place to
Speaker 1: make Google Glass a successful consumer product. So there wasn't
Speaker 1: just enough. They're there to keep people's interest, and the
Speaker 1: wrong sort of folks had jumped into the program. And
Speaker 1: by wrong sort of folks, I mean people who thought
Speaker 1: it was a prestigious thing to be in this club,
Speaker 1: who spent the money as a way of having something
Speaker 1: that other people did not have, not as a way
Speaker 1: of expanding the technology, but as a way of expanding
Speaker 1: their own status among others. And so interest in support
Speaker 1: began to wane, both inside and outside the company. But
Speaker 1: Glass did not disappear lots of those features became incorporated
Speaker 1: into other stuff like Android and Google Home. The phrase
Speaker 1: okay Google is still used to activate Google's Assistant, which
Speaker 1: could be on the phone, it could be on Google Home,
Speaker 1: it could be on other devices. And I apologize if
Speaker 1: once a again I woke it up for those of
Speaker 1: you who have Android devices nearby, and that can do
Speaker 1: a lot of different stuff depending upon what Google Assistant
Speaker 1: is running on. For example, at home, I can use
Speaker 1: it to listen to different types of music or control
Speaker 1: my lights on my phone. I can do all sorts
Speaker 1: of different types of features. And you might even encounter
Speaker 1: Google hardware Glass hardware in certain industries because, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, Google Glass does still exist. Google still produces
Speaker 1: them and still licenses it out, but only to other companies.
Speaker 1: It's a business to business product now, it's not a
Speaker 1: consumer product. This is a program called Google at our
Speaker 1: Glass at work, I should say Glass at work. So
Speaker 1: rather than this consumer product, this is a device that
Speaker 1: gives real world assistant to people working in various industries,
Speaker 1: and it all depends upon the augmented reality apps that
Speaker 1: the glasses are running. But it could be something like
Speaker 1: what I was talking about before, with mechanics, giving real time,
Speaker 1: overlaid information on how to do a repair, or how
Speaker 1: to take a part an engine, or how to build one.
Speaker 1: It could be for medical use, it could be even
Speaker 1: just for corporate use. There are a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: that Google Glass could come in handy. So it is
Speaker 1: still around. It's just not a prestige product for glass holes.
Speaker 1: Now it's doing real work. The sad thing is, I
Speaker 1: bet Google Glasses progress would be much further along if
Speaker 1: there had not been such a hoopla about it when
Speaker 1: it was first launched. If it had been launched more
Speaker 1: like we're trying to develop this technology and less like
Speaker 1: a rock star, then maybe people wouldn't have gotten so
Speaker 1: wrapped up in it, And maybe that means that Google
Speaker 1: would have been able to get more helpful information from
Speaker 1: people who are really using the technology the way it
Speaker 1: was intended, and maybe we would see Google Glass much
Speaker 1: further in development, and maybe it would even be a
Speaker 1: con sumer product. I'm sure it was discouraging to the
Speaker 1: Google Glass team to see how things went awry, but
Speaker 1: it does still exist and a R is still a thing.
Speaker 1: There are related products that are also pushing augmented reality
Speaker 1: into a new era. There's Microsoft's hollow lens. That's a
Speaker 1: great example. There's Magic Leap, about which we know very
Speaker 1: little bits and pieces of information leak out over time,
Speaker 1: but we're always learning a little bit more. But I'm
Speaker 1: always going to have a soft spot in my heart
Speaker 1: for Google Glass. It's something that I think of and
Speaker 1: it's something that I think if it had just had
Speaker 1: a little bit of a lower key rollout, we'd be
Speaker 1: looking at a very different world with wearables right now,
Speaker 1: or at least a more advanced one. As for Google,
Speaker 1: the company seems to maintain an optimistic outlook. If you
Speaker 1: visit the Google Glass web page today, you'll be greeted
Speaker 1: by a pretty simple shot, a photograph of a pair
Speaker 1: of feet clad in Neon yellow sneakers, with the phrase
Speaker 1: thanks for exploring with us. The journey doesn't end here,
Speaker 1: but our journey does. It's time to wrap up this episode,
Speaker 1: So if you guys have any suggestions, comments, or anything
Speaker 1: like that, you should get in touch with me. You
Speaker 1: can email me at tech Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle for the show at both
Speaker 1: of those is text Stuff H. S W. And remember,
Speaker 1: you can watch me live on Wednesday and Friday afternoons
Speaker 1: at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Visit that link
Speaker 1: to learn more about my live stream schedule. That's all
Speaker 1: for now, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com