Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer at iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. So it is Friday, It's time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode. The episode you're about to hear, originally
Speaker 1: published on May twelfth, twenty seventeen, is called the Google
Speaker 1: Glass Story. Hope you enjoy. I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: a subject that I've touched on in past episodes. In fact,
Speaker 1: we did a full episode about this subject. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about Google Glass. And while we did do an older
Speaker 1: episode about this, I felt like we could really use
Speaker 1: a chance to revisit this and kind of talk about
Speaker 1: in the more modern style of this show. You might
Speaker 1: remember the old version of tech Stuff was more conversational,
Speaker 1: and this one's less, so it's more narrative. Well, Google
Speaker 1: Glass was a big augmented reality project or an AR project,
Speaker 1: out of Google's R and D labs, the Google X Labs,
Speaker 1: that's the super secret research and development branch of Google.
Speaker 1: And 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 costly, but whatever the reason, and
Speaker 1: we'll explore all of them. It's no longer a consumer
Speaker 1: product that you can buy from Google. So today we're
Speaker 1: going to 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 intrease 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 AR,
Speaker 1: but just in case, I'm going to give you a
Speaker 1: quick refresher. So Thomas Cottle gets the credit for coining
Speaker 1: the phrase augmented reality in nineteen ninety. He was specifically
Speaker 1: talking about a system that would allow you to see
Speaker 1: where wires needed to be laid out in say, the
Speaker 1: fuselage of an airplane. So if you've ever been able
Speaker 1: to walk into an airplane where it's been stripped down
Speaker 1: so you can see the guts of it. I was
Speaker 1: recently at an airplane museum where I got to do this.
Speaker 1: I walk through what had been a former seven forty
Speaker 1: seven and now included a section where everything got stripped
Speaker 1: away so you could see essentially the bones the skeleton
Speaker 1: of the seven forty seven, and part of that included
Speaker 1: conduits through which wires would run well. When you're building
Speaker 1: one of these airplanes, you need to know where those
Speaker 1: wire conduits have to be so that you can make
Speaker 1: sure they fit into the overall design. Coddle worked on
Speaker 1: systems that would give a digital overlay as engineers would
Speaker 1: look at this airplane design so that they could lay
Speaker 1: the cables the proper way, make sure that they were
Speaker 1: aligned so that they weren't going to end up messing
Speaker 1: up the design some other way. And really, augmented reality
Speaker 1: is just the integration of digital information into the real
Speaker 1: world around us. And you can do this in lots
Speaker 1: of different ways, but typically we talk about augmented reality
Speaker 1: in terms of overlaying some sort of visual digital information,
Speaker 1: like a digital display through which you can see a
Speaker 1: view of the real world, and thus you can have
Speaker 1: some augmented information on top of that view of reality.
Speaker 1: So a good example of this might be a fighter
Speaker 1: pilot who has a helmet that includes a digital heads
Speaker 1: up display or HUD on the visor of the helmet itself,
Speaker 1: so you might be able to visualize things like Allied
Speaker 1: aircraft and you'd be able to see it and it
Speaker 1: would be identified within your visor, so that you get
Speaker 1: information about that. That's a simple example, simple in the
Speaker 1: sense that you can easily imagine it. It's actually quite
Speaker 1: complicated when you build the technology. A few high end
Speaker 1: cars have similar features that give digitally enhanced information that
Speaker 1: is projected or otherwise displayed on the windshield itself, which
Speaker 1: gives the driver the ability to see certain special views.
Speaker 1: You might be able to see, like an infrared view
Speaker 1: of what is outside the car, or a projection of
Speaker 1: things like the outside temperature, that sort of stuff. But
Speaker 1: it tends to be in those luxury cars. You don't
Speaker 1: see it in a lot of the lower production cars,
Speaker 1: even the nicer ones. It's pretty rare. You also have,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing an augmented reality device on you. More likely
Speaker 1: than not most of you, I'm sure have smartphones. So
Speaker 1: if you have a smartphone, you have a device that
Speaker 1: is probably capable of running augmented reality apps. There are
Speaker 1: tons of different apps in the AR space for all
Speaker 1: of the major smartphone platforms, iOS and Android being the
Speaker 1: two big ones, but there are ones for other ones
Speaker 1: as well, and typically the way these work is that
Speaker 1: you hold your phone up, your phone's backfacing camera pulls
Speaker 1: in a view of the world around you. So it's
Speaker 1: like you're getting a live view. It's like 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. Say you've programmed your
Speaker 1: phone saying I want to 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: going to take a rite. That's a pretty simple again
Speaker 1: concept 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 incorporate this kind of augmented reality, and it's pretty awesome,
Speaker 1: at least in my opinion, is pretty awesome. But there
Speaker 1: are tons of different ways to implement augmented reality and
Speaker 1: just as many different use cases for AR, and it
Speaker 1: ranges from just entertainment to productivity to industrial use and
Speaker 1: beyond medicine, lots of different potential uses for AR now.
Speaker 1: Google Glass started as a head mounted computer device that
Speaker 1: would incorporate augmented reality features into a display that you
Speaker 1: could look through and still see the world beyond. And
Speaker 1: while the project was first teased in a video in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the origins for this project go back much
Speaker 1: further than that. And first, before there was even a Google,
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Thad Starner. I've actually had
Speaker 1: the good fortune to meet mister Starner because he works
Speaker 1: at Georgia Tech. He's a professor there, and I visited
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech. I visited the wearable computing labs, and I've
Speaker 1: chatted with him. He's an interesting dude, and Georgia Tech's
Speaker 1: just down the street from how stuff works, so it's
Speaker 1: not hard for us to get over there. Well. He
Speaker 1: also served as a technical lead for Google Glass. In fact,
Speaker 1: I believe he served as technical lead longer than anyone
Speaker 1: else in that position for that particular project. And it
Speaker 1: was Starner's work in wearable technology and augmented reality that
Speaker 1: you could say got the ball rolling. So you remember
Speaker 1: I mentioned a guy named Coddle got the credit for
Speaker 1: coining the phrase augmented reality. Well, Starner says that he
Speaker 1: really coined that phrase independently of Coddle. Also in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety through a fellowship proposal, he wrote, and he thinks
Speaker 1: that that might be the first appearance of augmented reality.
Speaker 1: He wanted to use the phrase artificial reality when he
Speaker 1: was originally talking about this concept. However, someone else was
Speaker 1: already using that term. That someone was Timothy Leary, and
Speaker 1: if you don't know who Timothy Leary is, you should
Speaker 1: look that up. Leary was specifically talking about the kind
Speaker 1: of reality you experience when you have partaken in mind
Speaker 1: altering substances. So it wasn't exactly the context that Starner
Speaker 1: wanted to imply when he was talking about his technology,
Speaker 1: so he didn't adopt artificial reality, and he went with
Speaker 1: augmented reality instead. In nineteen ninety three, which was years
Speaker 1: before Google ever even existed, Starner created a wearable display.
Speaker 1: So it was a display that attached to his glasses,
Speaker 1: and really he worked with other people to design this.
Speaker 1: He didn't build it by himself with his own two hands,
Speaker 1: but he worked with designers to create a computer system
Speaker 1: that incorporated a display that could clip onto his glasses,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty big and bulky, and it was
Speaker 1: not transparent. It was like having a small computer monitor
Speaker 1: mounted on your glasses. And he started to wear this
Speaker 1: all the time wherever he went. It was kind of
Speaker 1: an experiment in finding out how you might use wearable computers,
Speaker 1: what elements are important, which ones are not important, how
Speaker 1: do you incorporate it into your daily life. So he
Speaker 1: would wear this all the time, and it very often
Speaker 1: would prompt people to ask questions about this weird thing
Speaker 1: that he had on hims on his face mainly. Eventually
Speaker 1: there was a build of this that started going by
Speaker 1: a name called the Lizzy. It was a wearable computer,
Speaker 1: complete with input devices and with that head Melton display
Speaker 1: that again was kind of unsightly originally anyway, This display
Speaker 1: was able to show a resolution of seven hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty by two hundred and eighty pixels, so tiny resolution
Speaker 1: compared to what you would find today, the very low
Speaker 1: resolution compared to today's screens. It was also monochromatic, so
Speaker 1: only one color. And connected to that was a one
Speaker 1: handed keyboard called a twiddler, which I wish were a joke,
Speaker 1: but it is not. So it was a little one
Speaker 1: handed twiddler keyboard. It kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 1: keypads on old cell phones where if you wanted to
Speaker 1: send a text message and you had to hit the
Speaker 1: letter E, you had to press the def key twice
Speaker 1: in a row in order for you to select E
Speaker 1: before you moved on to your next letter. According to Starner,
Speaker 1: he could hit type up to one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: words per minute using this one handed keyboard method, which
Speaker 1: is crazy fast. It's crazy fast even if you're using
Speaker 1: two hands on a regular keyboard. So I was really
Speaker 1: impressed to hear about that very large and heavy batteries
Speaker 1: would give the computer more than ten hours of juice
Speaker 1: before you need to recharge. But I mean, these batteries
Speaker 1: weighed several pounds at least, so they weren't little, unobtrusive
Speaker 1: things attached to the computer. It was like wearing a
Speaker 1: hefty backpack, so it wasn't exactly comfortable to wear all
Speaker 1: the time. And the computer was really serving as a platform,
Speaker 1: a development platform. It was the basis for programmers to
Speaker 1: design wearable computing applications. So it's not like it magically
Speaker 1: gave Starner some sort of crazy computing ability. It was
Speaker 1: rather an early wearable device to help explore the applications
Speaker 1: and implementations of wearables without having to worry about creating
Speaker 1: a specific product. So this was really exploratory, and when
Speaker 1: you think about it, it was meant to say, we
Speaker 1: think there's something here, but we don't exactly know what
Speaker 1: it is yet. We don't know what the final form
Speaker 1: is going to be, So I don't have an idea
Speaker 1: for something that's going to be in a package on
Speaker 1: a 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 the early nineteen 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 computers definitely had the
Speaker 1: potential to make an enormous impact, but we had to
Speaker 1: figure out what sort of implementation made sense and what
Speaker 1: kind of applications would you use it? For because just
Speaker 1: to have something, just to have it that doesn't remain
Speaker 1: compelling for very long. That would be part of the
Speaker 1: problem of Google Glass later spoiler alone. Now. One of
Speaker 1: those applications that Starner created early on was a program
Speaker 1: that would keep track of everything he said, whether or
Speaker 1: not it was straight voice to text. I am not
Speaker 1: entirely certain. I'm sure by some point it really was.
Speaker 1: But he would also be able to type things in
Speaker 1: using the twiddler, which I remind you it's not a joke.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of like a perpetual notes system.
Speaker 1: He could keep track of things he was thinking about
Speaker 1: and talking about, and then he could run a search
Speaker 1: back against that see if he could find anything interesting
Speaker 1: later on, and he said that about ninety five percent
Speaker 1: of the time what he got back was garbage, wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly interesting, insightful, or helpful. But about five percent of
Speaker 1: the time it was totally the opposite. It was something
Speaker 1: really worth knowing and remembering. So he thought of it
Speaker 1: as something like a memory booster. It wasn't replacing his memory,
Speaker 1: but augmenting it. Now, according to popular accounts, Starner attended
Speaker 1: a conference in the late nineties and he met two
Speaker 1: postgraduate students from Stanford, so this would be about nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Those two postgraduate students were named Saragaie Brenn
Speaker 1: and Larry Page, and if you're familiar with those two,
Speaker 1: you know those are the co founders or Google. In fact,
Speaker 1: they would found the company Google just a few short
Speaker 1: months after this conference. Now, Brin and Page thought that
Speaker 1: Starner's wearable computers were fascinating, and he gave them a
Speaker 1: full demonstration of what the computer was capable of doing. However,
Speaker 1: at the time, they were already focusing on a way
Speaker 1: to improve search engines on the web, so they couldn't
Speaker 1: really dedicate any attention to wearable computers. They were too
Speaker 1: busy perfecting their search engine approach. And this was important
Speaker 1: because back in the day before things like Google, the
Speaker 1: algorithm that got so sophisticated that it was able to
Speaker 1: ignore a lot of the tricks people were using to
Speaker 1: try and direct traffic to their sites. Web search engines
Speaker 1: were just okay. Most of them were looking for instances
Speaker 1: of keywords appearing on a page, which meant that people
Speaker 1: would try and fool search engines by inserting as many
Speaker 1: different key search terms as possible at the bottom of
Speaker 1: a page, even if the page had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that particular concept. And why would they do this
Speaker 1: Because web advertising is based off of how many views
Speaker 1: you get on a page. Page views are king at
Speaker 1: least most web advertising is not all of it, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it is. So if you were able
Speaker 1: to direct a lot of traffic to your web page,
Speaker 1: that was another page view, it didn't matter if what
Speaker 1: that people founded that by the time they got there,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't what they were looking for, and if
Speaker 1: they bounced, you got the page view. You don't care
Speaker 1: where they go afterward. Well, Google one of its big
Speaker 1: missions was to create a better search engine that would
Speaker 1: ignore all of the gamification of SEO and to try
Speaker 1: and look for the links that are the best representation
Speaker 1: of whatever it is you're searching for. So that's what
Speaker 1: their real focus was on. However, this meeting between Starner
Speaker 1: and Brennan Page may have been the first seed for
Speaker 1: Google Glass, and it happened in nineteen ninety eight, before
Speaker 1: Google was an official company. Now flash forward a decade,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand and eight. Google by this time is
Speaker 1: a huge company, incredibly successful, and it had just launched
Speaker 1: its own smartphone operating system called Android. Starner immediately thought
Speaker 1: that Android had promise as more than just an operating
Speaker 1: system for a smartphone. It could be ported over to
Speaker 1: all sorts of different devices and used for lots of
Speaker 1: different stuff, particularly things that were small and nimble, stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't like your traditional laptop or desktop computer that
Speaker 1: includes wearables. So he tried to get in touch with
Speaker 1: Brennan Page. However, the phone number he had from ten
Speaker 1: years previous was no longer going to either of them.
Speaker 1: Big surprise, right, and he kind of let lie for
Speaker 1: another couple of years. In twenty ten, he would write
Speaker 1: an email to Saragai Brenn and he said, you should
Speaker 1: probably come out to my lab at Georgia Tech and
Speaker 1: take a look at the wearables and see where we've
Speaker 1: gone in the last ten years. I think he'd be
Speaker 1: really interested. And Brennan said, you know, we're thinking about wearables.
Speaker 1: We think it's about time. And rather than us go there,
Speaker 1: how about we fly you and your team out here
Speaker 1: so you can give us a full day of demonstrations.
Speaker 1: And Starner said yes, and next thing he knew, he
Speaker 1: became a technical lead for Project glass Over at Google's
Speaker 1: X division. By Shortly thereafter, after Starner joined the team,
Speaker 1: Starner Brennan Page were able to bring over another leader
Speaker 1: in wearable tech, someone that Starner had worked with in
Speaker 1: the past, Greg Priest Dorman, who had pioneered work with
Speaker 1: biofeedback systems in the seventies and into the eighties and
Speaker 1: then moved into wearable computing. He's another huge name in wearables,
Speaker 1: so he also joined the Google Glass development team. On
Speaker 1: August eighteenth, twenty eleven, four Google employees filed a patent
Speaker 1: for what was called a wearable device with input and
Speaker 1: output structures. It's the title of a patent, and like
Speaker 1: most patent titles, it's a little dry and it seems
Speaker 1: pretty nondescript. The illustrations accompanying the patent include one that
Speaker 1: closely resembles what the final form of Google Glass turned
Speaker 1: out to be. Some of the other illustrations looked more
Speaker 1: like a more or less normal pair of glasses. Some
Speaker 1: of them looked a little strange or odd. The patent
Speaker 1: described the general components for the invention, which you know
Speaker 1: patents are supposed to do. In order for you to
Speaker 1: get a patent on something, you have to actually explain
Speaker 1: how the thing works the parts 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 therefrom and configured to be positioned over a first
Speaker 1: side of a brow of the user, and a first
Speaker 1: arm having a first end coupled to the first end
Speaker 1: 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 a fixing the display to the frame such
Speaker 1: that the display is movable with respect to the frame
Speaker 1: through rotation about a first axis that extends parallel to
Speaker 1: the first brow portion, and an input device a fixed
Speaker 1: to the frame and configured for receiving from the user.
Speaker 1: And input associated with a function wherein information related to
Speaker 1: the function is presentable on the display. What the what? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to explain what that means, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. All right,
Speaker 1: So what did that patent speak actually mean? Because it
Speaker 1: got so weird and dry, and that's typical for patents,
Speaker 1: by the way. That's it's a very formulaic approach because
Speaker 1: patent system is a bureaucracy 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 screen. I guess
Speaker 1: I can say clear and transparent like I can say
Speaker 1: ATM machine. Then the other part of it would wrap
Speaker 1: around back behind your ear, with a part of it
Speaker 1: resting just behind your ear. More on that than just
Speaker 1: a second, but that would be the main part of
Speaker 1: Google Glass. The other section would just be a dumb
Speaker 1: frame that exists really just to provide stability. So you
Speaker 1: would have a part that would rest on the bridge
Speaker 1: of your nose that would help support the stem I
Speaker 1: was talking about. And on the other side your second ear,
Speaker 1: because you remember the patent said first ear and first etc.
Speaker 1: Et cetera. First brow. The other one would be the
Speaker 1: second one. This is not important to the invention because
Speaker 1: nothing of any technical import is going on on that side.
Speaker 1: It's literally just a frame to hold the rest of
Speaker 1: the technology in place. So over your right ear you
Speaker 1: have the stem of the Google Glass, and in that
Speaker 1: section you've got a control area. You've got your battery,
Speaker 1: you've got your speaker, you've got your projector for the screen,
Speaker 1: you've got inside, you've got the processor, you've got the
Speaker 1: receiver for Bluetooth et cetera. On the other side, over
Speaker 1: your left ear, it's just a regular little stem that
Speaker 1: fits over your ear, kind of like a regular pair
Speaker 1: of glasses. There's nothing, no technical elements inside that side
Speaker 1: of it. It's just dumb plastic. So the part that's
Speaker 1: right behind your ear, that's where the speaker was, that's
Speaker 1: where the audio would come from. Obviously, if you're watching
Speaker 1: a video or you're taking a call, you would need
Speaker 1: to be able to hear things through the glasses. It's
Speaker 1: cool because this particular speaker wasn't just playing audio blasting
Speaker 1: it out into the real world. It was using bone
Speaker 1: conduction 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 acts 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 finger like nerve endings in it
Speaker 1: that are in this fluid. And when the coclia is vibrated,
Speaker 1: then this fluid moves around and that stimulates the nerve
Speaker 1: endings inside of it, which then sends signals to the
Speaker 1: brain which then interpret that to be sound. It's pretty
Speaker 1: cool when you really develop thought about it. Well, the
Speaker 1: neat thing about bone conduction is you can bypass the
Speaker 1: ear drum entirely. You can send vibrations through bone, which
Speaker 1: then will reach the inner ear on their own bypassing
Speaker 1: that pathway that all other sound tends to take and
Speaker 1: vibrating the cochlea directly. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: sports earbuds or headbands or whatever that have these kind
Speaker 1: of bone conduction speakers. Some people call them bone phones.
Speaker 1: I do not, but some people do. And the Google
Speaker 1: Lass had one of these types of speakers to again
Speaker 1: transmit sound without it blasting out into the general world.
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 corner of this prism down
Speaker 1: into about the middle of the prism, a this weird
Speaker 1: little diagonal. This is an angle layer inside the prism,
Speaker 1: and the way it works is it allows light to
Speaker 1: pass through straight from ahead of you. So if you're
Speaker 1: wearing the pair of Google Glass and you're looking at something,
Speaker 1: light can pass straight through the prism, no problem. But
Speaker 1: if light were to come from a right angle to
Speaker 1: the right, as in a place where a little projector
Speaker 1: in the Google Glass could project out images, it would
Speaker 1: then redirect that light ninety degrees so that it goes
Speaker 1: into your eyes. In other words, you can still see
Speaker 1: the world in front of you because that light can
Speaker 1: pass through unimpeded. Light coming from the right side, which
Speaker 1: is where the little digital projector is, that gets reflected
Speaker 1: into your eyes, so then you can see the digital
Speaker 1: information overlaid on top of the world around you. So
Speaker 1: think of its kind of like a mirror, but the
Speaker 1: mirror only works if light is coming at it from
Speaker 1: a very specific angle. It's, you know, in a way,
Speaker 1: like one of those two way mirrors where you can
Speaker 1: see through one way but not in the other. It's
Speaker 1: kind of similar to that. So I thought that was
Speaker 1: super neat. It was actually the most fascinating part of
Speaker 1: Google Glass when I was first learning about it way
Speaker 1: back in twenty twelve, when I was trying to learn
Speaker 1: how it worked so I could write an article about it,
Speaker 1: and in fact I did write at least a version
Speaker 1: of how Google Glass works. I haven't looked on the
Speaker 1: website to see if that's still my version, because we
Speaker 1: update these articles on occasion and sometimes that changes the
Speaker 1: authorship as well. But yeah, way back in the day,
Speaker 1: I wrote an article about how Google Glass works, and
Speaker 1: part of it was just learning about this prism and
Speaker 1: I thought it was fascinating. In addition, the design of
Speaker 1: this prism meant that it was slightly above your normal
Speaker 1: line of sight. So this is that part of the
Speaker 1: patent that talked about it being offset from your eye.
Speaker 1: It's it's mounted a bit above where your natural line
Speaker 1: of sight would be, so you would always have it
Speaker 1: in your field of view, but it wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: in focus unless you were to glance upward so that
Speaker 1: your right eye would be looking at the prism directly.
Speaker 1: This was a specific design implemented by Google in order
Speaker 1: to avoid things like people getting distracted by digital images
Speaker 1: when they should be paying 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: moving through a space. You want to be able to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're not having your attention divided so
Speaker 1: that you end up doing something stupid, like walking into
Speaker 1: an open manhole or into a telephone pole. I have
Speaker 1: done that before, for Realsi's but that was because I
Speaker 1: was looking at a phone. I've been that guy. I
Speaker 1: don't look at my phone when I'm crossing streets, but
Speaker 1: I look at it when I'm walking down sidewalks, and
Speaker 1: I have paid that price on multiple occasions. You think
Speaker 1: I've learned by now, and I guess I have. I've
Speaker 1: learned how to replicate that experience almost perfectly. The patent
Speaker 1: 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 reach 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 an actual command of
Speaker 1: some sort, and it might be selecting a program. It
Speaker 1: might mean turning volume up or down. It might mean
Speaker 1: swiping right because that dude you're looking at on tender
Speaker 1: is pretty hot and you kind of want to know
Speaker 1: what's his deal man, so you want to swipe right
Speaker 1: on that. Lots of different applications. There are also resistive
Speaker 1: touch screens that work on a slightly different principle. Those
Speaker 1: are the ones that you have to actually use pressure
Speaker 1: when you're making contact because it's not enough to touch it.
Speaker 1: You actually have to press so that you're slightly deforming
Speaker 1: the layers in order to create a circuit within the
Speaker 1: display itself. But that's a totally different type of touch screen. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of Google Glass, the capacity panel is
Speaker 1: a means to cycle through the various features that are
Speaker 1: on the glasses. It's also a way to execute other
Speaker 1: basic commands, so Google would go a step further than this.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have just touch commands. That was just one
Speaker 1: way you could interact with Google Glass. They also incorporated
Speaker 1: some motion controls and voice commands. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to turn your screen on and you wanted
Speaker 1: to wake up Google Glass from its power saving mode,
Speaker 1: you could choose an option where by tilting your head
Speaker 1: backward at a fairly good rate, it would wake up Google.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like saying sup to someone. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more about the Google Glass story in just
Speaker 1: a moment. If you want to take a photo, you
Speaker 1: could start with the phrase okay Google, which probably sounds
Speaker 1: familiar to you if you have an Android device or
Speaker 1: a Google Home and if I just activated it, I
Speaker 1: am sorry. You could then follow up with take a picture,
Speaker 1: so you could give a voice command to your Google
Speaker 1: Glass to take photos. I can speak from experience that
Speaker 1: people thought that this was the coolest thing ever when
Speaker 1: Google Glass was brand new and only a few pairs
Speaker 1: were out in the wild. In September of twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: after I had a pair of Google Glass, and yes
Speaker 1: I did have a pair of them. Technically, the company
Speaker 1: purchased them. I was just the representative who got to
Speaker 1: be the one to use them. When I had them,
Speaker 1: I took them to dragon Con, which is a big
Speaker 1: science fiction and fantasy convention here in Atlanta, and I
Speaker 1: would ask people, may I take your picture? Because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people in costume, a lot of
Speaker 1: great cosplay at dragon Con, and most of the time
Speaker 1: people say yes absolutely. That's why I got dressed up.
Speaker 1: And then I would say okay, Google, take a picture,
Speaker 1: and they would look at me confused because they had
Speaker 1: never seen Google Glass do that before. And then the
Speaker 1: little light would flash on the Google Glass because that
Speaker 1: would indicate that a photo had been taken. Google wanted
Speaker 1: to have a physical indicator to let people know when
Speaker 1: a camera was active. And then immediately they would freak
Speaker 1: out about the fact that I was wearing the future
Speaker 1: on my faith, and I would invariably have to take
Speaker 1: another photo because the first one would mostly be if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a dog, look confused. That's what almost
Speaker 1: all of the first photos look like from that Dragon Con.
Speaker 1: Because I was talking to a pair of glasses and
Speaker 1: they thought I was talking to them and they were wondering,
Speaker 1: why am I saying this. These days, everyone would totally
Speaker 1: understand what was going on. At the time, it was
Speaker 1: pretty new. Now, to avoid making the headset too heavy
Speaker 1: or too hot, the designers decided that Google Glass would
Speaker 1: have to be a peripheral piece of technology, so in
Speaker 1: other words, they didn't want it to be loaded down
Speaker 1: with processors and with various connectivity chips like cellular connectivity,
Speaker 1: Wi Fi, all of that kind of stuff. So you
Speaker 1: would co pair it to another device, like a smartphone,
Speaker 1: for example, and the smartphone would act as your link
Speaker 1: between the glasses and the outside world. For the most part.
Speaker 1: You could also do Wi Fi, I think, but obviously
Speaker 1: WiFi is not pervasive, so if you're anywhere where there's
Speaker 1: not Wi Fi, you would need to have almost like
Speaker 1: a modem, and your smartphone would act as your modem
Speaker 1: with a Bluetooth connection allowing for the communication between your
Speaker 1: glasses and the phone. Now, that simplified the components that
Speaker 1: needed to go into the glasses themselves, and that allowed
Speaker 1: the designers to make it a little bit lighter and
Speaker 1: not worry about so much heat generation. It also meant
Speaker 1: that there was less of a drain on the battery,
Speaker 1: which was perhaps the biggest challenge for the team was
Speaker 1: designing a battery that would be light enough and yet
Speaker 1: powerful enough to do what they wanted it to do.
Speaker 1: They needed it to not make the glasses uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: wear or really unwearable for any length of time, but
Speaker 1: they also wanted to make sure they had enough juice
Speaker 1: to get a decent amount of use out of it
Speaker 1: before you had to recharge it. They also got around
Speaker 1: this by having Google Glass go into sleep mode pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: so that anytime you were not actively using it, it
Speaker 1: could conserve power, and that way you could get maybe
Speaker 1: another hour out of it. It drained pretty fast back
Speaker 1: when I got one. Earlier wearable computers would require those
Speaker 1: massive batteries I talked about before, ones that weighed four
Speaker 1: or five pounds. Now, you don't want something like that
Speaker 1: on your glasses. It would just be excruciating. So this
Speaker 1: was a huge challenge. It remains a huge challenge in
Speaker 1: wearables to this day is figuring out the balance between
Speaker 1: the features you want to include and how much can
Speaker 1: a battery provide before you're going to have to start
Speaker 1: recharging it. Every few minutes. While the paperwork was being
Speaker 1: drawn up with the patents, Starner and others were in
Speaker 1: Google's labs building this actual hardware and testing it constantly.
Speaker 1: Whenever they were in the lab, they were wearing these devices.
Speaker 1: Whenever they were doing their regular jobs, they were wearing
Speaker 1: these They were testing them, they were trying them out,
Speaker 1: they were adding new features, taking old ones out when
Speaker 1: they didn't work, building apps just for their own use,
Speaker 1: to kind of really test the limits of what this
Speaker 1: technology could do. And then at the end of the
Speaker 1: day they would put them up and go home because
Speaker 1: they weren't ready for the world to see Google Glass yet.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to go out and start using it
Speaker 1: outside where people might wonder what the heck is going on,
Speaker 1: and then next thing you know, everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 1: So in twenty eleven, Google employees submitted the patent for
Speaker 1: the headmounted display. The Patent Office would eventually grant that
Speaker 1: patent on February twenty first, twenty thirteen, which actually is
Speaker 1: not that long at all. That's pretty fast in many
Speaker 1: cases for between a patent application and when it's actually granted.
Speaker 1: A couple of years is nothing. But then go we'll
Speaker 1: let the cat out of the bag. In between those
Speaker 1: two dates, in April twenty twelve, Google released a concept video,
Speaker 1: and this was a video that was shown from a
Speaker 1: first person view, so you were in the shoes of
Speaker 1: a guy wearing some sort of device that had something
Speaker 1: to do with Google. And the reason why I'm vague
Speaker 1: is because the video was pretty vague. It was just
Speaker 1: giving you an idea of what this experience might one
Speaker 1: day be like. Clearly, it was a head mounted display
Speaker 1: of 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, and you could even alert the person of
Speaker 1: what was going on in the world around them. So
Speaker 1: at one point, he's on his way to an appointment
Speaker 1: and he wants to take the subway, and as he
Speaker 1: gets close to the subway, a little alert points up
Speaker 1: and it says there are delays at the subway station,
Speaker 1: and he's like, aw shucks, and so he decides to
Speaker 1: walk instead. So some of this 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: But it was an interesting video and it got a
Speaker 1: 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. That was not worked into Google Glass
Speaker 1: 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 GPS from a smartphone
Speaker 1: as well as a person's calendar if they've added an
Speaker 1: appointment to their calendar, and if the phone makes a
Speaker 1: quote unquote guess that you are on your way to
Speaker 1: set appointment, and it notices you're getting closer to a
Speaker 1: subway station because of your GPS coordinates, it could then
Speaker 1: send you an alert saying, oh, we've got this message
Speaker 1: 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 walk. You're
Speaker 1: never going to 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 battery 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, and they did admit they were working on
Speaker 1: an augmented reality project and they wanted to get feedback
Speaker 1: from people about how they would use it and what
Speaker 1: they thought about this concept. A couple of months later,
Speaker 1: they held the Google Io Developer Conference. I've been to
Speaker 1: one of these. They're very very nerdy. It is interesting.
Speaker 1: It gets incredibly technical very fast, because it's meant for
Speaker 1: people who are developing apps for Google platforms. The event
Speaker 1: took place in San Francisco's Moscone Center, and high above
Speaker 1: the center was a blimp with several skydivers in wingsuits
Speaker 1: and parachutes, and each person in that group was wearing
Speaker 1: a pair of Google Glass. And in the middle of
Speaker 1: a totally different presentation, Sarah gay Brenn runs up on
Speaker 1: stage and he says, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we've
Speaker 1: got a time sensitive event going on right now, and
Speaker 1: he switches to video showing the blimp above the Moscone Center.
Speaker 1: Then they switch to a camera inside the blimp itself
Speaker 1: and you see the team there, and you see that
Speaker 1: each member of the team is wearing a pair of
Speaker 1: Google Glass. They start a Google hangout using their Google Glass,
Speaker 1: and then you can see the screens from each of
Speaker 1: their perspectives. So now you're getting a first person view
Speaker 1: of these people who are inside the blimp. And eventually,
Speaker 1: once the blimp is in the right location, they make
Speaker 1: a jump. They jump out of the blimp, they fall,
Speaker 1: they launch their shoots, they land on the roof of
Speaker 1: the Moscone Center. They hand over a package to a
Speaker 1: person riding a mountain bike and he's also got Google
Speaker 1: glass on. He rides over to the edge of the building,
Speaker 1: switches over into repelling gear, repels down the side, gets
Speaker 1: inside the Moscone Center, gets on a different mountain bike,
Speaker 1: rides over into the conference room, down the aisle, straight
Speaker 1: over to the stage, and brings Sergei brin a package
Speaker 1: that has inside of it a fresh pair of Google glass.
Speaker 1: It was a heck of a demo. I watched it live,
Speaker 1: not in the Moscone Center. I was watching it remotely.
Speaker 1: I was not at that particular Io event, and my
Speaker 1: jaw was on the floor to see this display of
Speaker 1: wearable technology in such a cool application. You know, this
Speaker 1: Google hangout that's showing me what it's like to skydive
Speaker 1: from a first person perspective. And then this journey from
Speaker 1: the sea, the roof of the building down into the
Speaker 1: center itself. It was an effective demonstration. Now, in August
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, Google would receive a pattern. Now this was
Speaker 1: not the same one for the head mounted display pattern
Speaker 1: that one wouldn't be granted until twenty thirteen, but this
Speaker 1: was a patent for a process and the title of
Speaker 1: the pattern was unlocking a screen using eye tracking information.
Speaker 1: So this would require having some sort of camera facing
Speaker 1: back toward a person's eye, and it would look at
Speaker 1: motions of the eye and interpret that as various commands,
Speaker 1: including unlocking a device. So you may have had a
Speaker 1: smartphone at some point that allowed you to create a
Speaker 1: pattern by tracing something on a screen. An old Android
Speaker 1: one I used to use had 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: wanted to unlock the phone from that point forward, you
Speaker 1: had to retrace that pattern. Well, 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 using 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 a 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: show nearby. Make a little heart shape with your hand. Awe,
Speaker 1: so cute, you Millennials, And then this would end up
Speaker 1: being picked up by the camera and interpreted as liking
Speaker 1: the thing you are looking at. Maybe it posts to
Speaker 1: a social media page saying, Jonathan likes the fact that
Speaker 1: they might be giants is going to be in Atlanta
Speaker 1: the Variety Playhouse playing a show, And yes, I would
Speaker 1: like that. I love they might be giants and the
Speaker 1: Variety Playhouse is a delightful venue. I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would go so far as to make the little
Speaker 1: heart shape of my hands, though I do have my limits.
Speaker 1: But this shows another way of how Google was thinking
Speaker 1: about interactions with its technology and ways that you could
Speaker 1: control it beyond just using a capacitive touchscreen or even
Speaker 1: voice commands. That also would not find its way into
Speaker 1: Google Glass, but it might find its way into some
Speaker 1: future Google product. Now, next we'll explore a bit with
Speaker 1: Google Glass, and we will pay handsomely for it. But
Speaker 1: before I jump into that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. In April twenty thirteen, Google would
Speaker 1: open up an extremely limited program called Glass Explorers. So
Speaker 1: I guess actually it was dragon Con twenty thirteen, not
Speaker 1: dragon Con twenty twelve, which totally makes sense. I can't
Speaker 1: tell those years apart dragon Con to dragon Con, they
Speaker 1: all bleed together. But 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. Not only that, but
Speaker 1: you had to pay for it. You couldn't just get
Speaker 1: a pair. They cost one thousand, five hundred dollars fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for a pair of Google Glass. Now, the
Speaker 1: application process was pretty simple, but it meant that Google
Speaker 1: could very quickly go through this huge number of applications
Speaker 1: and decide which ones sound like good choices and which
Speaker 1: ones don't. Now, in my case, our company bought the
Speaker 1: pair of Google Glass. I applied for them, but it
Speaker 1: was a company purchase, so I don't actually own those
Speaker 1: Google glass anymore, but I was able to buy some.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to tell you a funny little story
Speaker 1: that happened to me. And this is all because Jonathan
Speaker 1: doesn't pay enough attention when he fills out online forms.
Speaker 1: So in the United States, there were a couple of
Speaker 1: different places you could pick up a pair of these
Speaker 1: glasses once you ordered them, and you had to physically
Speaker 1: go to these locations. Google did not want to send
Speaker 1: anything to anyone because they didn't want to deal with
Speaker 1: the case of someone intercepting a shipment and stealing it
Speaker 1: or selling it or breaking it apart or whatever. They
Speaker 1: wanted to keep a tight rain on who actually got
Speaker 1: their 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 could 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 going to
Speaker 1: do this other day. So I chose a different day.
Speaker 1: I 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 fly to
Speaker 1: New York, I rescheduled to fly to La So I
Speaker 1: 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: laser eye surgery since then, but back when I got
Speaker 1: the Google Glass, I still wore eyeglasses, and Google Glass
Speaker 1: at that point had not been outfitted to work with
Speaker 1: existing pairs of glasses. You could either wear Google Glass
Speaker 1: or you could wear a pair of glasses, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't really do both unless you worked for Google like
Speaker 1: Sergey Brinn, and you could have someone make a custom
Speaker 1: pair for you. So instead I would have to wear
Speaker 1: contact lenses. This was one of those early complaints about
Speaker 1: the Google Glass program. A lot of people wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to attach the Google Glass part to an
Speaker 1: existing pair of glasses, and there was just no way
Speaker 1: you could do that In May twenty fourteen, Google opened
Speaker 1: up the Explorer program and allowed more folks to join,
Speaker 1: and there were talks of special Google Glass stores, including
Speaker 1: floating barges, off the coast of places like San Francisco
Speaker 1: and New York. And these were meant to be interactive
Speaker 1: tech spaces and perhaps even a high end life luxury
Speaker 1: showroom for Google Glass. But by June twenty fourteen, so
Speaker 1: May twenty fourteen, this is all in the news, and
Speaker 1: in fact, the barges have been kind of coming together
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years, but in June twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the plans for the barges were I guess scuttled is
Speaker 1: a good word if we're talking about barges. The plans
Speaker 1: were scuttled. The barges weren't scuttled immediately, but the plans were.
Speaker 1: They never saw service, they never came online, they never
Speaker 1: became stores. They did raise a lot of interest as
Speaker 1: people watched them take form on a daily basis, but
Speaker 1: they disappeared with about as much of a whimper as
Speaker 1: could be. They were never really explained, and so they
Speaker 1: kind of started to become something and then went away
Speaker 1: before anyone could really figure out what exactly they were
Speaker 1: going to turn into. In January twenty fifteen, Google pulled
Speaker 1: the plug on the Explorer program because ultimately it had
Speaker 1: been a failure, but not necessarily for the reasons you
Speaker 1: might think. So let's rewind a little bit. It's twenty
Speaker 1: twelve and Project Glass has a divided team. You got
Speaker 1: two main camps of engineers who are disagreeing about a
Speaker 1: fundamental aspect of Google Glass. One team thinks this should
Speaker 1: be a persistent wearable device, meaning you put it on
Speaker 1: and you wear it all day long. It's like a
Speaker 1: fashion accessory, it belongs as part of your outfit. The
Speaker 1: other team disagrees and says, no, this should be something
Speaker 1: that you're using for specific use cases. So a situation
Speaker 1: comes up when you would need Google Glass. That's when
Speaker 1: you put it on, and then when that's over, you
Speaker 1: take it off again. The two can't agree with which
Speaker 1: direction they should go in. Saragey Brinn, who's excited about
Speaker 1: the technology but impatient to wait and get all of
Speaker 1: this susted out, has an idea. Instead of relying on
Speaker 1: a relatively small group of engineers and developers, why not
Speaker 1: create a beta testing program invite a wider group of
Speaker 1: people to use it in the real world and take
Speaker 1: that information as a way of developing it further. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you open this up, you get a
Speaker 1: lot more information from a lot more people using it
Speaker 1: in a lot of different situations, and you see where
Speaker 1: it works and where it doesn't work, and you make changes.
Speaker 1: If it works in one case, maybe you pursue that
Speaker 1: a little more. If it doesn't work in another, maybe
Speaker 1: you change gears or you try to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to make it work in that situation. But the
Speaker 1: point was opening it up to more people meant more information,
Speaker 1: and more information meant that they could make better decisions.
Speaker 1: And this was not a bad idea. It could teach
Speaker 1: Google how people would use the technology and where they
Speaker 1: should concentrate on building out features. It was really just
Speaker 1: a larger part of the overall Google Glass experiment, only
Speaker 1: there was a small problem. The unveiling of Google Glass
Speaker 1: made it a prestige item. The way they showed it
Speaker 1: off and the way they rolled it out meant that
Speaker 1: it became an object of exclusivity. You had to apply
Speaker 1: to be in the club for one thing, so people
Speaker 1: were either in it or they weren't. You had to
Speaker 1: pay fifteen hundred dollars for it, which meant that you
Speaker 1: needed to have a pretty good amount of discretionary income
Speaker 1: if you were going to buy something like this. Wearing
Speaker 1: Google Glass didn't just say I'm interested in technology. It
Speaker 1: also said I have the money to blow on something
Speaker 1: that hasn't even become a product yet. And it also
Speaker 1: said I'm in a club and you aren't. And on
Speaker 1: top 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 the
Speaker 1: 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 a photo was being taken,
Speaker 1: and if the light was off, then presumably it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Now I would encounter strangers who would see me wearing
Speaker 1: these 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 ask 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 began to be called a new name. The official
Speaker 1: 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 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, or what the Google
Speaker 1: Glass was for, you should have been fine with that.
Speaker 1: You knew from the get go that this was a
Speaker 1: testing phase of a technology, not something that was ready
Speaker 1: for prime time. But people began to get frustrated with
Speaker 1: glasses 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 there 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 and 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: can be on the phone, it could be on Google Home,
Speaker 1: it can be on other devices. And I apologize if
Speaker 1: once again I woke it up for those of you
Speaker 1: who have Android devices nearby, and that can do a
Speaker 1: lot of different stuff depending upon what Google Assistant is
Speaker 1: running on. For example, at home, I can use it
Speaker 1: to listen to different types of music or control my
Speaker 1: lights on my phone. I can do all sorts of
Speaker 1: different types of features. And you might even encounter Google
Speaker 1: hardware Glass hardware in certain industries because, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: Google Glass does still exist. Google still produces them and
Speaker 1: still licenses it out, but only to other companies. It's
Speaker 1: a business to business product now, it's not a consumer product.
Speaker 1: This is a program I'm called Google at our Glass
Speaker 1: at work, I should say Glass at work. So rather
Speaker 1: than this consumer product, this is a device that gives
Speaker 1: real world assistant to people working in various industries, and
Speaker 1: it all depends upon the augmented reality apps that the
Speaker 1: glasses are running. But it could be something like what
Speaker 1: 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 apart 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 would even be a consumer product.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was discouraging to the Google Glass team
Speaker 1: to see how things went awry, but it does still
Speaker 1: exist and AR is still a thing. There are related
Speaker 1: products that are also pushing augmented reality into a new era.
Speaker 1: There's Microsoft's hollow lens that's a great example. There's Magic Leap,
Speaker 1: about which we know very little bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: information leak out over time, but we're always learning a
Speaker 1: little bit more. But I'm always going to have a
Speaker 1: soft spot in my heart for Google Glass. It's something
Speaker 1: that I think if it had just had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a lower key rollout, we'd be looking at
Speaker 1: a very different world with wearables right now, or at
Speaker 1: least a more advanced one. Hope you enjoyed that classic
Speaker 1: episode about Google Glass. Obviously you could argue this is
Speaker 1: another case of Google shelving a product after having some
Speaker 1: issues getting it to actually, you know, gain traction. Whether
Speaker 1: Google will ever make a huge jump back in the
Speaker 1: mixed reality remains to be seen. Honestly, it kind of
Speaker 1: remains to be seen if anyone can really get that
Speaker 1: technology to a point where it has mainstream adoption. It's
Speaker 1: such an expensive and difficult technology to master that it
Speaker 1: may be a while before we see that. Apple certainly
Speaker 1: is going to give it a shot, so I have
Speaker 1: to keep our eyes on that. Hope you're all well
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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