Look, Here! Beyond Tablets, Expect Spectacles

Today, the New York Times ran an article on Google’s investment in wearable "heads-up" display eyeglasses, with the headline: Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality. Seems that Google may be less than a year away from marketing eyeglasses, or spectacles, which will let the wearer see dynamic information without looking at a screen – smartphone, tablet or computer display. It seems the glasses will also have a camera in the frame so that the viewer can "point" the glasses at objects (or persons) of interest. The information is fed to and from the glasses via an Android device (which does not have to be visible) and that Android device would be connected to the network and the cloud. The glasses/Android combination will have location awareness, too.

This is not a new idea. I’ve been writing about and presenting this idea for the past five years, based on products that are already in use by the military and in some commercial applications such as healthcare. Take a look at a company called Vuzix to see what this looks like. The main point has been that today’s hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablets are probably an interim solution. Why busy one or two hands when you can just wear a heads-up display. By the way, some of the Vuzix products come with a finger-thumb mini-glove which provides for mouse-like navigation. But maybe there will be other methods for "selecting" or "clicking" with these new endpoints. You could imagine controlling the spectacles with a touch-screen Android device, but in a pocket or on a belt or wrist or sleeve, since you could see what you’re touching or tapping in the eyeglasses display.

It’s intriguing to imagine what might happen if this report is accurate. If Google gets behind this, it is very likely to take off, and go in some pretty interesting directions.

From Google’s perspective, this would certainly start with virtual reality advertising. Just look at a store front, for example, and the display would light up with today’s sales specials in that store. Look at a street sign and a map could display the nearby sponsored eateries, shops, entertainment, and more. Touch your Google + circle on the Android touch screen and a map would show the location all your nearby buddies.

There are other applications, too, such as facial recognition so that you don’t have to stumble over the name of that long-lost friend whom you meet in an airport; or try to remember all three of your friend’s children’s names and ages. That would be a boon to my social networking, for sure!

The New York Times article and a number of the posts to the article emphasize the privacy and safety concerns of all this. Well, I give up my privacy when I walk down a street, through an airport, into a hotel, or onto a convention floor. Seems that’s not a change from our current world, just reminds us of the meaning of public place. As to safety, we already allow bill boards (including animated diamond-vision displays) along the interstates as well as radios, navigation displays, and cell phones in cars. Sure, it will require care and attention, but Wired Magazine showed a hypothetical future view of a heads-up “Smart Windshield” on their “Found” page in issue 16.01. Could be a lot safer than today, with the car’s computer helping out. Why not just have that on your eyeglasses?

But my interest is in how this will advance Unified Communications, including Collaboration and Social networking. Seems this could be a major breakthrough in many dimensions. Privacy is one aspect, since smartphones and, especially, tablets show far too much information to passers-by. Another is the hands-free capability where information about how to perform a task could be displayed without having to hold the display in one hand or to look aside all the time to a screen. Collaboration could be enhanced by allowing faster interactions with mobile people, though we would likely want to include speech recognition for mobile IM chats or Tweets to stay in hands-free mode. And, if the mobile person needs to be seen on a video call, maybe a video camera in the wearer’s baseball cap brim would be way better than trying to hold a cellphone or tablet up to your face. Well, my imagination is still going, but so is yours. I’ll stop and you can take it from here.

So, huzzah for Google if they bring those spectacular spectacles to market. It will ramp us up to new levels of unified communication and personal convenience.