The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this. Also several of these,...
The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this.
Also several of these, especially the Snap and Warby Parker ones, just look like fairly normal glasses. Whether they look tacky or not depends more on how they’re culturally coded. Like the style of normal glasses that’s popular now look a lot like what used to be standard issue military spectacles that were regarded as SO ugly they got the nickname “Birth Control Glasses.” Tastes change.
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do? Unless you’re the sort of creep who takes up skirt photos, the answer seems to be “no.” So focus on that.
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them. In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to...
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them.
In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to information whenever I want. In practice, so many annoying little piece of shit technologies compete for my attention basically every minute of the day. My phone pings me with notifications, my computer at work makes a bloop sound when teams messages and emails come in, my tv whines that it needs to be updated, my computer at home "helpfully" tells me when new windows features or video card features or my fucking mouse's software has new features available. I absolutely detest it, and I've avoided smart watches like the plague because of the same reason.
Any time I talk about this problem online, a deluge of people chime in with "but your notification settings!" Like clockwork, which is a disingenuous response and I'm pretty sure everyone that says it knows it. Applications update themselves and silently change their notification settings all the time, and every time a new one is installed, those settings need to be reviewed. It's like a second job that I need to take on just to not being driven insane which I never signed up for.
So in theory, yeah, cool, ar glasses let me pretend to be iron man and... I don't know, check to see if the noodle place I want to go to is open without the excruciating labor of reaching into my pocket for my phone. In the real world where technology concepts are absolutely ruined by greed and incompetence, having a cloud connected ad machine on my face at all waking hours constantly annoying me with notifications literally sounds less desirable to me than Chinese water torture.
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he...
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he killed himself. Having some space from our technology is vital.
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but...
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but notifications are supposed to be useful. If I am being nagged so much it makes me turn them off how is this not framed as a profound failure of design?
The core problem is that companies feel entitled to my time and attention. If I am using a tool they’ve given me they feel like their purpose of the tool is to facilitate my use of the tool (e.g. “Did you know you can now do. . .?”) But the point of the tool isn’t to use the tool, it’s to accomplish the task I picked it up to do. Software developers, and the tech industry in general, have completely lost the plot.
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that...
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that nothing has hit the market that actually provides the experience I want.
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream...
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream about what I'm looking at, I don't have a quantifiable health value to keep track of, and I generally know how to navigate to most places I'm trying to go.
If we can come up with genuine everyday utilities, then I think the appeal will grow. As it is, I can only see getting occasional use out of smart glasses, like identifying plants and bugs on a hike, and even that is a harder task than you would think.
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect,...
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect, but "is there a bird in this picture" is now about as routine as the GPS lookup.
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and...
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and we spend most of the stroll identifying various plants and insects along the way. He’s been developing an encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora and whatever fauna can sit still long enough for me to scan it.
One of the keys is that when it identifies the species it pops up a profile page full of photos including that plant, bug, or animals’ various developmental stages. That way you can directly confirm if it matches the reference pictures.
The main drawback is that it takes time to ID something accurately so it’s difficult to get an ID on things that move a lot. Birds can be tough if you don’t have a telephoto zoom lens, many flying insects as well. I have a bunch of beetles but good luck catching a gnat or fly. It’s spotty as to whether it can ID my breed of dog because he never sits still, but even if it doesn’t have it down it still gets in the neighborhood of canid and speculates he might be a jackal or coyote (he’s a kelpie, so at a distance even a human with poor vision could get confused).
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of...
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of being a drudge living in the crumbling empire of a miserable dystopia.
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other...
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other comment, modern tech overlords think the purpose of technology is to make us use and engage with the technology. Their brains just aren’t wired to think in terms of technology as enabling us to engage more deeply with the world instead.
Most AR use cases I can think of would benefit from having something that wears more like ski goggles or welding goggles. Having a HUD overlay while I’m riding my bike for turn-by-turn directions and safety warnings would be great. If I’m trying to fix an appliance or something being able to overlay a schematic over my view would be amazing. But I don’t need to wear something 24/7 to do that.
The one case I can think of where I’d maybe want to wear something and walk around as I do normal stuff would be like if I’m in a foreign country and would like a thing that can live-translate signage or things people are saying to me. But that’s SUCH a narrow use case and I imagine carrying something for that would be more like having reading glasses (or clip-ons to normal glasses) than the kind I use to see.
The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this.
Also several of these, especially the Snap and Warby Parker ones, just look like fairly normal glasses. Whether they look tacky or not depends more on how they’re culturally coded. Like the style of normal glasses that’s popular now look a lot like what used to be standard issue military spectacles that were regarded as SO ugly they got the nickname “Birth Control Glasses.” Tastes change.
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do? Unless you’re the sort of creep who takes up skirt photos, the answer seems to be “no.” So focus on that.
Back in my day, creeps used to harass strangers for the love of the game. Now everything is for content. Smdh
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them.
In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to information whenever I want. In practice, so many annoying little piece of shit technologies compete for my attention basically every minute of the day. My phone pings me with notifications, my computer at work makes a bloop sound when teams messages and emails come in, my tv whines that it needs to be updated, my computer at home "helpfully" tells me when new windows features or video card features or my fucking mouse's software has new features available. I absolutely detest it, and I've avoided smart watches like the plague because of the same reason.
Any time I talk about this problem online, a deluge of people chime in with "but your notification settings!" Like clockwork, which is a disingenuous response and I'm pretty sure everyone that says it knows it. Applications update themselves and silently change their notification settings all the time, and every time a new one is installed, those settings need to be reviewed. It's like a second job that I need to take on just to not being driven insane which I never signed up for.
So in theory, yeah, cool, ar glasses let me pretend to be iron man and... I don't know, check to see if the noodle place I want to go to is open without the excruciating labor of reaching into my pocket for my phone. In the real world where technology concepts are absolutely ruined by greed and incompetence, having a cloud connected ad machine on my face at all waking hours constantly annoying me with notifications literally sounds less desirable to me than Chinese water torture.
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he killed himself. Having some space from our technology is vital.
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but notifications are supposed to be useful. If I am being nagged so much it makes me turn them off how is this not framed as a profound failure of design?
The core problem is that companies feel entitled to my time and attention. If I am using a tool they’ve given me they feel like their purpose of the tool is to facilitate my use of the tool (e.g. “Did you know you can now do. . .?”) But the point of the tool isn’t to use the tool, it’s to accomplish the task I picked it up to do. Software developers, and the tech industry in general, have completely lost the plot.
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that nothing has hit the market that actually provides the experience I want.
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream about what I'm looking at, I don't have a quantifiable health value to keep track of, and I generally know how to navigate to most places I'm trying to go.
If we can come up with genuine everyday utilities, then I think the appeal will grow. As it is, I can only see getting occasional use out of smart glasses, like identifying plants and bugs on a hike, and even that is a harder task than you would think.
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect, but "is there a bird in this picture" is now about as routine as the GPS lookup.
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and we spend most of the stroll identifying various plants and insects along the way. He’s been developing an encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora and whatever fauna can sit still long enough for me to scan it.
One of the keys is that when it identifies the species it pops up a profile page full of photos including that plant, bug, or animals’ various developmental stages. That way you can directly confirm if it matches the reference pictures.
The main drawback is that it takes time to ID something accurately so it’s difficult to get an ID on things that move a lot. Birds can be tough if you don’t have a telephoto zoom lens, many flying insects as well. I have a bunch of beetles but good luck catching a gnat or fly. It’s spotty as to whether it can ID my breed of dog because he never sits still, but even if it doesn’t have it down it still gets in the neighborhood of canid and speculates he might be a jackal or coyote (he’s a kelpie, so at a distance even a human with poor vision could get confused).
It'll display your shield, ammo, and how many grenades you're carrying, obviously.
I hate having to check that stuff manually.
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of being a drudge living in the crumbling empire of a miserable dystopia.
Don’t mind me, just popping in to drop the link to the mobile version of that comic…
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other comment, modern tech overlords think the purpose of technology is to make us use and engage with the technology. Their brains just aren’t wired to think in terms of technology as enabling us to engage more deeply with the world instead.
Most AR use cases I can think of would benefit from having something that wears more like ski goggles or welding goggles. Having a HUD overlay while I’m riding my bike for turn-by-turn directions and safety warnings would be great. If I’m trying to fix an appliance or something being able to overlay a schematic over my view would be amazing. But I don’t need to wear something 24/7 to do that.
The one case I can think of where I’d maybe want to wear something and walk around as I do normal stuff would be like if I’m in a foreign country and would like a thing that can live-translate signage or things people are saying to me. But that’s SUCH a narrow use case and I imagine carrying something for that would be more like having reading glasses (or clip-ons to normal glasses) than the kind I use to see.
The last what? Did something get edited out of this paragraph?