I was totally into this stuff in the 90’s, reading Wired and Mondo2000 whenever I could find them, and devouring Gibson and Sterling like candy. I’m a product of the cyberpunk age.
Category: Wearable computing
Sony is going to be releasing heads-up display glasses to theaters for accessibility issues (read as: hearing and visual overlays of subtitles).
By “wearable computing” I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no separate display that you hold in your hands think Terminator vision. The underlying trend as we’ve gone from desktops through laptops and notebooks to tablets is one of having computing available in more places, more of the time. The logical endpoint is computing everywhere, all the time – that is, wearable computing – and I have no doubt that 20 years from now that will be standard, probably through glasses or contacts, but for all I know through some kind of more direct neural connection. And I’m pretty confident that platform shift will happen a lot sooner than 20 years – almost certainly within 10, but quite likely as little as 3-5, because the key areas – input, processing/power/size, and output – that need to evolve to enable wearable computing are shaping up nicely, although there’s a lot still to be figured out.
via Valve: How I Got Here, What It’s Like, and What I’m Doing | Valve.
We knew Google was working on this, but here’s the first real look at Project Glass, their wearable display/augmented reality hardware.
Lumus’ OE-31 optical engine = wearable displays
And yet more from the wearable display front…the way that modern gadget production works seems to be very much a sort of punctuated equilibrium. There are ideas, then a breakthrough in sensor production and pricing causes an explosion of forms, which then settle down into a few winners (see: eReaders in 2010, Tablets in 2011, etc). I am very curious where this particular explosion is going to take us.
We’re inching one step closer to Rainbows End every day. I’ll admit, even though I’m a certified Apple guy, I’d buy these in a hot minute.
Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End
People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.
According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year.