Gadgetory

on some level Google glass is a long time coming in science fiction books and movies for decades we've been imagining a world where we're not looking at our phones or tapping incessantly on keyboards in the future we've learned we do everything with our voice or maybe even our thoughts our computers whatever they might look like we'll project data into the world around us will wave our arms like crazy to move information around like Tom Cruise data Minority Report or maybe we'd be like Tony Stark with a heads-up display permanently in front of our face while we order around our own personal Jarvis every author and director has a slightly different vision but they've all been on the same thing technology is not going to be on a screen anymore it's going to be out in the world on top of the world inside the world and we're going to be spending a lot of time poking it prodding it and especially talking to it so far Google glass is a small cautious sort of imperfect step in that direction it's designed to use with your voice you say ok glass and then issue a command take a picture email my girlfriend show me who won the yankee it's less like talking to a friend than it is issuing a series of dictates but glass obediently carries them out well most of the time sometimes glass goes to sleep and you have to wake it by either tapping the side of your head like your Cyclops or by tipping your head upward at the exact degree you'd use for a slightly exaggerated eye roll and while glass understands and executes its basic commands navigation is a bit of a chore you swipe along the temple of the glasses to move forward and backward through the endless glass interface from the home screen you can swipe through every interaction you've ever had with the device or swipe to settings or Google now or to other apps swiping upward takes you back and tapping on the temples is like pressing enter and that's all once you're connected to your phone which you need before you can do much of anything glass can't connect to the internet on its own so without your smartphone it's really nothing more than an unimpressive camera glued to your face once you've signed in to your Google account and linked it to your glass it uses a QR code and the camera in the glass to connect and it's probably the first time a QR code has ever been the simplest way to do anything but the process is still far from over every contact you an email or message you'll have to manually add from your phone or computer every app you want to install every place you want to share images you just can't manage anything from glass your smartphone is the engine it's the power source glass is just an accessory attach to your face glass isn't anywhere near finished and we know that even if Google hadn't said it over and over some of the gestures don't work reliably and glass doesn't understand me quite like I want it to it's like being in a foreign country where no one fully understands English and like The Ugly American i am i still find myself yelling where is mcdonald's into the upper right corner of my eye line more often than i should glass may come straight out of science fiction but ok glass doesn't begin quite the technological revelation that Star Trek's communicators or how 9000 taught us to hope for actually now that I think about it maybe Google followed Hal a little too closely oh hell