So Google I/O just passed and the company did a lot of talking up for a lot of their new products and projects, except for one that did not receive as much review as the others. Google Glass was introduced online a few years ago, but did not receive much attention during the company’s keynote speech this year. The product has been in development under the guidance of Project Glass and more recently, they have begun a sort of trial run called the Glass Explorer program. This trial consists of 2,000 users that are given a prototype of the product to use in hopes that all the bugs will be worked out, and it seems as though that plan is beginning to make progress.
One thing that Project Glass did announce at Google I/O is that the company will now be coming out with monthly updates for the Glass devices. This first update required all new tech for the Glass Explorer’s, but the corresponding software update was a simple, user-friendly, over the air update like in any other handset on the market. These monthly updates will mean plenty of time to spit shine the product based on reviews and suggestions made by the Glass Explorers, as the product is not scheduled to hit the bridges of the masses noses until 2014.
It’s exciting to see such a futuristic technology reaching such a deep stage of development, but is the world truly ready to adapt to the option of an augmented reality? They say that a society is defined by the technology that drives it, but if that is the case where is this technological determinism leading us? It is no question that technologies from the past two decades are revolutionary and still on the rise, but personally I could never have predicted cell phones would lead us to augmented reality glasses. In fact I wouldn’t even been able to have defined or conceived of the term! Will Google make Glass Explorers of us all, and is that such a distinction from the techno-zombies people joke about while their friends are staring at their phones? Google has already explained to the public the benefits of Project Glass but one must accept the bad along with the good, so what do you think will be some of the social drawbacks of plunging users into a mainstream augmented reality for the first time in history?