How Google Glass will change mobile, and how it could fail

How often do we hear jokes about how no one experiences life as it happens these days? People miss out on life because we’re all too busy filtering real-time experiences through the screen of a smartphone or tablet. Google may not have figured out the use case of Google Glass, but after seeing Sergey Brin on the subway, and digging through old Glass stories, it struck us as quite simple: rather than filtering real-life through a screen, the screen mimics our eye and sees what we see, without our attention.

This is the beauty of invention. The company freely admits that it doesn’t quite know how to market the product; the tech elite don’t quite know either; and, common people are a bit unnerved by the technology. But, the geeks are excited, because we can simply feel the potential, and the disruptive force that comes with something new.

The true POV camera

Really, it’s the strength that Microsoft has always claimed with Windows Phone, that it would get you “in and out and back to life”. But, with Google Glass, there theoretically is no more “in and out”. Taken to its logical conclusion, Google Glass (and all subsequent systems like it) would aim to take our digital world and make it part of a HUD for real life. So, rather than having to take time to look at your phone (maybe stop walking, certainly while not driving,) and be completely distracted from whatever you are doing.

Take a look back at all of the video we’ve seen from Google Glass. For the most part, the pictures may not seem to be anything special at first glance, but the longer you look, the more you see. The camera can capture something much more intimate than anything we’ve seen before. Handheld photography can only get so close, and all “POV” videography feels clunky and off, because there is only so much a handheld camera can mimic the movement of our head. Even a camera strapped to your forehead isn’t quite right, because the perspective is slightly off compared to what we would really see. 

But, then you see the video that Sergey Brin and the Glass team took while skydiving, and even though the camera is a bit jerky, it still feels somehow natural. Only the best camera operator can approximate what we would see when moving our heads side to side, but Google Glass seems to be able to simply because the Glass camera has no choice but to follow our heads, and capture the same perspective that we see with our eyes.