My week with Google Glass

NEW Yorkers are pretty hard to impress. You could cartwheel through the A train wearing leathers and a pom pom and they wouldn’t break their stride. But get on the subway wearing Google Glass and suddenly they see you.

“Are you taking a picture with that thing?” demanded the woman opposite on the #4 train as the man beside her took a picture of me. “Er, no,” I replied glaring at her companion. He had the grace to look embarrassed. The rest of the carriage stared at me as if I was visiting from another galaxy.

Ah yes, welcome to the world of wearable computing. Brought to you by Google Glass.

Wearable technology was one of the big themes at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and while Glass (with its in-built camera and eye sensor) was a big hit at the show’s convention halls, it was banned from the Vegas gaming tables.

That’s hardly surprising. In fact, it’s probably easier to think of places where Glass will be banned (think live gigs, cinemas, health clubs, restrooms, etc, etc) than places where people will accept it.

But let’s just focus on the potential for a moment. Imagine you’re a journalist trying to video a news story while taking notes in an interview. Imagine driving in a busy city where you don’t dare take your eyes off the road to peek at the GPS. Imagine being blind or partially sighted and unable to read the food labels at the supermarket.

Now imagine wearing a voice-activated headset that can record exactly what you see while you’re free to take notes, read directions to the motorway or read the label’s barcodes right into your ear. All at the sound of your voice.

This is where the much-hyped — and very expensive — Google Glass comes in. Glass is the internet giant’s prototype of so-called wearable computing which has the potential to revolutionise information-access in more ways than mobile computing.

The technology holds out real hope for those with impaired or limited or even no-vision. Google Glass can already scan barcodes and it would not take a major software innovation to create a barcode-to-speech version that could transmit information back to the user’s ear. This could transform a blind person’s ability to access information that sighted people take for granted.

This idea of wearable computing isn’t new, but earlier versions were clunky and looked like cheap props for a 1970s TV show. In contrast, Google Glass sits quite neatly on your head like a pair of glasses.

I had reservations about the whole point of Google Glass (too nerdy, too expensive, too elitist) but the minute I put it on I could literally see what all the hype is about. The functionality, as multiple critics have pointed out, is currently very limited — particularly if you compare Glass to your average smartphone. But the potential is enormous. Sure, it’s beta; sure, it’s finicky; and sure, it can’t really do a whole lot now. But Glass isn’t about now. Glass is about the future.

The current functions include a video, a camera, audio and video phone calls, messaging, Gmail, and GPS. No Facebook, no Twitter and no Instagram. Yet.

The Get Directions function is really useful. Just say “OK, Glass”, to wake up the headset and then “Get Directions”, to access the navigation. You tell Glass where you want to go and the screen displays the turn-by-turn navigation while the headset relays the directions to your ear. Except it doesn’t actually speak in your ear. Google Glass uses bone conduction to transfer sound to your ear. It feels deeply, deeply weird. And ticklish.

The headset causes problems for those of us who wear prescription glasses because it’s difficult to balance Glass on top of them. While I could see the screen without glasses, several other eyeglass wearers couldn’t. Google would have to offer some sort of adjustable focal depth option in any true consumer version.

People ask if the display is distracting and it truly is not. The screen hovers above your right eye and doesn’t block normal vision. If it wasn’t for the prescription eyeglass issue, I would use the headset for navigation on a road trip in preference to trying to stab at the typically decidedly un-tech GPS screen in most rental cars.

“OK, Glass” is the main voice command and that launches voice or swipe functions such as “Take a picture” or “Record a video”. Using the eye sensor embedded in the headset Google has also added “wink” commands so you can even take pictures by winking. This obviously throws up all kinds of privacy issues but there are so few Glass headsets in general use that opposition, so far, has been muted. (Are you winking at me or taking a picture?!)

Some US software developers have already used the eye sensor to create programs that can do things like detecting driver fatigue.

For now, most people just talk to the device. It feels decidedly odd the first time you start talking to yourself in public but it’s the easiest way to operate Glass. Also, once you’ve done it a few times, it begins to feel less dorky. My bigger problem was trying to get Glass to understand me. “Google Irish news,” got translated to “Google eye rich nudes”. Some days it was more like Father Ted than The Big Bang Theory, as I pleaded with the device like a frantic Mrs Doyle.

Given the speed at which mobile phones transformed computing it’s a fair bet that by 2020 we will look back at Google Glass and say, “Remember when our headsets looked so clunky?”.

As for me, I got so used to Google Glass that I find myself tapping my real glasses now. OK, Glass!

* Google Glass is currently available on an invite list for “explorers” who will pay ,500 (€1,090) each for the privilege. Google Glass is not currently available in Ireland, but interested parties can sign up via www.google.com/glass

* Kelly Fincham is an assistant professor of journalism at Hofstra University in New York