Google's Project Glass Demoed in Real Life

The most exciting piece of technology without an "i" in its name this year is undoubtedly Google's funky Project Glass AR glasses. Previously spotted on Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, head of Google X sat down with Charlie Rose to give us common folk a look at the future.

In his interview with Rose, Thrun answers a few questions concerning why Google is so excited about Project Glass. For one thing, Project Glass is aimed at "getting [computers] out of your life and not into your life."

Thrun believes Project Glass will augment reality in useful ways without the technical barrier that is often associated with operating mobile devices such as smartphones. "This is a display that sits above a normal feed of you. It can see things that you wish to, but normally it doesn't impede your vision."

The other major purpose of Project Glass is to make it super easy to share things — with a first-person perspective.

As is standard with all prototypes, Google's Project Glass video showed a piece of eyewear that was virtually entirely voice-controlled. Want to take and share a photo to Google+ instantly? Just tell your glasses to do it for you.

However, the reality of the situation is never quite as simple. Throughout Thrun's brief interview, he never once used any voice activated commands (it could be that he just didn't activate them), but instead took a photo by tapping a physical button on the top of the glasses frame and nodded his head to share it. Does it look ridiculous? You bet it does.

Naturally, Thrun took a photo of Charlie Rose, immediately shared it to his Google+ profile and the Internet got to work trashing the quality of the image:

(Click to enlarge original untouched photo)
charlierose-google-project-glass.jpg

Rose seemed genuinely excited for Project Glass's implications. I still think it's kind of a silly toy. I'm not especially fond of the single tiny display on the right side. Why not have two? How about full-sized lenses? How is Google tackling privacy concerns with Project Glass?

Via YouTube

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