Day 30

Inchoate Thoughts

Not too much Glass today.  At work I wore them during a tour of our building's display area for some young visiting scholars from South Asia.  After work, I took a short bike ride and documented some of the narrow courses along the Griegos Lateral above the Alameda Drain.  

But I have been giving a lot of thought to yesterday's breakthrough in terms of Glass functionality.

Basically, I took a one hour bike ride and, with very few brief interruptions, was able to document it very completely with Glass.  I took 55 images (15  9-second videos and 40 still photos) and captured every key intersection, street crossing, scenic view, route condition, and principle activity.  I caught a number of good wildlife images as well and documented some activities that would be impossible without hands-free control. 

To do the same with a conventional point-and-shoot digital camera would have meant 55 dismounts followed by getting the camera out of its belt pouch, turning it on, snapping the photo, putting it away, and remounting.  Somethings like crossing the acequia on an 18" wide catwalk would not have been possible, let alone safe, without Glass.

My thesis right now is that Glass is not just a small evolutionary step in mobile tech; it's a revolutionary change in data/information throughput.  With its voice recognition system, touch pad, attitudinal sensing controls, camera, and other features, Glass has greatly increased one's ability to capture, input, store, and share data.  With its visual display, transduction speaker, and wireless communication capabilities, Glass has greatly increased one's ability to interpret, analyze, visualize, and otherwise understand your environment.  Just as Google says, Glass is there when you need it and disappears (to the user) when you don't. 

These two aspects combined create a saltatory change in how one observes and responds to phenomena.  More to come as I refine these thoughts.