Way back in 1945, Vannevar Bush, the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, wrote a remarkable essay titled "As we may think." In it, Bush predicted the rise of the worldwide web. He also wrote that "the camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimetres square, later to be projected or enlarged."
Bush's future is here. With the arrival of Google Glass, the camera is even smaller than a walnut.
In a detailed piece in The New York Times, author Clive Thompson looks at the history of wearable computing, beginning with Bush's vision. He talks about the experiment conducted by mathematician Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon , the engineer and cryptographer known as the father of information theory. Thorpe and Shannon created a small device, the size of a cigarette pack, that they used to beat the odds at roulette at Las Vegas casinos. This was the first wearable computer.
Thompson also talks about Thad Starner, first a student, then a professor at MIT. As a student , in 1993, Starner found it difficult to take notes and concentrate on what his professor was saying at the same time. He built a device to help him. It was made of computer parts stored in a backpack. Input was through a one-handed keyboard called the Twiddler. The user interface was an LED display clipped two inches in front of his right eye. He found the device so useful that he has used it for nearly 20 years now. In 1998 Starner met Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the founders of Google. Years later, Brin and Page would hire Starner to help them work on Google Glass.
Thompson also discusses the design process of Google Glass - how it went from a mad scientist's design to its current streamlined structure, with one arm acting as a trackpad, the other arm acting as a speaker that plays music directly against the skull. A future so bright, you gotta wear shades!
No comments:
Post a Comment