Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/08/interesting-sneak-peek-of-vaun.html
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Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society.
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Just don’t wear them in a casino.
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Nifty stuff. The fact is that anyone who wears normal eyeglasses already wears tech on their faces, so the basic premise is already accepted.
The key here, of course, is good and thoughtful design of the applications. Also, this is one product where buying cheap knockoff hardware from Asia would not be a good idea:
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O ye of little faith.
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What I like about these is that they are glasses in that you can get them fitted with a prescription and everything. So many VR/AR solutions seem to assume that you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing glasses unless they are the giant dorky goggles they are making.
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I’ll buy the first pair of smart glasses that can run a terminal emulator.
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Big mistake. A lot of the glasshole syndrome and bad rep came from the fact that it was intentionally exclusive. It literally created a visibly distinct us and them. That exclusivity is going to get a lot of negative knee jerk reactions.
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China is several steps ahead…
Glassholery
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I guess rule 34 applies. They’ll be loaded with deepfakes software running in real time.
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I want this, just not for porn. I’d love to have glasses that reskin reality. Turn random people into goofy characters or cute animals.
It could also be awesome for spectrum people who can’t read facial expressions if the glasses could just tell you in floating text what it thinks their expressions mean.
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Unfortunately, Gibson’s maxim that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed” works on a micro as well as a macro level. They’ll be smart if they limit the early access programme to real developers rather than to celebrities and unicorn founders and PR people and journalists who tend to get into situations like this fool did:
Since these glasses aren’t obviously digitally enhanced like Google Glass Intel would be well advised to ask early-access users not to tell everyone around them they’re wearing them. Also, from what I saw in the video these prototypes don’t have video and audio record capability, which was one of the major drivers of glasshole behaviour.
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“The accused claims, in his defence, that, prior to him assaulting you, you kept on pointing at him and laughing.”
“Well, he looked soooooo funny!”
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If it doesn’t have a camera or microphone, I don’t see how it can be used for AR or any other smart glasses application?
If it does, then it has recording capability whether the developer wants it to seem that way or not.
Also, the trend in most AR has been towards use in manufacturing and construction environments and the like. To me, that seems much more likely to convince a large swath of the population that smart glasses are normal and useful, and to understand both the benefits (assistance in lots of tasks) and dangers (surveillance, privacy).
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The prototype shown here just has a small monochrome overlay that takes its cues from a phone’s sensors and inputs. It’s not full AR, more of a HUD projected onto the retina.
It’s only a matter of time before they add the camera and mic, though.
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Got it, thanks. So it just relies on the recording devices we’re already wearing at the moment.
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So will these things display your wuffie score natively or will that have to be an add-on?
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You are the first person who has ever made augmented reality seem attractive to me.
I want to reskin everyone as Tex Avery characters!
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There’s no camera.
This is because Intel is looking for partners. They don’t want to sell these things directly to consumers because that’s not really their forte.
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