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Comment by heyrhett | Hacker News Reader

Why would the largest advertising company in the world want to place a screen between my eyeballs and reality?

I'm imagining a remix of the featured video to look something like this:

* Guy wakes up, puts on glasses. They immediately tell him what brand of breakfast he should be eating today.

* When he looks at the window to see the weather, buildings and places are censored, and advertisements are replaced with google ads, yet he doesn't care

* During the text message with his friend, after he says "Strand books", Google suggests Chapters or Noble or another "featured" store, and he has to opt out of the text replacement.

* When the Subway is out, advertisements for cab companies come up on his "screen". He must opt out of them to get the walking route. Google begins caching the advertisements he will be seeing during the rout superimposed on the scenery.

* The board of posters he steps up to is blurred out and is instead a different, large "pop" label, not some indie band.

* In the book store, Google quotes lower prices for each book at "Google Books" and offers free shipping.

* The picture he takes at the end has a superimposed image of "Sponsored by Google!"

* It ends with the sunset having a superimposed text advertisement for vacations.

This is a very interesting interpretation of that video. It has such a dystopian flavor. Yes, it solves problems for you, but at the expense of a full thought process.

You already live that life on the Internet. Why is it so hard to imagine it following you into the real world?

This is why government regulation can be healthy. Ideally, ad replacement like what you described would be illegal. In a purely capitalist world it would be encouraged.

Apologies for getting political. But you paint an all-too-possible picture that's worryingly dystopic.

>"Ideally, ad replacement like what you described would be illegal"

Why is that? No one's forcing anyone to wear these glasses.

Do you think Adblock plugins should be illegal? If not, should they be illegal if they display a different ad instead? What if they remove all ads, but put a banner at the bottom of each page?

I personally didn't think that any of the situations I described should be illegal, but I suppose it really says something about our society when I can picture people being okay with corporations knowing everything about them.

I personally wish that outdoor ads visible from public places were illegal like they are in São Paulo. Outdoor advertising is visual pollution that has been placed over the World so slowly that most people don't realize the problem because they don't have a point of reference to compare to and be outraged.

Wrong. In a purely capitalist world, you can choose to avoid the product or use a competing product, or pay more for a premium service without ads.

Thinking that government regulation can be healthy is a horribly naive and extremely dangerous idea.

> Thinking that government regulation can be healthy is a horribly naive and extremely dangerous idea.

I assume you don't mean for this to apply to others areas, like food and drug inspection, vehicle safety standards, etc.

I would definitely prefer if the government had nothing to do with any kind of safety standards, including regulation of food, drugs, and vehicles.

Maybe something like this:

https://vimeo.com/8569187

A less cynical version:

https://vimeo.com/14294054

Also, in the concept video he goes into a physical book store and selects a physical book and buys it. Surely, his Googgles would just scan the book tell him how much cheaper it was in the Google Store... Rather amused that when meeting a friend he spent time checking in to the location rather than talking to the dude.

But these could be useful in situations where you don't have your hands free to hold a smartphone. For example, I would very much like GPS as a heads up display for cycling around London. And skiers/snowborders would enjoy them for other information (How many Gs am I pulling in this turn? How fast am I descending? Where am I?)

> And skiers/snowborders would enjoy them for other information (How many Gs am I pulling in this turn? How fast am I descending? Where am I?)

http://www.reconinstruments.com/products/mod

That is absolutely mind-blowing. I had to double-check online that it wasn't a concept mock-up or a joke, but it turned out to be a real product. I have no idea how well that screen looks in RL, but if it's half as good as in those promotional videos, then it's pretty impressive.

I thought it was going to cost a few thousand, but it's only 300/400, wow.

I can only imagine what a company with the talent and resources of Google could do with more advanced iterations of HUD technology.

Rather amused that when meeting a friend he spent time checking in to the location rather than talking to the dude.

I'm rather creeped out by this project. In almost all the situations presented he could have asked a freaking human instead of his glasses :

  - bookstore : ask the bookseller that's what he's here for,
 he may even give you better recommendations
  - maps in the street : ask somone
  - where is your friend ? call him

Etc etc...

Every single one of those things is faster and easier if handled automatically.

Ask the bookseller where to find a book? I don't do that now unless I've looked for the book myself and failed to find it, because it makes me feel lazy, and because it's not always easy to find someone without going to the cashier.

Ask someone for directions? People suck at giving directions, and they're slow at giving those bad directions. There's a reason people buy GPS units, and it's not because they're anti-social. It's because they work so much better.

Call your friend just to ask where he is when you expect him to arrive any minute? That comes off as impatient. And it's an inconvenience for your friend who has to answer his phone just to tell you he's almost there.

Here, here!

I think that as the way information is handled transforms and evolves the world will have to adapt.

I suspect getting floor plans of each and every store where these glasses operate wouldn't be feasible so having staff around to point people to specific books may still be useful. But I strongly believe that we shouldn't shun a new technology on the basis that it renders a current job useless. Just think of how many jobs that computers destroyed, and made.

I'm always excited when I think of what the future will look like because so much has changed with the Internet, and so much will continue to change as products like smartphones, tablets and AR systems come into play.

Imagine if someone from the 1800's could visit 2050. He might assume we are all extremely high-functioning schizophrenics.

> Imagine if someone from the 1800's could visit 2050. He might assume we are all extremely high-functioning schizophrenics.

Remember that movie 'Time After Time'? HG Wells and Jack the Ripper both visit the 1980's. Guess who fit in better? :-)

It's probably good for bookstore scenario but for asking people about maps requires that there must be (helpful) people around with good knowledge of the area. And for friend's location, calling requires input from someone else (which makes it slower, costlier, and imagine getting call from your friend asking for your location every x minutes [you can only do that so many times without "crossing the line"])

I'd add:

- where is your friend? just wander around. you'll find him.

Anyway so me too. Once I know I'm gonna be thought weird for asking someone, because most people just use their gadgets to find out, I don't ask, unless I'm not worried about being weird. And I'm just making it worse, of course. Oh dear.

There's a reason why one of the most successful comedy sketches in my country is about some guys giving directions. Not only are they slow and confusing, as - and I don't know if this is a cultural thing - they often actually make stuff up instead of admitting they don't know where it is.

The biggest wtf is why he is even going into a paper bookstore in the first place. He should be able to just navigate some sort of hierarchical list of all published works and have a copy sent to his e-paper reader. There are no technological barriers to this, only social.

There's always going to be a lot of people who prefer a paper book to an e-book; even with the death of paper books I could absolutely see "one-off" book printing companies licensing printing rights from the publishers and making a niche for themselves.

Don't ask smart questions - just put on the glasses

You see a jogger pass by in a Nike t-shirt. But Under Armor is paying steep fees to have the augmented reality overlay show you the advantages that a UA t-shirt would give you: "57% more air exchange, 7% lighter, " etc.

I think that big media corporations (owning dozens of TV and radio stations, newspapers and magaiznes) are still largest advertising companies in the world. Whether you count it by money flow, reach or anything else.

This is the same thing I thought. This ad brought immediately to mind the book "Feed" by MT Anderson.

Because they are trying to create a new reality....

He was being sarcsatic

of course he was....I still don't understand why an advertising company would like to put a screen in front of your eye.....lol

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