Comment by leoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leoc | Hacker News Reader

Two thoughts:

1) Google is obviously terrified that being seen wearing Glasses will brand you as terribly nerdy. (Compare the 'gargoyle' stigma in /Snow Crash/.) So to control the early perceptions they're doing a heavily-publicised early release to some carefully-selected mobile-phone-company-commercial beautiful people. The ideal candidate will be taking photos for /National Geographic/ while cave-diving for her Rhodes Scholarship. She will also be rather attractive, and not a wearer of prescription glasses. (Compare http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/05/08/the-sophie-choice . Courting Steven Levy seems to have turned out pretty poorly for Google, eh?)

2) Glasses looks very promising, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to call what it does Augmented Reality? AR more or less implies a HUD, or some other means of superimposing CGI on what you see of the real world. But the http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/ video seems to suggest that instead Glasses takes a "picture-in-picture" approach, and the screen's transparency seems to serve mainly to make it feel less oppressive, and to minimise the amount it obstructs your vision when the whole screen is not in use. Goggles http://www.google.ie/mobile/goggles/ is more of a true AR system. (I'm not suggesting this is a bad decision: in light of the current problems with head-tracking http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/raster-scan-displays-m... and precise geolocation it seems like a good one.)

I disagree that people will be branded as 'nerdy' or like 'gargoyle's in snow-crash. I think they'll be seen more like the people who always have a bluetooth headset on their ear (i.e. douchey).

I'm convinced that perceived nerdiness is a hazard for Google. I will accept that perceived douchiness is another one. I'm sure that the marketers are standing by to reject any application that even faintly suggests that you might use the Glasses to photoblog your dinner.

I think I disagree.. The rise of the "brogrammer" is proof that nerd culture is not only on the rise, but actually revered as the new "cool".

Look at television for example.. Asthon Kutcher is the highest paid actor on TV, and he basically stars as himself on Two and a Half men. Ashton is a product evangelist + angel investor. He makes nerds look awesome

Another example from (popular culture/TV) is Big Bang Theory. "Toward the end of its run, Friends was topping out around 20 million viewers, meaning Big Bang is now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one of network TV's biggest and longest comedy successes."[1]

Movies like The Social Network + jOBS will further push the perceived nerdiness for Google into a good thing, not a negative thing. Our culture is shifting.

[1]- http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/01/big-ban...

The new "nerd chic" is real enough, but there's still a line most people are not comfortable crossing, and not respectful of others crossing, and I think Google is in danger of finding Glasses to be on the other side of that line. Even if that isn't actually the case, I think it's fairly clear that Google fears it could be, and the company is trying its best to prevent that.

Ashton may have some nerd cred, but I promise you that your girlfriend/wife/whatever does not see him as a nerd.

It hasn't shifted that far. Geek culture itself is still considered "uncool", even in silicon valley. When popular culture uses the term "Geek" they really mean "Hipster." It's the aesthetics that are considered cool, not the substance.

The shift you're perceiving is this: people with geeky hobbies and professions are now allowed the opportunity to be cool. That wasn't an option before the dot com boom. Thanks to the mass amounts of wealth and resources geeks have generated, we've been allowed a seat at the table, provided we behave ourselves. IE: no segways, no VR goggles, no LARP.

That distinction is exactly why Google is taking the tactic they are - they want the glass associated more with Apple and less with Segway.

This guy qualifies for gargoyle in my book. http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdon...

So the first thought which came to your mind after going through the Glass site is how Google is terrified about the appearance of people in those glasses!

You said nothing about the tremendous opportunity this brings in terms of making your lives easier by providing you with the right information at the right time, by recording the key moments of your life easily, by augmenting your vision/view of the world with tons of fact based data etc.

And what you saw was how bad this looks. Some people are hard to satisfy..

The benefits aren't worth it if I can't wear it without feeling like a tool.

This is the first iteration for god's sake. I am sure there will be multiple models of this and you can choose which one to pick and use.

edit: grammar

thera are multiple models of bluetooth headests. Doesn't help the slighttest. For Google glasses it will be 1000x so.

> AR more or less implies a HUD, or some other means of superimposing CGI on what you see of the real world.

I realize that not having grown up on Snow Crash makes me a bit of an outsider to this, but... yeah, I have no idea what makes you think this is a requirement. My conception of AR actually looks more like Tony Stark's holographic interactable blueprints in Avengers, rather than his inside-the-suit HUD which I just consider... a HUD, and not very interesting.

UPDATE: Actually, I've just come across this Steven Levy article in Wired that illustrates the perception challenge nicely. http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/epicenter-google-glass... On the LEFT: how Google wants you to think of Glasses. On the RIGHT: how you think of Glasses. And again: this was a Wired article, by Steven Levy.

If the market is only people who think it'd be cool to look like a Star Trek character, that is still a pretty big market.

So, the AR happens in the picture-in-picture instead of the main screen. I think that still counts as AR?

In Korea and Japan, people wear glasses to look cool, and they are cheap. People who don't need glasses either just wear glasses with either no-prescription or no lenses. It's not nerdy. It's cool. Think jewelry. Not utility.

Add a chat/texting app and give it to teenagers and it will be instantly considered "cool".

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