Sergey Brin TED talk about Project Glass (fun about yahoo and bing) | Hacker News Reader

Sergey Brin TED talk about Project Glass (fun about yahoo and bing)

glass-apps.org

48 pointsinfoman47 comments

Sergey is an interesting character. He's so brutally honest and unrefined. There's no trace of corporate bullshit, no fear of saying anything wrong about Google (although he did correct himself over eBay).

He's awkward. Says "er" a lot. Makes jokes about competitors. Admits that Glass hasn't succeeded yet. Criticises mobile phones (I assume it's a Nexus 4). Says his wife slaps him.

No CEO would do any of this. It's refreshing to see a company spokesperson so "normal".

He kind of comes across as a less shifty Mark Zuckerberg.

Thats why i like him more and trust him to make the right calls. (i.e. privacy) Mark does not have that, whenever i hear him you can sense this aura surrounding him. Something is off.

And comparing both companies Google is driving inovation. Google Car will transform our planet within years and the same goes for Glass. Think about where in your workplace you could apply a tool like this.

It is worth noting that every major car company is working on self-driving cars, and has been for quite a few years now.

> and has been for quite a few years now

They have. I first saw stuff about self driving cars when I was a kid, a couple of decades ago. So where are they?

Google has had a fraction of the time, yet appears to have gotten further than most already..

...only to cancel it at some random future time, mid-drive.

It's definitely refreshing to see. I don't like the Glass project but kudos to him for being straightforward about it regarding its obvious problems.

He's too nervous when he's making a joke though. Those moments are borderline cringeworthy.

Site wasn't working for me.

I think this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rie-hPVJ7Sw

The most boring presentation ever. He is like, so i created google, so i don't have to make an effort to show excitement in my new product, that's for the marketing and sales.

No onstage demo, jizuz i always present my stuff live ! that's where the emotions are.

Personally, I'm fine with people not showing excitement and just being themselves. And I actually liked this presentation; seemed very honest and genuine.

Still don't like it. Maybe we'll be the ones that people laugh at in the future, like we do now with the ones that said that Internet was just a fad. But consider, doesn't this mean that many people will let computerized glasses do all the thinking for them? It has been very much debated how now we don't memorize so many information anymore, as we can easily just solve an argument with a simple search on our phones. But this Google Glass is just taking it to another level..

Talking will maybe become more philosophical? Everybody will know facts but we will think about how to interpret and use them in a way with more foresight and impact on the whole univers

There's a few good Alastair Reynolds short stories where characters have a Glass-like assistant called an 'Aide Memoire' which they use to process the amount of information they get due to networks. A good side effect is also that as the characters age they still have recall of the facts stored.

Why are you keen on filling your own memory with things that can be readily accessible these days?

That's exactly why I like Glass so much. Humans aren't the only things that have memories, as demonstrated by dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, and dogs. Humans aren't the only things that can process data, as demonstrated by computers. The thing that is unique to humans is the ability to think, to make high-level abstract decisions. By doing all of the menial labor for me - memorization and basic number crunching and mechanical information retrieval - tools like Google Glass let me concentrate on that decisionmaking. They let me concentrate on being human.

I would argue that without a foundation of basic knowledge and facts you will be unable to do advanced abstract thinking. Knowing something and being able to look it up are not the same thing.

"I would argue that without a foundation of basic knowledge and facts you will be unable to do advanced abstract thinking."

What does that even mean?

It would be analogous to saying that without knowing algebra you'd be hard-pressed to solve problems in calculus.

I'm not sure what that has to do with thinking. Is there an absence of thinking when solving algebra that only kicks in when solving calculus?

No, it means that you need to know algebra to be able to think about calculus, not merely having access to an algebra book. Everyone can have access to algebra information, that doesn't mean everyone can solve calculus, as proved by reality.

It means that even with easy access to all the necessay information you can't build a rocket if you don't know how to do it.

You can learn how to do it, but that just means transferring the information from the outside into your brain.

You are not able to meaningfully reason (think) about a topic if you don't know anything about it and I show you the Wikipedia page. Easy access to data is useful if you know what to do with it.

I don't see how this argument detracts from glass in anyway. Doesn't it just make a better case for them?

Where did I mention Glass?

The OP said that having easy access to information allows him to "be human" and think. I'm arguing that is not nearly enough.

A large part of what I do when I program is recognising patterns and deciding when to apply certain methods. Without knowing the patterns and the methods to apply, I'd get nowhere.

When I write, I rely on a knowledge of words and how they relate to my mental abstractions to be able to formulate sentences from them.

Pretty much everything we do rely extremely extensively on facts and knowledge we need to acquire and remember.

Not knowing or remembering details is fine. I rely extensively on documentation and searches to write code, for example. But you need to know what to look for and what to search for.

Well, perhaps you are right and this is the ultimate natural selection. And maybe we will be free to perform other activities that are much more relevant to our existence. But the brain is a well-oiled machine, and the less you use it the rusty it gets. If the glasses tell you exactly where to go all the time, we will lose spacial orientation perhaps. If the glass makes all the math for us, we will lose our computation abilities.

Furthermore, this will make you highly dependent on a device that could ran out of battery or connection. How will you perform computation that you need for decision making then? Let's take it further, why go to universities when Google Glass tells me what I need to know?

OP only submits articles from glass-apps.org. Clearly a shill for that site. 14 submissions from that site in 4 days.

Can an admin change the link to point to youtube instead of this guys blogspam?

Account was registered on 3rd March, domain was registered 5th March. "Hmmm"

hey guys sorry if I offended you by my enthusiasm for google glass. I certainly didn't know enough about the hacker news community to to everything right. The site is currently down because of the attention (I have seen the same problem with other news posted here). I think I know now how to act properly in this "community".

Let me guess.. home work media job, lots of time on your hands to discuss interesting products?

Even if Glass isn't the right implementation, I love the fact that Google are trying to make something Minority Report-level wacky a mainstream consumer item.

yes it will be creepy for a while and then become normal. Do you remember those businessman with clunky cellphones we laughed at? -_-

The frame should be transparent, maybe made out of glass.

That felt a lot more awkward than I expected.

No kidding. The awkwardness never really let up.

"If I had glass" on Yahoo and Bing:

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Agw0sPNuxbiST6yjUH1P2j6b...

http://www.bing.com/search?q=if+i+had+glass&go=&qs=n...

and Google

https://www.google.com/?q=if%20i%20had%20glass#hl=en&new...

If anyone is interested, I did an analysis/visualization of people's "if I had glass" responses. Some are predictable ("I would sell it on eBay"), some are interesting ("surgeon could video and broadcast surgery" - at the very bottom of that visualization), lots and lots are about capturing moments and sharing them:

http://blog.itrendcorporation.com/2013/03/19/back-by-popular...

I am still amazed at this approach by Google with Glass - they don't offer a compelling reason to buy it yet, and people still seem to want it.

He says that they designed Glass to free up your hands and eyes and ears, but that is only true when you're not using it. When you are using it you're using your hands to scroll, your eyes to look at the screen, and you are still listening for what it has to say. How is this different from a phone?

When your phone is in your pocket your hands and eyes and ears are free but when you are using it they're not. The only difference seems to be looking up and slightly cross-eyed and not down.

If Glass becomes a success, I fail to see how it would bring people out of the bubble they're in when using a phone. It seems like Glass just moves the bubble.

http://glass-apps.org/google-glass-anime I've seen a very good anime about augmented reality. There are really nice glasses that are barely visible on your face. I hope google glass will be as fashionable as that some day:

I have a question: Would anyone still be bothered by all the privacy stuff if Glass didn't have a camera?

I guess then it'd be a redundant technology (is there such a thing?), but I assume people wouldn't be so concerned about their privacy as well, right?

There are three types of complaints I've seen about Glass:

* Camera-based privacy concerns.

* A rude distraction in my face/someone else's face that interrupts human interaction.

* It's ugly.

I completely ignore the last.

For the second, social norms will change or develop to address this. I expect people who pause in a conversation to stare at their eyeball screen will get similar reactions as people who glance down at their phone. Some will care; some won't. A lot of younger people won't give two poops.

For the privacy/camera based concerns, I'm quite fatalistic about it. Google has indicated that it's going to be obvious when you take a picture -- but more importantly, we are going to be surrounded by more and more cameras and sensors as time goes on. Since I don't think we can beat 'em..

Cue the advent of the No-chamber: http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/No-chamber

wtf is wrong with his hair?

That's really all you have to ask? Interesting...

I know all other official stuff about Glass :_)

Nobody does though. I don't think even Google knows what to do with Glass (or how to sell it) just yet.

Maybe it was set up that way to hide the electronics on the back of Glass?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com