Google Glass: Future of Movies Or Monkey Cam 2.0?

theodp writes "When it comes to Google's futuristic Glass goggles, people seem to fall into two camps. On the one hand, you have people like NY Times Arts critic Mike Hale, who goes gaga over how fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg put Google glasses on models who walked in her recent Fashion Week show, enabling them to capture video from their point of view as they walked the runway. 'For a preview of how we all may be making movies in a few years,' Hale breathlessly writes, 'take a look at DVF Through Glass .' On the other hand, you have folks like NY Times commenter JokerDanny, who says he's seen this Google Glass movie before. 'David Letterman used to call this Monkey-Cam,' quips JD, referring to the mid-1980's Late Night bits in which Letterman mounted a camera on Zippy the Chimp, enabling the monkey to capture video from his point of view as he roamed the studio. Thanks to the magic of YouTube Doubler, here's a head-to-head comparison of POV video shot by Zippy in 1986 — the year Larry Page and Sergey Brin celebrated their 13th birthdays — to that taken by a DVF model in 2012."

Neither

[Andrio]

It's not either, but it is going to be one of those things from sci-fi that'll end up everywhere in our lives (like cellphones).

In a decade or two, they'll cell them in drugstores like prepaid phones.

Jackass cam 1.0

[Grayhand]

It's like cheap video cams brought filmmaking to the masses Google Glasses will mean anyone can act like an idiot and provide a first person view of the disaster. There's already been some intensely cool helmet cam videos but that's because it's mostly pros or semi pros using them. Like with cheap video cameras we didn't see a rash of Citizen Kanes we saw mostly films that shouldn't have been made. We're likely to see something closer to Strange Days. It'll be guys getting laid and failed attempts to jump between buildings where you'll watch the POV all the way to the ground. I'd like to think people would sick of it after the first hundred bicycle riders face planting into walls but morbid curiosity never seems to die.

Pogue: Potential no other machine has ever had

[theodp]

David Pogue: Google Glass and the Future of Technology [nytimes.com]

WSJ: The glasses were ultimately disappointing

[theodp]

Spencer Ante: Hype and Hope: Test Driving Google's New Glasses [wsj.com]

I'm in the happy camp!

[kiriath]

In my opinion, Google Glass is one of the absolute most awesome new pieces of tech to come about in years. I look forward to this technology with great anticipation.

I find myself not getting too excited about tech recently, this is the only thing that has even remotely piqued my curiosity and I'm hooked.

I think it is something to get excited about.

The future

[93 Escort Wagon]

I think Google Glasses are more of a short-term gimmick and proof-of-concept than anything else. But one of the guys Google just hired (away from our university, as a matter of fact) is Babak Parviz - who's been working towards what could probably be called "Google Contacts".

The tech's nowhere near ready; but I think the idea of an unobtrusive HUD on a contact lens would be far more likely to garner widespread adoption than Glasses ever will.

On a side note - all this focus on the "camera" functionality is mostly missing the point. What's cool about the concept isn't the ability to take portable movies - we can already do that. It's the information right in front of your eyeballs that's the future.

Re:The future

[wurp]

By the time we're doing that, we'll be stimulating memories directly and expanding your imagination with DirectX48 at 120fps, while giving the answer to any question you briefly consider instantly in full multimedia a la Google+Wolfram Alpha+Wikipedia+Mathematica.

And the future *I* want involves my enhanced, uploaded mind occupying a few metric tons of atomically precise computronium distributed across the solar system, with continuous incremental backup a few light years away.

(Of course, from my point of view that computronium is an utterly immersive universe in which I am the dashing hero.)