Google Glass encapsulates the difference between Apple and every other company thats ever attempted to do futurism. As long as I can remember, there have been people trying to create digital homes. Actually, before I can remember: there was the Disney exhibition with the animatronics all wearing futuristic info-goggles, which originated at a Worlds Fair before I was born. There were people twenty years ago offering to fully wire-up your house for a million dollars. Its the wave of the future, theyd tell the media, but when you asked how you went stepwise from the reality of the day to their image of Tomorrowland, it got very hand-wavy. Whats always impressed me with Apple is that theyve gone from bottom up. It started with a computer that was relatively easy to use. Then there was wireless internet, back when that was generally considered a strange why do I need it? technology. It was a bit pricey, but not SO pricey that average consumers couldnt afford it. It wasnt tremendously necessary, but you could at least see its value. Both on the supply side and on the demand side, it was the commercial equivalent of a stretch goal. The same happened with the iPod, which was also just a bit beyond the market. A little more expensive, a lot easier to use, but not enormously different from what consumers already understood that they needed. iPhone added integration with telephony and with remote internet. Again, these were things most consumers didnt feel a burning need for, but the product was just far enough outside their envelope as to be attractive. Now we get the watch and ApplePay, and again the experts say no one needs that. But its a near-field expansion on what people already recognize that they need, so it will draw them stepwise into the future. Before long, we will all have been offered entrance into that Tomorrowland future, but not as a single giant step. It was one step at a time. Nor was it any kind of a trick. Steve Jobs had no idea of the iPhone when he pushed the iPod. Those engineer-fantasy results grew evolutionarily, in a manner that the venerable conservative Edmund Burke might have approved. Yet in the end, were getting really close to the home of tomorrow that a liberal fantasist might have dreamed of, 30 years ago. Will computerized goggles become part of our daily lives? Maybe. But they wont come by some engineer pushing them down on our foreheads. Theyll come by stepwise progression from one identifiable value to the next identifiable value to the next, and so on. slate/articles/technology/technology/2014/11/google_glass_why_it_s_time_for_google_to_walk_away_from_its_much_hyped_moonshot.html?wpsrc=sh_all_tab_tw_ru
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:39:35 +0000
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