The emergence of Google Glass, a prototype for a transparent Heads-Up Display (HUD) worn over one eye, is significant. It is the first conceptualization of a mainstream augmented reality wearable eye display by a large company. This paper argues that Glass’s birth is not only a marketing phenomenon heralding a technical prototype, it also argues and speculates that Glass’s popularization is an instigator for the adoption of a new paradigm in human-computer interaction, the wearable eye display. Google Glass is deliberately framed in media as the brainchild of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Glass’s process of adoption operates in the context of mainstream and popular culture discourses, such as the Batman myth, a phenomenon that warrants attention.
The emergence of Google Glass, a prototype for a transparent Heads-Up Display (HUD) worn over one eye, is significant on several levels. It is the first conceptualization of a mainstream augmented reality wearable eye display playing out in a viral marketing campaign. Google Glass will enable us to capture video, let us interact with personal contacts, and navigate maps, amongst other things. The YouTube concept video “One Day…” that announced its coming on April 4, 2012, has been viewed more than 18 million times . Gracing the face of Diane von Furstenberg, who wore it at New York’s fashion week, it is often strategically trotted out for photo opportunities. It has been provocative enough to scare both Apple and Microsoft, who had been issuing patents for augmented reality products of their own . However, most salient of all is the way Google Glass is framed in media as the brainchild of Sergey Brin, the American computer scientist of Russian descent who co-founded Google. Brin is also celebrated in online articles as a real life “Batman,” who is developing a secret facility resembling the “Batcave”. This paper argues that Glass’s birth is not only a marketing phenomenon heralding a technical prototype, it also suggests and speculates that Glass’s popularization is an instigator for the adoption of a new paradigm in Human- Computer Interaction (HCI), the wearable eye display. Glass’s process of adoption operates in the context of mainstream and popular culture discourses, a phenomenon that warrants attention.
Background
Google Glass is a prototype for an augmented reality, heads-up display developed by Google X lab slated to run on the Android operating system (see Figure 1). Augmented reality involves technology that augments the real world with a virtual component . The first appearance of Glass was on Sergey Brin who wore it to an April 5, 2012 public event in San Francisco. Provocative headlines emerged such as “Google ‘Project Glass’ Replaces the Smartphone with Glasses” and “Google X Labs: First Project Glass, next space elevators?” . A groundswell of anticipation surrounds Glass because it implies a revolutionary transition to a new platform, even though release for developers is only planned for 2013. At the time of our writing this paper, it is not available for consumers who can only see it in promotional materials.
Heads-up eye displays are not new. The Land Warrior system, developed by the U.S. army over the past decade, for example, includes a heads-up eye display with an augmented reality visual overlay for soldier communication. Many well-known inventors have contributed eye display technology, research or applications over the past two decades including Steve Mann (Visual Memory Prosthetic), Thad Starner (Remembrance Agent), and Rob Spence (Eyeborg). Commercially, Vuzix is a company that currently manufactures transparent eye displays.
Science fiction and popular references to the eye display are almost too numerous to list, but most are featured in military uses: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator from the 1984 film had an integrated head’s up display that identified possible targets, Tom Cruise’s Maverick in Top Gun had a rudimentary display to indicate an enemy plane’s target acquisition and current G-forces, and Bungie’s landmark video game series Halo features a head’s up display that gives the player real-time status updates on player enemy locations, shield levels, remaining ammunition and waypoint information. In most popular culture uses, a head’s up display is transparently overlaid upon the real world. However, in video games, the display is considered to be part of the entire game interface. While many film and television shows are adding HUDs to their storytelling to add a science fiction or futuristic feel, there is a movement in game development away from any artificial HUDs as many consider them to be “screen clutter” and block a player’s view of a created world. The video game Dead Space by Electronic Arts is an exemplar of this new style: traditional game information such as health and ammunition have been woven into character design, allowing for an unobstructed view.
Relevance to HCI Community:
Google is calling for a profound change in computer interactivity with the mainstream introduction of the wearable eye display. This case study explores how this nascent computer platform is undergoing a process of early adoption in creative and alternative ways. Our paper charts this phenomenon by reading the popular culture context that surrounds adoption and the discursive response in the news and media. The path to technology adoption is a much-researched area with established theories as to why people embrace a platform. John B. Horrigan and Ellen Satterwhite analyze adoption and emphasize the social aspect:
It is social support that draws people to adoption, that is, the “demonstration effect” that comes when people see others in their social networks using something new, which in turns helps people understand the value of trying something new. People learn about a new product from people around them; their social networks, in other words, play a key role in helping people discover the utility and usability of an innovation. Google’s approach is to bring Glass into public social networks before it emerges. It generates a culture and a mass mainstream following for Glass as a new HCI platform by mediating how it is introduced to the public. Using an exemplary figure in Sergey Brin, Google makes Glass seem both socially relevant as well as alluring. While relevant research has been conducted on the adoption of “hyped technologies,” , it usually takes a consumer research perspective and does not consider the broader discourses, personas, and popular culture allusions that function in this process.
Sergey Brin has been loosely associated with Batman since the fall of 2011, setting persuasive discursive grounds for actions that Google takes. A compelling character in the narrative that charts this technology’s emergence, the name “Sergey Brin” appears 713 times in the corpus of 1,000 print and online news articles about Google Glass. Often the story concentrates on Brin’s activities, comments, whereabouts, and future expectations amid news of a technology that only exists as an artifact of the press for the public. Rupert Till explains the definition of how an individual must amass popular fame in order to form a “cult of personality”: A celebrity is someone who is well known for being famous, and whose name alone is recognizable, associated with their image, and is capable of generating money. . . For a star to progress to a point where they are described as a popular icon requires their achievement of a level of fame at which they are treated with the sort of respect traditionally reserved for religious figures. In order to be described as a popular icon, a star has to become a religious figure, to develop their own personality cult and recruit followers.
References
Google. Project Glass: One day… YouTube Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/14/googleglass-diane-von-furstenberg-new-york-fashionweek-video/
http://www.google.com
Done By
Isabel Pedersen
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Oshawa, ON, Canada
Douglas Trueman
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Oshawa, ON, Canada
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