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Tuesday, May 31, 2016

THE NEXT VERSION OF GOOGLE GLASS IS WAY SMALLER -- AS WELL AS CREEPIER

Remember Google Glass? The doofusy headsets which enabled super-nerds to snap photos by simply blinking their eyes? It had been one of Google's numerous unmitigated failures, and not only because it looked therefore stupid on anyone who dared put it on in public. Rather, Google Glass caused a widespread freak-out since it was disturbingly easy with regard to wearers to surreptitiously catch photos and video of individuals around them, without their own knowledge or permission. Dealing with an onslaught of critique over privacy concerns, Google halted production under a year after Glass hit the industry.

The big G said it wasn't quitting on Glass and promised an entire redesign, and we have not heard much since. Now it appears like it's set its sights on the much smaller, inconspicuous wearable: a contact. And while this tiny bit of optical tech will definitely solve the embarrassing glasshole issue, the creepiness factor looms bigger than ever.

Google's research started innocently enough...

Google's first patent application for any contact lens was approved long ago in 2014, when it had been still in the attention (! ) of a pr shit-storm over Google Cup. The headsets were becoming banned by restaurants, pubs, theaters, and sports occasions, and Google was getting ready to take them off the marketplace altogether. Unveiling an even weirder wearable at this type of moment seemed like an enormous PR miscalculation -- before you realized what the lens was actually created for.

On its blog, Google excitedly outlined how the mysterious contact lens wasn't some newfangled eyeball digital camera, but rather a device targeted at helping people with diabetes, capable of constantly monitoring glucose levels via the glucose within tears. The announcement successfully shifted attention from the Glass disaster to some new project, one that would stop painful finger-pricking for huge numbers of people.

Since then Google has partnered using the pharmaceutical giant Novartis to obtain things moving, and has also begun developing yet another kind of lens to restore the actual eye's natural autofocus with regard to patients with age-related long-sightedness. Neither device has hit the industry yet, but the latter may reportedly enter human-testing trials this season, and Google's even patented the packaging for this.

... But of course this didn't stop there

It would've been foolish to assume Google would avoid the opportunity to additional develop the technology to show our eyes into digital cameras. The company made head lines again this month having a new patent application to have an "intra-ocular device" -- a little gizmo (pictured above) that might be surgically implanted into your own eye. According to the actual document, it would not only manage to correcting poor vision with time as your eyes grow older, but would have another special functions baked within, too -- the capability to connect to other cellular devices, charge via sent radio energy, and click and store photos. Hmmm… problem?

Will shrinking the camera down to how big a contact lens solve all of the problems that plagued Search engines Glass? Aesthetically, sure -- but as unsightly since the headsets were, you could a minimum of tell if someone had been wearing one. There's nothing more unnerving than being on the other hand of a stranger's digital camera, but you couldn't hide a tool as obvious as Search engines Glass in, say, a locker room or cinema. But when that gadget is surgically implanted on to an eyeball, detecting whether someone is actually wearing one -- or whether it's actively recording images from any given moment -- becomes much more problematic.

Now Google has competition within the contact-lens race

If you are concerned, it gets even worse: Google is far from alone with this quest to advance optical technologies. Both Samsung and Sony are developing their very own contact lens-based concepts. Based on a recently revealed Samsung obvious application from 2014, the South Korean conglomerate might be hard at work on the lens that would permit you to take photos by flashing. It would connect for your smartphone and project images on your eye via a little display -- put 2 and two together, and it is not crazy to imagine the next where we'll be getting texts and notifications upon our eyeballs.

Similarly, simply last month, details associated with Sony’s contact-lens project (pictured above) had been uncovered, and it seems to be the most ambitious and advanced from the bunch. The device enables you to view images and video using the blink of an attention, and to record movie of what you're viewing. Not only that, it'll incorporate aperture control, move, stabilization, and focus manage. If this thing involves pass, it'll make your iPhone camera appear to be a dinosaur.

Creepiness apart, the technology is extremely exciting

Despite the privacy implications of this, there's no denying that using a camera on your eyeball will be cool as hell. Capturing everything you're seeing means forget about "pics or it did not happen" moments, or toting around a clunky camera on holiday. And as Jody Medich associated with Singularity University told all of us, tech-equipped contact lenses would be the future of virtual actuality. They'll not only allow us to view what star quarterbacks as well as superstar musicians are seeing instantly as they play as well as perform, but will additionally be critical components with regard to augmented-reality systems.

Just take a look at Magic Leap. Never heard about it? It's an under-the-radar, Google-backed "mixed reality" new venture that's developing some genuinely mind-bending virtual- and augmented-reality technology. It just filed a lot of new patent applications, including a VR headset that could incorporate a contact zoom lens (pictured above). The organization is mum on particulars, but Recode predicts it can help automatically calibrate your eye's focus in tandem having a larger headset so which virtual "objects" appear as real for you as physical ones.

While Google may be in front of the pack, there's no telling recognize the business will actually be the very first to deliver a camera-packed contact to the public. And also the more important question is actually this: which one would be the first to convince us it won't turn us right into a civilization of super-creeps?

Techsourcenetwork