Google to sell Augmented Reality Glasses in 2012.

[Hoodie]

It's all a matter of time anyway. The argument is a pointless one because all you need to do is look at an iphone and realise it's about 8 times as powerful as the laptop you were using 8 years ago and about a 16th the size.

My 7 year old laptop begs to differ at least in terms of processing power.

 

have you looked up the nvidia tegra? it's pretty damn powerful.

 

to be fair though, Rambo was talking about the processing power in an iPhone, which doesn't use the tegra chipset at all.

 

i'm just saying that the technology is out there.

[murve33]

In my opinion, the reason we are having all these discussions is because there is an uneasiness. I think humanity itself is undergoing a shift. We have this new technology constantly beng created which is pointing us in a new direction but we are slightly lagging behind it in some senses. So you have people making points like but we need space and time to think, and comments like technology is stopping us from *thing that humans have always done traditionally*. Well there's bad news, we are never ever going back. We will evolve and become a totally new beast, posthuman, or wipe everyone out this century. Sounds all a bit OTT but that's how i see it. I'm sure plenty of others do too.

 

Thats Kurzweil's thing, we will eventually have to physically merge with machines just to keep up with technological innovation. It's an interesting idea and I think it's likely the case.

I do feel uncomfortable with it, but I don't think it can be stopped either.

Sounds like a sound theory to me. To an extent, many people have merged with technology. People seem completely addicted to it and unable to put down their smart phone. But, it's not like everyone has to use technology. We won't live in a world where everyone is part machine as long as the amish are around.

 

I can have an akira arm?

 

No, no - it's all about the Tetsuo: Iron Man penis

Agreed. Plus Tetsuo the Iron Man is way cooler than Akira.

[Guest Rambo]

It's all a matter of time anyway. The argument is a pointless one because all you need to do is look at an iphone and realise it's about 8 times as powerful as the laptop you were using 8 years ago and about a 16th the size.

My 7 year old laptop begs to differ at least in terms of processing power.

 

have you looked up the nvidia tegra? it's pretty damn powerful.

 

to be fair though, Rambo was talking about the processing power in an iPhone, which doesn't use the tegra chipset at all.

 

haha I'll be honest, i didn't stop and think about the numbers too much. It was a general point really. You only have to look at the inside of an iphone it's just ridiculous. I can pretty much assure everyone that they had a better laptop than me 8 years ago as well while we are on the subject.

[HoA]

That's not what has happened up until this point. 500 million smartphones were sold last year. I heard a fantastic quote recently (and it's true) that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone has access to more knowledge than president Clinton had 15 years ago. Do you think anyone with this kind of gloomy outlook that pervades western society now would have made that prediction 15 years ago?

 

What is more important, smartphones or clean drinking water?

 

We live like royalty in the U.S. and U.K. Who do you think made those smartphones?

 

http://www.businessi...ld-labor-2012-1

 

 

To give you an idea of what it's like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF8jUDzz5bE

[murve33]

Yea, it's disgusting.

 

Good thing we're not communist like the Chinese, amirite?

[oscillik]

That's not what has happened up until this point. 500 million smartphones were sold last year. I heard a fantastic quote recently (and it's true) that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone has access to more knowledge than president Clinton had 15 years ago. Do you think anyone with this kind of gloomy outlook that pervades western society now would have made that prediction 15 years ago?

 

What is more important, smartphones or clean drinking water?

 

We live like royalty in the U.S. and U.K. Who do you think made those smartphones?

 

http://www.businessi...ld-labor-2012-1

 

 

To give you an idea of what it's like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF8jUDzz5bE

 

you'd best stop using your computer then!

[Guest Rambo]

Dont ever put a positive spin on anything, it just aint cool chaps

[chenGOD]

Or some less sensationalist reporting:

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/what-cameras-inside-foxconn-found/

 

Every country has gone through times like this, the Chinese are overcoming their labour issues probably faster than they were addressed in the UK/US/Japan/South Korea (in order of industrialization). Yes there are problems, but instead of running around screaming like chicken little, some rational thinking might be in order.

[DerWaschbar]

Yeah that whole Foxconn thing was blown out of proportion in my opinion, atleast regarding the suicides. 14 people out of 930,000 (1.5 per 100,000 in 2010) is actually less than the Chinese average (22.23 per 100,000 in 2010) or even the Canadian average suicide rate (11.3 per 100,000 in 2004).

It's pretty revealing as to how much little thought goes into news stories and how much little research people do into the stories presented to them.

[chenGOD]

Yeah i don't think people really comprehend the size of the Foxconn factories. I've made that exact same argument, but people just plug their ears and close their eyes and go "la la la suicides...evil corporations!"

[YO303]

Typing this post on a computer made by a exploited Chinese worker that probably killed him/her self.

[lumpenprol]

typing this post in an office with Chinese workers who probably want to kill themselves or me

[oscillik]

lol

[chenGOD]

lol

[skotosa]

Google has been beat.

 

 

Lumus' OE-31 optical engine turns motorcycle helmets, other eyewear into wearable displays

[YO303]

lol how is ^ that not dangerous.

[Guest Margatroid]

Seems like no one really wanted to take Hoodie to task for his claims here, but I want to.

 

maybe those are personal problems you both are having and not problems with our culture as a whole. creeping on facebook and texting is gross to you? lol, ok. why are you using an online forum then?

First off, this is a fallacious argument. "If you think alcoholism is bad then why do you drink alcohol?" Please. Secondly, it's rude to accuse people of having "personal problems" because they're ambivalent about the social effects of the internet. If anything, you sound defensive yourself, like you can't tolerate the idea of there being any downsides to the way people use emerging technologies.

 

last night i chilled with some chick. we got stoned and talked talked talked. the entire time, her macbook was there and we would put on youtube videos or look up movies we were talking about. we listened to some music, etc etc. this is my point: technology isn't a replacement for social interaction. it's an AUGMENTATION. it adds to it. in my opinion, it's bringing people together in a huge way. you can immediately show someone what you're talking about and they can experience the same thing as you. contrast that to, "oh yeah, i saw this movie a couple of weeks ago at the theater. have you heard of it? no? well, let me try to explain it to you. also, you will probably never have enough time to drive out to the theater and watch it."

You give an anecdotal example of how you shared an internet experience with someone else in person. This is more the exception than the rule, as you undoubtedly know. Sure, it's cool to be able to call up audio and video with a snap of your fingers and experience it with someone else, but it's disingenuous to suggest that this is how people use computers most of the time. Normally, they do it alone, and with smaller devices like cellphones they almost invariably do it alone. Statistics show that people increasingly spend more and more time at home by themselves, and they also show that the number of close friends or confidants that people have is also becoming lower over time. (Not going to source this; you can look it up.) Instead, people have more acquaintances who they mostly communicate with through computers and phones. The impact of the loss of deep, face-to-face connections with other people is something that cannot be scientifically quantified, but something which undoubtedly causes a vast amount of pain.

 

today, we can just google that shit and they can watch it on netflix that night. i think this is changing a lot of things, but imo the big one is empathy. more and more people are able to experience similar things with minimal effort. we're starting to understand each other better because seeing the world through someone else's eyes is becoming more accessible than it has ever been. i'm excited about the next two or three decades because i think this will be one of the few instances where, yeah, the game has changed and humans are gonna start acting differently to reflect that. or maybe we're forever doomed to be assholes, idk. i like to be an optimist.

Have to disagree with your point about empathy as well. When people get on the internet, their first inclination is to pursue things that they are personally interested in, and people tend to gravitate towards small communities of other like-minded people. Like this forum.

 

Rather than having a society which is strengthened by the constant sharing of a plethora of different viewpoints, we see an increasingly fractured and polarized society in which people become less and less able to understand others who aren't on their own relatively narrow wavelength. Look at how polarized politics is nowadays in America. Technology is responsible for this, for the most part. We've lost our real communal ties because they've gradually been replaced by small, loose-knit circles which arguably have less empathy in them than whole towns did half a century ago.

 

Don't get me wrong; I love computers and video games and synthesizers, and I would jump at the chance to try out a modern version of virtual reality, but I think that, as other people have said in this thread, the ability of human beings to adapt to the technologies they create in a psychologically healthy way lags far behind the actual creation of those technologies. And some technologies are just not very cool, in the way that land mines and atom bombs are not cool. The prospect of everyone wearing augmented reality glasses around all the time strikes me as incredibly unnecessary and genuinely creepy. AR goggles could be a very useful tool, but as a toy for the masses they would undoubtedly be abused at this point in humanity's development, and there would be real, if subtle, costs.

 

The AR games on the 3DS are pretty fun though! Just keep it out of my social interactions.

[murve33]

Seems like no one really wanted to take Hoodie to task for his claims here, but I want to.

 

last night i chilled with some chick. we got stoned and talked talked talked. the entire time, her macbook was there and we would put on youtube videos or look up movies we were talking about. we listened to some music, etc etc. this is my point: technology isn't a replacement for social interaction. it's an AUGMENTATION. it adds to it. in my opinion, it's bringing people together in a huge way. you can immediately show someone what you're talking about and they can experience the same thing as you. contrast that to, "oh yeah, i saw this movie a couple of weeks ago at the theater. have you heard of it? no? well, let me try to explain it to you. also, you will probably never have enough time to drive out to the theater and watch it."

You give an anecdotal example of how you shared an internet experience with someone else in person. This is more the exception than the rule, as you undoubtedly know. Sure, it's cool to be able to call up audio and video with a snap of your fingers and experience it with someone else, but it's disingenuous to suggest that this is how people use computers most of the time. Normally, they do it alone, and with smaller devices like cellphones they almost invariably do it alone. Statistics show that people increasingly spend more and more time at home by themselves, and they also show that the number of close friends or confidants that people have is also becoming lower over time. (Not going to source this; you can look it up.) Instead, people have more acquaintances who they mostly communicate with through computers and phones. The impact of the loss of deep, face-to-face connections with other people is something that cannot be scientifically quantified, but something which undoubtedly causes a vast amount of pain.

I'll just say I agree with you here. I'll probably debate some more in this thread in the future, but I have too much shit to sort out in my head before I start laying down my law.

[chenGOD]

Umm not that I really have a dog in this race - but you can't provide an argument and say - not going to source this - you can look it up.

 

And in fact looking up the US government's time-use studies, they show a remarkable consistency between 2004-2011 in the amount of time per day spent socializing and communicating.

2004 was 0.78hrs/day socializing or communicating (scroll to page 9 of the PDF)

2010 was 0.70hrs/day socializing or communicating.

Barely a statistical blip.

 

Anyways - I've already said that i thought Hoodie's example was a superficial one - but there are certainly some valid points for technology.

 

Your argument about people finding like-minded communities is specious - this forum has people who share a love of electronic music, but they also bring many other things to the table, and as a result we actually have an opportunity to learn about the world outside of our small burg to a much greater degree than did the people who used to congregate at the local coffee shop to listen to that one guy who'd been abroad talk about the outside world.

Whether or not we take advantage of that opportunity - that's a different question altogether.

[lumpenprol]

you're so right, I once used this forum to find great tits.

[Lucas]

in the end I absolutely don't believe in that "posthuman" thing (if I understand well you're talking about a humanity even more connected to machines, maybe even in a direct way ?) because once again all this technology burns a lot of resources and only profits to a very small amount of the world population. What is supposed to happen to the rest of the earth then ? Because I'm pretty sure there's not a pair of those AR eyeglasses for every of the 10 milliards we could be in some years.

 

That's not what has happened up until this point. 500 million smartphones were sold last year. I heard a fantastic quote recently (and it's true) that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone has access to more knowledge than president Clinton had 15 years ago. Do you think anyone with this kind of gloomy outlook that pervades western society now would have made that prediction 15 years ago?

 

The quote you heard sounds pointless imo. What is "more knowledge" supposed to mean ? I would agree to say that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone theoretically have an access to knowledge sources covering a wider field than the sources of knowledge Clinton had 15 years ago. But still the sentence would be irrelevant because it says nothing about the reliability of those sources, their actual quality, the fact they're easy to find or not, and also a fact so badly missed is that access to knowledge is something, but the actual knowledge you will take throughout this access is something else (and it all depends on your education and your social background).

 

Also this quote is full of that occidental condescension we're so good at "hey c'mon poor people of kenya, we know that your country sucks and that we are part responsible for this, but now we offer you those very smart looking smartphones that will grant you access to an infinite knowledge !"

 

You probably think I'm cynical, "gloomy", unloved, whatever, I would simply like to precise I consider myself as being very optimistic towards life and things in general. I just think there's a lot of shit around us and that it's always good to talk about it. And I just want to think about the way I'm living and consuming and try to understand the repercussions it has so that I can actually find a way to live that represents my ideas. thanks

[Guest Rambo]

That's not what has happened up until this point. 500 million smartphones were sold last year. I heard a fantastic quote recently (and it's true) that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone has access to more knowledge than president Clinton had 15 years ago. Do you think anyone with this kind of gloomy outlook that pervades western society now would have made that prediction 15 years ago?

 

The quote you heard sounds pointless imo. What is "more knowledge" supposed to mean ? I would agree to say that a person living in Kenya with a smartphone theoretically have an access to knowledge sources covering a wider field than the sources of knowledge Clinton had 15 years ago.

 

That IS broadly what i mean so why are you asking me what it means?

 

 

But still the sentence would be irrelevant because it says nothing about the reliability of those sources, their actual quality, the fact they're easy to find or not, and also a fact so badly missed is that access to knowledge is something, but the actual knowledge you will take throughout this access is something else (and it all depends on your education and your social background).

 

You mean they have to use their own intuition, judgement and intelligence to assess the information they are being told just like in real life? Fuck.

 

Also this quote is full of that occidental condescension we're so good at "hey c'mon poor people of kenya, we know that your country sucks and that we are part responsible for this, but now we offer you those very smart looking smartphones that will grant you access to an infinite knowledge !"

 

You probably think I'm cynical, "gloomy", unloved, whatever,

 

A little bit but more importantly i think you're a bit of an idiot for what you said above that.

 

I would simply like to precise I consider myself as being very optimistic towards life and things in general. I just think there's a lot of shit around us and that it's always good to talk about it. And I just want to think about the way I'm living and consuming and try to understand the repercussions it has so that I can actually find a way to live that represents my ideas. thanks

 

Cool. No argument there.

[murve33]

Your argument about people finding like-minded communities is specious - this forum has people who share a love of electronic music, but they also bring many other things to the table, and as a result we actually have an opportunity to learn about the world outside of our small burg to a much greater degree than did the people who used to congregate at the local coffee shop to listen to that one guy who'd been abroad talk about the outside world.

Whether or not we take advantage of that opportunity - that's a different question altogether.

Are we the norm though? Ya'll seem like a unique bunch to me. From what I see, the bulk of college-aged kids use the internet to Facebook, Stumbleupon, and pirating/purchasing from the iTunes store.

[chenGOD]

you're so right, I once used this forum to find great tits.

the great thing about this tech is that there are great tits everywhere.

 

Imagine walking down the street with these glasses :) Augmented reality!

 

murve - I'm back in school, and sure lots of kids use facebook and so on - but i see lots of them using it together (most of the time they use it alone seems to be during lecture...lol/cry)

Many other forums offer this sort of broad diversity - slashdot, digg, reddit, hell even 4chan can be a wealth of knowledge (if you don't spend all your time on /b/). I've seen fascinating conversations about politics on bodybuilding forums that were full of rational arguments. When I used to read megatokyo, the forums there were full of diverse people who also brought other interests besides anime/manga to the conversations.

I think the point is that while there certainly can be a lot of noise - in places where the signal-to-noise ratio is good (I'd like to think WATMM is one of those places), there is a lot of opportunity to increase our understanding of the world outside our traditional borders.

[Guest Margatroid]

Umm not that I really have a dog in this race - but you can't provide an argument and say - not going to source this - you can look it up.

 

And in fact looking up the US government's time-use studies, they show a remarkable consistency between 2004-2011 in the amount of time per day spent socializing and communicating.

2004 was 0.78hrs/day socializing or communicating (scroll to page 9 of the PDF)

2010 was 0.70hrs/day socializing or communicating.

Barely a statistical blip.

 

Anyways - I've already said that i thought Hoodie's example was a superficial one - but there are certainly some valid points for technology.

 

Your argument about people finding like-minded communities is specious - this forum has people who share a love of electronic music, but they also bring many other things to the table, and as a result we actually have an opportunity to learn about the world outside of our small burg to a much greater degree than did the people who used to congregate at the local coffee shop to listen to that one guy who'd been abroad talk about the outside world.

Whether or not we take advantage of that opportunity - that's a different question altogether.

I think those studies probably include internet use, texting and phone calls under their definition of "socializing and communicating." While that isn't incorrect, it also doesn't really go against the point I was making. I was talking about actual face time: time spent intimately with other people, in person. That is something which has declined. Also, you are right about the internet providing all kinds of information and differing views that one would be less likely to encounter otherwise. However, being knowledgeable and worldly does not necessarily translate into an increase in empathy, and I think the social barriers that have been created through the constant public use of electronic devices are something that you are not considering.

 

Knowing more about the world becomes far less relevant if you can't have a conversation with the person sitting next to you because they're on their laptop, texting/on their phone, or have iPod earbuds on. People constantly shut themselves off from their actual surroundings because their digital gadgets offer instant gratification and larger variety of experience, but the quality of that experience becomes impoverished when the main way it is shared is through said gadgets. The actual social world becomes fractured as people gather in notional digital communities rather than real physical ones. And there is a genuine loss there. I think people will eventually figure this out.

 

Anyway, I think this is largely a matter of age and perspective. "Using facebook together" with your friends or spending lots of time reading something like reddit seems a lot more interesting when you're younger. I find both of those things to be pretty unrewarding, but that's my POV.