The Inventor Of Google Glass Says It Could Outsource Our Brains
Stephen Lam/REUTERS
It can also be transformative.
At an intimate conversation at last week's Aspen Ideas Festival, Google Glass inventor Sebastian Thrun explained his vision for the product.
If the device were always powered up, he said, it could be your "memory."
"If we get to the point where this thing is always on ... and really understand how to make it a seamless experience," he said, "it would be as good to us individually as books have been to society."
His logic: armed with just our brains, we're lousy at holding information individually, and especially lousy when passing information from one generation to the next.
Because of that forgetting, he says, strange stories get passed down through society. Example: thinking that the Earth was flat, even though the ancient Greeks had known and proven that the Earth was round.
Then one of the first forms of digital information came.
"You don't think of books as digital today," Thrun said, "but they are digital, because you can actually copy them losslessly."
With the book, we were able to store cultural intelligence. In this way, libraries powered the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.
"Today, of course, we would never want to live without the book," Thrun continued. "What [Google Glass] could do is take your personal experience and digitize it."
It's as outlandish as it is intuitive. A constantly running Google Glass would act like a record of your experiences, ready to be saved and shared. Lots of inefficiencies would vanish - like, say, not being able to remember somebody's name.
"It would be a massive change. That's why I'm so excited about this, and I know that's very provocative," Thrun said. "The ability to outsource our brain to a device like this will just make us so much better."
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- Bengaluru's rental income highest in Q1-2024, Mumbai next: Anarock report
- Rupee falls 10 paise to settle at 83.48 against US dollar
- Include 4 hrs of physical activity, 8 hrs sleep in routine for optimal health, suggests study
- 11 must-visit tourist places in Nainital in 2024
- Indegene's ₹1,842 crore IPO to open on May 6
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market