Google Glass is THE future. We are slowly evolving into machines. Google recently hired scientist Ray Kurzwell who wrote The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Kurzwell believes that humans will eventually leave their biological form and evolve into machines. This is all part of human evolution. In 5,000 years humans might not consist of skin, muscle and bone. In the future it is quite possible we will communicate by beaming our thoughts through radio encrypted signals to each other using technological telepathy. Our bodies are simply vessels of the soul and the brain. This is only the beginning. Google Glass is this technology in its infancy. Remember that scene in Terminator 2 where Arnold’s character walks into a bar and immediately starts scanning the room, analyzing the situation and providing the Terminator with data about the individual and room conditions. Google glass has potential to do this. It has accelerometers, GPS, a camera and with the aid of software and network connectivity it could potentially have such applications. The options are limitless. Imagine walking into a room and your Google Glass scans the room, a dating application is running in the background. Another individual has the same dating app running on their Google Glass. Using GPS proximity data you are alerted that a match is nearby. Each Google Glass beeps to alert the individual and shows their statistics along with their likes and dislikes and a short bio. You then approach the person and start a conversation. Love at first byte.
At some point computer chips could be hard wired into our brains which will allow us to think and communicate with whoever we please in milliseconds. We will use the infinite knowledge of the internet, Google and other technology to supercharge our brain power. Any question we think or ask will be answered. Our brains will be networked to other brains. This is only a small step. For critics to say Google Glass is a gimmick is very short sighted. Sure the initial uses are limited but so were the uses for the iPad when it first came out. It had a camera, email client and web browser but was a platform to innovate upon. This is a similar tool. A day will come when our brains and thoughts can be downloaded and we could potentially live forever in a digital form. After all our bodies fail prematurely but our thoughts and feelings stay alert till death consumes us.
Imagine a world where if we wanted to travel we could simply download our “soul” or our entire life experiences and thoughts into another machine a city away, a continent away, a planet away and continue our lives. We could in theory take a vacation to Paris by beaming our “soul” into a waiting android or machine to tour the city, add to our experiences, and then beam back home once we have enjoyed the day. If we are to colonize planets and traverse the galaxies in one lifetime that is our only option. When this day arrives humans or whatever we will have evolved into will truly be mobile to an infinite degree. This is only the beginning. A million years from today when machines roam the earth the fossils of primitive humans might be stumbled upon by robot archeologists. The simple machines and robots of today would be viewed as ancestors of the most evolved form of life on earth, viewed as primitively as we view the single celled organisms that started life here on earth. The distant future might be populated with humanoid robots with feelings, thoughts and memories…a being that lives forever by transferring its collective knowledge and experiences into a more advanced machine that has further evolved its capabilities. Google glass could quite possibly be its infancy.
Lets not forget Watson the IBM powered super computer that annihilated the smartest human players in Jeopardy. As computers continue to get smaller and more powerful and scientists and researchers continue to figure out our biologies it is quite possible in a few decades a super computer could be augmenting our brain and using something akin to Google Glass as its input and output method. I believe in Google Glass. Don’t count it out just yet.