Don’t miss the real point about Google Glass

Living and working at the edge of Silicon Valley (in San Francisco), I know I reside in an alternative universe populated by two parts culturally sensitive well-meaning people, one part mercenary libertarians, one part militant liberals, and three parts technology addicts. We’re the region where Google tests out driverless cars on our everyday roads, where VCs strip-mine an army of highly paid entrepreneurs and technologists, where there are more Priuses and iPhones than Fords and watches, and where every other jacket, tote bag, or T-shirt has a tech company’s brand emblazoned on it.

As you might imagine, a lot of people here — and in our colonies throughout the world such as New York’s Silicon Alley — are enraptured with or enraged by Google Glass, the prototype pair of Internet-connected glasses that Google may release in a year or so to the general public but are currently in the possession of a lucky few developers. With Web connectivity, a verbal interface, and a screen image beamed directly into your eye, it’s the ultimate mobile device. Look, ma — no hands!

The geek community here is swooning over Google Glass, imagining a world where they can keep one eye on virtual reality rather than both eyes on the real world, all without the inconvenience of pulling their iPhone or Galaxy S III out of a pocket. Conversations — not just at ultrageeky Google itself — turn quickly to how cool it would be to get augmented reality descriptions and videos as you walk down a street, eat a meal, play a game, or any number of activities. Of course, geeks prove their manhood by talking about how they’ve already jailbroken or tweaked the Google Glass prototypes, so they can do even cooler things. Sadly, there’s also a Neanderthal group of people that make fun of the objects of geeks’ passion, reminiscent of those old Charles Atlas ads where the beach bully kicks sand in the face of the nerdy 98-pound weakling.

At the same time, the well-meaning worryworts are fretting over Google Glass. How many young geeks will meet their demise by walking in front of a Muni bus, distracted by the display on their Google Glasses? How many cars will plunge off the Bay Bridge, distracted from the treacherous S curve as their drivers read their tweets in one eye?

How many relationships will fade as people enmesh themselves in their Google Glass world, even while sitting across from each other at a table? If you think the depersonalization brought on by computers, smartphones, and tablets is bad, just wait until no one actually interacts with each other even when physically together. Are you looking at me or that samurai warrior beamed onto your retina?

Will Google Glass cause new eyestrain maladies to replace the thumbstrain maladies brought on by smartphones and the RSI maladies brought on by keyboards? Of course, data-mining Google will find ways to use it to strip-mine more of your personal data. I’ve heard one colleague suggest that Google Glass is designed for the era of the driverless car, when Google can finally take advantage of the time you spend behind the wheel, once you don’t have to drive any more.

These are extremes, but also perfectly true reactions. The geek utopian vision and the worrywort dystopian vision have elements of truth, but they miss the real point of technologies like Google Glass that promise both highly mobile technology and intimate technology.

The reason that smartphones became the fastest-adopted consumer technology ever — until the iPad came along — is the combination of mobility, personal-ness, and utility. Google Glass will be even more mobile and more personal to the point I call it “intimate,” as it becomes almost part of you.

If it’s also useful, watch out! You may never use a smartphone again, and your tablet and laptop will get relegated to “big” activities where you need an efficient input mechanism such as a keyboard and mouse. Keep in mind: A keyboard is often a much better data-entry tool than voice recognition, and for fine-detail manipulations, a mouse is better than a finger or even a pen.

Forget about the cool stuff that geeks salivate over. Google Glass could be useful for stuff that actually matters. For example, imagine you repair aircraft engines or photocopiers. In the old days (2009), you had a huge book of diagrams to pore through to understand how the parts fit and worked. Today, you may have that on an iPad, in PDF format at least and perhaps in iBooks Author format with interactivity features. Tomorrow, you may have the schematic overlay appear in your Google Glass oriented to match what you’re actually looking at, with the ability to zoom in to a part, look up details, and rotate it in 3D. I’m not fantasizing: You can already do that on an iPad, as the construction industry knows.

Maybe even airline pilots and train operators will use Google Glass as a heads-up display for the key information they need, with the iPads now finding their way into cockpits going the way of paper manuals or serving as a backup medium. I bet you can imagine the military possibilities — captains who monitor drones in Afghanistan won’t need to worry about dropping their iPads and cracking their screens. Think of all the professions where ready access to data in nondesk situations would be invaluable: surgeons, miners, building and other safety inspectors, police, pharmaceutical sales reps (both the legal and illegal kind), and insurance adjusters — assuming they’re not surreptitiously watching TV or playing games while doing their work.

Where Google Glass’s utility gets trickier is in situations that require human interaction some of the time. You can imagine the benefit of students and teachers being able to converse on a subject and access information at the same time. Or for a nurse assessing a patient in the ER while looking up health records and treatment availability. Or for workers being able to check facts and pull up context on the fly in a meeting, without having to pull out their tablets. Or travelers getting near-instantaneous translation of a language they don’t understand.

But the simultaneity of meaningful dialog and information access will likely lead to one or both activities getting short shrift. It is very hard for people to process two streams at once — to have their brains engaged in two conscious, involved activities at the same time. Yet thanks to the common occurrence of checking our smartphones while driving (hands-free or not), we all know how addictive always-available access can be. Just ask any parent trying to have a family dinner or watch a movie as a group; the kids eat and watch with one eye on the screen — adults too.

We risk degraded interactions in the name of improved information access for those interactions. That won’t kill you, as a speeding bus would a geek playing World of Warcraft while crossing the street. But it exacts a price.

I suspect we’ll figure out new social cues — a blinking light on the Google Glass face would help to know when it is in use and the wearer thus engaged — for such intimate technology, as well as be permissive in the dual interactions that result, as we already are for other mobile devices and for screens (such as TVs in airport lounges and bars). A few spectacular deaths caused by virtually engrossed people will no doubt help us adjust our behaviors, and I won’t be surprised to see government mandates that restrict mobile device usage in cars, perhaps with a technology assist — say, an auto-disconnect feature when driving.

But don’t let any of that blind you to the amazing but practical possibilities of Google Glass — or a similar product developed by another company (you know Apple must be exploring the idea). Google Glass may come across as just another geek toy, but even though it will have its frivolous uses, it could also be as transformative as the computer, Internet, smartphone, and tablet have all been.

This article, “Don’t miss the real point about Google Glass,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.