Wearables today

Steve Mann created his first wearable computer in the 1970s, making the first wearable computers for computer aided photography.Before Steve Mann began designing wearable computers, computers were traditionally used to perform calculations or adding up numbers or solving problems. Mann has a different vision for computers that is meant to aid communication and allow people to see better.

To date, personal computers have not lived up to their name. Most machines sit on the desk and interact with their owners for only a small fraction of the day. Smaller and faster notebook computers have made mobility less of an issue, but the same staid user paradigm persists. Wearable computing hopes to shatter this myth of how a computer should be used. A person’s computer should be worn, much as eyeglasses or clothing are worn, and interact with the user based on the context of the situation. With heads-up displays, unobtrusive input devices, personal wireless local area networks, and a host of other context sensing and communication tools, the wearable computer can act as an intelligent assistant, whether it be through a Remembrance Agent, augmented reality, or intellectual collectives.

An EyeTap is a device that is worn in front of the eye that acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose computer-generated imagery on the original scene available to the eye. This structure allows the user’s eye to operate as both a monitor and a camera as the EyeTap intakes the world around it and augments the image the user sees allowing it to overlay computer-generated data over top of the normal world the user would perceive. The EyeTap is a hard technology to categorize under the three main headers for wearable computing (constancy, augmentation, mediation) for while it is in theory a constancy technology in nature it also has the ability to augment and mediate the reality the user perceives.

Sousveillance Scenarios

Google Glass

When Google Glass was release in 2013, it was met with widespread criticism: At $1,500, it was expensive; it was banned in many public places, and it was largely ridiculed by mainstream consumers for looking geeky.

Though Google provides its own manual on how not to be a Glasshole — including “Don’t be creepy or rude” — social navigation proved to be tricky. Many non-wearers felt their privacy would be violated because Glass did not offer a sufficient indication that the camera was recording or taking a video.

“By all accounts, Google Glass failed to gain commercial success. Just to be clear, Google Glass didn’t fail because of the technology, rather because it wasn’t clear to the customer what problem it solved or why they needed it.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianaltman/2015/04/28/why-google-glass-failed-and-why-apple-watch-could-too/#6cd3ca5f58ec

Snapchat Spectacles

In September, Snap Inc. introduced that their first hardware product, “Spectacles” will hit the market at $130 later this fall.

Spectacles will record and download 10-second snippets of video over Bluetooth or Wifi into the Memories section of the App. There is an LED ring that lights up to let your friends know they’re being snapped.

The choice to simply embedd a camera rather than some sort of “smart glass” into the glasses makes them a lot less complicated than Google Glass and also gives users a simple clear purpose for their us.

https://www.spectacles.com/

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052115/how-why-google-glass-failed.asp