You, Too, Can be Iron Man
Time sure can get away from you—and the best laid plans only are successful if you actually implement them. So somehow, in the busyness of the past year, I'd managed to completely forget to go back and re-publish the articles from my now-defunct Techinch Magazine.
A screenshot in an article that I'd contributed to just reminded me of the old content in Techinch Magazine—articles I'd loved, poured time into, and then forgot about long after I'd stopped selling the magazine.
So here, in its unedited form, is one of the articles that ran in the first issue of Techinch Magazine. It's dated, as 2-year old content is wont to be, and Google Glass has obviously failed to change the world—or even capture my own imagination. Still, though, it's a thought experiment about what tech could be, one that's perhaps more relevant today if you reference the Oculus Rift.
Enjoy, and expect to see more somewhat dated articles published over the next few weeks.
The computer of movies is here, today, thanks to Google Glass. It's going to change the world — but not in the ways the Glass site envisions today.
"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."
~slogan of The Founder's Fund
We're all using computer the wrong way. We're typing on keyboards — or tapping on glass — when we're supposed to be talking. We're looking at screens, when we're supposed to be looking around at the 3D holographic images around us.
That is, if the movies are correct. It's been a long time since laptops were futuristic; even tablets have been with us as long as Star Trek. We get excited over retina displays and thinner laptops, but eventually, the computer is supposed to disappear. But today's tech isn't even at Minority Report's level of see-though displays, much less the projection displays in Iron Man's workplace and his suit's heads-up display.
Instead, we're walking around with smartphones, and the best thing we can think of to do with them is Instagram and Twitter. Seriously?
It's not all gloom and doom though, and the future might be closer than we think.
It's already here, in fact, in bits and pieces.
With Your Head in the Cloud...
Take a closer look at that smartphone, and you'll find more cause for hope in the future than reason to fret that the future always seems to be coming but never here. Today's smartphones rival turn-of-the-century PCs in computing power, battery life, screen resolution, and almost everything else. But there's more: smartphones are starting to actually be smart, but they're getting those smarts in bits and pieces so we're not noticing the major shift.
First up, speech recognition. Remember the first time you talked to a computer, perhaps a voice answering system at a company you were calling for support? They never worked good. But gradually, they started to really work good. The first voice recognition I ever used that really worked good was Google's now-defunct 411 service, which in 2007 seemed amazing. Now, we're carrying around a voice recognition tools like Siri in our pockets, and it doesn't seem that amazing or surprising.
Siri may not seem terribly smart, but it's incredibly useful if only for random quick queries and the dictation feature throughout iOS. It works surprising well in most cases — close enough to typing exactly what I say that I'm often startled. And then I remember that we're living in the future.
Speech on its own won't do much, but add smarts to it and you've got something. Siri is smart to a degree, but not smart enough to be a full personal assistant that anticipates what you need. Google Now, on the other hand, is that smart. It'll tell you when you need to leave to get to your next meeting on time, what time you need to check in to not miss your flight, and when your packages should arrive. It's amazing — and brand-new to the iPhone in the Google Search app — and is perhaps the most futuristic seeming service today.
Google manages to make Google Now that smart by combing through your email and calendar, and the real smart part isn't on your phone, but rather on Google's servers. But of course, that's Siri's trick, too: its voice recognition is enabled by Apple's servers, and its smarts often come from Wolfram|Alpha. Now, imagine smarter servers: IBM's Jeopardy winning Watson computer is digging through databases to find cures for cancer, so perhaps a computer helping you create a new element isn't so impossibly futuristic. Even if the power comes from remote servers, it's still making our lives smarter, and bringing the future closer.
...and Some Futuristic Gadgets
We may still never know if the suit makes the man or if the man makes the suit. What we do know is that Tony Stark wouldn't be half as cool without his high tech gadgetry. That's what we really envy about him, truth be told.
And yet, even his hardware — aside from the suit itself — may also not be as far out of reach as we think. 3D projection screens in our offices might be something we'll never see outside of movies, but Minority Report-style gesture-based interfaces are absolute here. They're even mainstream already, thanks to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, apps like Flutter for Mac, the Samsung Galaxy 4's Air Wave, and the upcoming Leap Motion device to let you control any screen with gestures. We might not be seeing them in real-world work experiences yet, but working with 3D models by waving your hand is a real possibility today.
And then, there's Google Glass. Easily dismissible as the latest hipster accessory, Glass could actually be the first glimpse of the possibility of immersive computing experiences we're used to in movies. Glass lets you overlay a UI on top of part of your vision; take that further, and you might be able to see a projected display around your whole workspace, even if we don't actually have a way to project displays the way Tony Stark does in his garage. We might not have the Iron Man suit, but Glass could be the first step towards having his suit's heads-up display — and more. (1)
Now Put it All Together.
So imagine Watson's smarts, combined with Google Now's knack for understanding your personal life and Siri's flair for spoken conversation. Throw in Kinect's gesture controls, and use those gestures and your voice to control the interface of a Glass-style heads-up display, and perhaps a 3D printer — another futuristic device that's actually here today. Now imagine what you could do with that.
Suddenly, Iron Man doesn't seem so far away. The tech part, that is; afraid we'll have to save jet packs for another day. But really, we're at an amazing point in history, one with tech that really seems futuristic even today when you really think about it.
The only limit is our imagination. After all, what would you actually do with such a system? Even geeks are struggling to find ways that Google Glass could be useful; perhaps we're all too used to thinking inside the box. Maybe Glass isn't useful today, per se, but surely a combination of Watson and Glass and Kinect could be incredibly useful for so much. That is, if we can think big enough to really put it to use, as Tony Stark would.
I should hope we'd find something better to do with it than, say, take pictures while skydiving. How about inventing new elements, or, you know, saving the world?
Originally published on July 1, 2013 in Techinch Magazine Issue 1.
- Heads-up displays aren't anything new; they're already in widespread use in avionics, and are even in some motorcycle helmets and luxury car windshields. Not quite Iron Man-level, by any stretch of the imagination, but still a start. Google Glass, though, by being wearable, takes the idea to a whole new level — much closer to something you could imagine Tony Stark using.
Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.