{"279851":{"#nid":"279851","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Starner Laid Groundwork for Google Glass","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cem\u003EBy Sean Sposito | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution |\u0026nbsp;February 8, 2014\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe was sweating it out.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENearly two decades ago\u2014before search engines or smartphones\u2014Thad Starner, then 24, sat in front of a qualifying panel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For several hours he was grilled by four professors, a prerequisite before he could write his Ph.D thesis.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt the end, one of his inquisitors asked:\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EHey, Thad, were you using your wearable computer?\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStarner, clad in a get-up that covered his left eye with wires leading down to a keyboard on his forearm, plus a satchel holding a battery pack and a measly 80 megabyte hard drive, said:\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003EYes.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis answer touched off a half-hour debate that almost culminated in MIT conferring its degree on \u201cThad Starner and his computer.\u201d That, sadly, did not come to pass.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt would have been hilarious,\u201d the 44-year-old, now on faculty at Georgia Tech, said in hindsight.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStarner\u2019s\u0026nbsp;work at MIT\u2019s Media Lab would later lay some of the groundwork for Google Glass. Since 2010, he been a technical lead for the project, as well as the founder and director of the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Computing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe was one of the people to wear the first iteration of Google\u2019s wearable computer \u2014 which he found a distinct improvement on his earlier model. (He did, though, have to cut his shoulder-length hair in order to wear it comfortably.)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.myajc.com\/news\/technology\/nypd-testing-google-glass-patrol-surveillance\/ndF4z\/\u0022\u003ENYPD testing Google Glass for patrol, surveillance\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe now wears the latest version, in light blue, fitted with his prescription lenses.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis weekend Google is bringing the circus to town, inviting regular folks to try on Glass at the Foundry at Puritan Mill.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe two day event is the fourth stop on the search engine\u2019s campaign to make people more comfortable with the $1,500 devices. Google hopes the tour will help dismiss some of the Orwellian perceptions that have surrounded the device over the past year.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGlass wearers look up into a translucent heads-up display (not unlike that of a fighter pilot), where information is displayed. The device is based on more than a half-century\u2019s worth of research, dating back to 1945.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGoogle would like you to think about Glass like this:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe cloud is forever. Your laptop is a place where you can hold information for months or years. Your smartphone is for stuff you want to keep for a week.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut wearable computing, an emerging category that includes Glass, is for right now \u2014 the Random Access Memory (RAM) of our lives.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGlass\u2014in fact all wearable computing\u2014is meant to function almost as an extension of the wearer\u2019s nervous system. In effect, Starner is a beta site: a trial run for of what a computer-enhanced human might look like.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe\u2019s been taking computerized notes on nearly every important conversation he\u2019s had since at least 1993; asked about something from his past, he uses Glass to retrieve the notes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E(Wearers use a combination of eye and head movements and spoken commands to access information and perform other operations on the Glass computer.)\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe stories Starner tells about the people he\u2019s met and places he\u2019s been come out in encyclopedic bursts. No chronology. Just search-engine-like depth and speed. Jumping from one subject in 1995 to another in 2008.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the midst of talking to you, he looks up, responding to an incoming alert. He stares into space, reading material returned in his latest web search. His eyes flick upward; he\u2019s gotten an email. You get the gist.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt sounds strange, but it\u2019s actually meant to be less intrusive than having the person you\u2019re talking to constantly dive into their cell phone to handle the same range of tasks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOn Thursday night, during a last-minute Google Glass-sponsored Design Sprint on the sixth floor of the Centergy Building in Midtown, four Google development specialists chatted about the ins-and-outs of creating software for Glass.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe gathering drew roughly a 100 Georgia Tech students, programmers and designers (some cool enough to wear both Glass and green pants).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat kind of buy-in from the development community is critical, especially if Glass is to take off. No one company has the ability to fill the needs of all mobile Internet users.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo hear the Google folks tell it, Glass is almost like a silent librarian.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt shouldn\u2019t interfere with the actions of the user. Glassware (as Google calls its brand of wearable computing apps) should only give gentle reminders and directions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo refine the user experience, Google has been testing its foray into wearable computing for the past year on Glass Explorers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat\u2019s a group of early adopters who were originally chosen from a pool of roughly 150,000 applicants. Each explorer paid $1,500 for the privilege of being a test subject, a price point that is unlikely to fall anytime soon.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir ranks have grown from 8,000 at the onset to roughly 10,000.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201c\u2018When you concentrate on the hardware, the software you get creates bad interactions,\u201d said Starner, sitting toward the back of the room. He wore a Mandarin-style shirt buttoned to the top, a dark sports coat and black jeans.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAnd when you start with the human and design the software around the person, it works very well.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESitting on a couch at the edge of the space, a millennial \u2014 a digital native, maybe a Google employee, herself \u2014 stared up into the bifurcated Glass screen, which might have been displaying an important text message, just out of her normal line of vision.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter a moment, she gracefully shifted her attention back to the presentation, but then a real interruption intruded. She darted from the room to answer a smartphone call.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGlass is set to be released to the masses later this year.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Thad Starner\u2019s work at MIT\u2019s Media Lab would later lay some of the groundwork for Google Glass."}],"uid":"27255","created_gmt":"2014-02-28 21:55:53","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:15:55","author":"Josie Giles","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-02-08T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-02-08T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"279861":{"id":"279861","type":"image","title":"Thad Starner","body":null,"created":"1449244184","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:49:44","changed":"1475894973","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:49:33","alt":"Thad Starner","file":{"fid":"198891","name":"13p1000-p17-004-f.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/13p1000-p17-004-f_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/13p1000-p17-004-f_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2300768,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/13p1000-p17-004-f_0.jpg?itok=LTtvARIL"}}},"media_ids":["279861"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/robotics.gatech.edu\/","title":"Center for Robotics \u0026 Intelligent Machines"},{"url":"http:\/\/ipat.gatech.edu\/","title":"Institute for People and Technology"},{"url":"http:\/\/gvu.gatech.edu\/","title":"GVU Center"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.cc.gatech.edu\/~thad\/","title":"Contextual Computing Group"}],"groups":[{"id":"142761","name":"IRIM"}],"categories":[{"id":"42941","name":"Art Research"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"152","name":"Robotics"}],"keywords":[{"id":"87831","name":"Thad Starner; Google Glass; Project Glass; Google Goggles; Augmented Reality;"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"},{"id":"39521","name":"Robotics"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJosie Giles\u003Cbr \/\u003EIRIM Marketing Communications\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:josie@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejosie@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["josie@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}