Impact of Google Glasses on Society, Economy and Culture

Google glasses are a good example of a development in HCI that can affect the world, this brings could be the start of a new era of advanced HCI, this type of HCI has been in the process for a long time however until technology advances it was only a theory, a theory of virtual reality. For a long time virtual reality wasn’t possible due to lack of hardware, however it is becoming a reality with the help of Google glasses. This new technology could revolutionaries the way we live our lives, there would be no need to carry a phone anymore as you could have a HUD (Heads up Display) that allows you to see life in a new way.

 

Society

This could affect society in many was, however the main way it could affect society would be through communication, the glasses have in built texting, video calling, GPS locations and various social networking sites on. This would be like having a smart phone in front of you.

On the other hand there are many complications to this device, like would you like to have data transmitting next to your brain 24/7? How can you focus on the glasses and in front of you at the same time, this could cause accidents.  

 

Economy

These Glasses would affect the economy in a few ways for example this technology would be sold for around $1500 not to mention extras you could buy for the device. The Glasses also have services installed that you can buy from, this would require the internet which would also need to be updated from 3G to 4G as it would require faster speeds to get data to the user.

Services such as Netflix, Google Movies, Love Film, 4oD and BBC-iplayer are slow and stream in low quality with 3G however if there was an update to 4G these services should be able to broadcast HD videos without any jittering. This is the process that takes place when new technology comes out, new software is also made to utilise the hardware.

 

Culture

The culture aspect of the glasses would be the ability for it to communicate with people all over the world with many different language types, the glasses could change the way in which we perceive glasses. Glasses are seen as a nuisance, this leads to some people getting surgery on their eyes, however if glasses were the norm then this wouldn't happen. Having glasses could improve lots of people’s visions as people might have poor vision without realising.