Smart Glass

Now that mobile phones can connect to the internet, people can get information from the internet almost anywhere around the world. One useful resource on an internet enabled phone is a search engine. If at any time, someone wants to know more about something, they can take out their phone and search for the information they need. This connectivity will get faster and more pervasive over time. Smart glass is a theoretical use of this connectivity to allow us to gather information about our surroundings in real time.



Unlike a search engine in a mobile browser, smart glass does not require you to encode what you are looking at into words before searching for information about it. You simply send the image over the internet and receive the information you want in return. If this worked well, it would greatly simplify the process of searching the internet for answers to your questions. The use of glass also allows you to see the data you want overlaid on top of what you are looking at to organize it in an intuitive manner.



Unfortunately, this technology would require huge advances in artificial intelligence before it could become practical. It is unclear how this concept would allow you to specify what to do next if it returns irrelevant data. It is hard enough for a search engine based on text to return relevant data. Using images would only make it that much more complicated. Also, image processing technology is far from good enough to identify a lot of objects from every day life, such as a flower or an apple. There may however be a few specific cases where this would not be too difficult. Processing the image of a clear night sky might in order to identify constellations might be practical if the image capturing technology is precise enough.



Additionally, the use of additional technology such as a GPS system might compliment the search technology well enough for specific applications to work. For example, if the smart glass knows the precise location and orientation that it is being held in, it could potentially calculate how to draw an arrow along a road to direct the user in the style of Google Street View.



While this technology would be difficult to implement - particularly with the image recognition and the issue of returning relevant results, it would certainly make for an intuitive way to gather information on the world around us.