We are proposing that there is value in a totally new product category and a totally new set of questions. Just like the Apple II proposed, 'Would you reasonably want a computer in your home if you weren't an accountant or professional?' That is the question Glass is asking, and I hope in the end that is how it will be judged.
Moonshots live in that place between audacious projects and pure science fiction.
I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.
It comes up over and over and over again that a ten times increase in the weight-oriented density of batteries or the volume metric, the space-oriented density of batteries, would enable so many other moonshots that that's one that just constantly comes up over and over again, and we will start that moonshot if we can find a great idea.
A ten-times increase in the weight-oriented density of batteries would enable so many other moonshots, if we can find a great idea. We just haven't found one yet.
Phones would not be better if they could be cooler looking, if they could weight less, or if they could have more battery. Phones would be better if we didn't have to carry them around.
Moonshot thinking starts with picking a big problem: something huge, long existing, or on a global scale.
Find some fun way to get a little more oil on your hands or mud on your boots. Sometimes, that's what it takes to take down some of the really big problems.
To say a scientist is not at all responsible is wrong. But to say that someone who invents a piece of knowledge or technology is responsible for all future uses is ridiculous. It doesn't have to be that binary.
If you don't have a tonne of optimism, you're not going to make it... you won't be able to evangelise to everyone else. On the other hand, if you aren't constantly paranoid about what can go wrong and put plans in place, then you're going to get bitten at some point.
Most of us have to spend a lot of energy to learn how to drive a car. Then we have to spend the rest of our lives over-concentrating as we drive and text and eat a burrito and put on makeup. As a result, 30,000 people die every year in a car accident in the U.S.
I think wearables in general have, as their best calling, to better understand our current state and needs and to express those back to the world.
The cycling helmet can save your life, but it doesn't look good and tends to ruin your hair.
The Explorer edition of Glass wasn't for everyone, but the Explorer program pushed us to find a wide range of near-term applications and uses for something like Glass.
The great decision was the Explorer program. The thing we did not do well is that we allowed and somewhat encouraged too much exposure to the program.
Rather than thinking of ourselves as a computer, and trying to give you computer-like functionality, it's better to start from the understanding that this is a pair of glasses, and say, 'How smart can we make these glasses for you?'
When you try to do something ten per cent better, you tend to work from where you are: if I ask you to make a car that goes 50 miles a gallon, you can just retool the engine you already have.
The moonshot for Google Glass is to harmonize the physical and digital worlds. It is specifically to find a way to help people be naturally, elegantly situated, physical and digitally, at the same time.
Wouldn't it be awesome if we had a jetpack that wasn't a death trap? The problem is that it is going to be so power inefficient. I just couldn't live with that... it would be as loud as a motorcycle.
We've got rings, glasses, we wear things for armor, for protection from the elements, to signal our status to other people. And we're going to co-opt a lot of those things, where wearables are going to end up being the interface between us in the world.
