Glasses as Gadgets
I saw this article on Forbes when it first came out. It struck me as being a bit off, but I wasn't quite sure what to say about it. Coming back to it now, I still think it worth a short comment. This paragraph seems to more or less sum up Juliet's point:
Why are Google Glasses a big deal? Because they may be the beginning of the end of gadgets. Today, gadgets like smart phones, tablets, and MP3 players are built from the ground up to serve specific technological purposes. A smart phone exists to make calls. A MP3 player exists to play music. In the future, we'll see more of the opposite: everyday objects that already exist (like glasses) or spaces (like a room) that have technology built into them. As the functionality of gadgets becomes built into these everyday objects, the gadgets themselves start to become irrelevant.I think my issue with this is two-fold:
- First, I think the distinction she sees between 'gadgets' and 'everyday objects' only serves to artificially postpone the change she foresees past the end of her article. In reality, the change that she thinks might be coming is already here. It is reflected in the convergence of devices that has been occurring for years. Does an iPhone really exist just to make calls? No, in fact, one of the groundbreaking things about the original iPhone was that it relegated making calls to an app on a device that was equally well suited for other tasks. Similarly, but from the opposite side, are glasses really just an everyday object? Aren't they also a gadget of sorts? After all, they are built from the ground up to serve a specific purpose.
- Second, the change in question hasn't resulted in the irrelevance of gadgets, only their convergence. My iPhone is a phone, a camera, and an MP3 player (among other things). It may have made my home phone, my point and shoot camera, and my iPod irrelevant, but it hasn't made gadgets irrelevant. It has just created a new convergent gadget.