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The Future According to Schmidt: "Augmented Humanity," Integrated Into Google
BY KIT EATONTue Jan 25, 2011


In the future we will be Google, and Google will be us--the online giant will make us better humans. That's according to soon-to-be ex-CEO Eric Schmidt speaking today at DLD 11 conference in Germany.

Schmidt announced this week that he's departing his role as Google's CEO, and then it emerged he was winning a $100 million golden parachute as a thank-you for his time in charge of one of the world's most important tech companies. Perhaps that's why he felt he could reveal some of his forecasts for the future at Google. A future he was careful to note he'll be involved in (promising he'll be at Google for at least "the next decade").

After some preamble about his time at Google, Schmidt got to the good stuff: The future is mobile, he thinks, driven by the "device of our time," the smartphone--and the tablet. Children now have two states of existence, aided by this trend--"asleep or online." Within two years Schmidt sees smartphone sales outstripping desktop PC sales, and the mobile sector is growing eight times faster than traditional PCs did at the same stage in their evolution. Soon the majority of online action will happen from mobile devices, and landlines will effectively be dead for phone-call purposes.

Then Schmidt got brave: Unconnected devices today are "no longer interesting," he thinks. Soon everything, but everything, will be hooked up to everything over wireless nets. A good example of the phenomena this enables, Schmidt said, is Google's recent efforts at a spoken-word universal speech translator app--which connects to many, many servers over the Net to give you access to near real-time voice recognition and translation.

So far so good, but then came the most fascinating bit of the whole speech. Computers, Schmidt thinks, can, when used ubiquitously and interactively and with cloud-like access to remote supercomputer powers can give us "senses" we didn't know were possible. "Think of it as augmented humanity" he suggested.

That's Augmented humanity. Not augmented reality, an idea we've been getting used to. It's a subtle twist but an important one. Many tools may be trusted to "augment reality" to appeal to a more digitally interactive culture--you could be happy using Layar on your phone to find a nearby beach, then Around.Me to find a good bar, Yelp to find a restaurant, and Word Lens to live-translate the foreign language menu for you. It's an interactive process, driven by consumer choice.

But augmented humanity implies inserting tech deliberately in the way of normal life, to better it. And Schmidt's unspoken line is that job should fall to Google--it has diverse tools that operate in all of these "augmented info" spaces and beyond, and if they were all centralized and presented to you seamlessly via Android smartphones, then it could improve the human race. After all, thanks to its vast user-info databases, Google already knows pretty much everything about you, and almost what you're thinking about where you're going next (as Schmidt has previously noted.) He caveated his argument with lots of references to the phrase "with your permission," obviously concerned he was overstepping the user-privacy boundary. But do we trust Google with the future of 21st century humankind? There's a big assumption here that Google will always promise not to be evil.

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NEW SCIENTIST

Smart contact lenses for health and head-up displays

10 January 2011 by Duncan Graham-Rowe


Lenses that monitor eye health are on the way, and in-eye 3D image displays are being developed too – welcome to the world of augmented vision

THE next time you gaze deep into someone's eyes, you might be shocked at what you see: tiny circuits ringing their irises, their pupils dancing with pinpricks of light. These smart contact lenses aren't intended to improve vision. Instead, they will monitor blood sugar levels in people with diabetes or look for signs of glaucoma.

The lenses could also map images directly onto the field of view, creating head-up displays for the ultimate augmented reality experience, without wearing glasses or a headset. To produce such lenses, researchers are merging transparent, eye-friendly materials with microelectronics.

The idea is to map images onto the field of view, creating head-up displays for augmented reality
In 2008, as a proof of concept, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington in Seattle created a prototype contact lens containing a single red LED. Using the same technology, he has now created a lens capable of monitoring glucose levels in people with diabetes.

It works because glucose levels in tear fluid correspond directly to those found in the blood, making continuous measurement possible without the need for thumb pricks, he says. Parviz's design calls for the contact lens to send this information wirelessly to a portable device worn by diabetics, allowing them to manage their diet and medication more accurately.

Lenses that also contain arrays of tiny LEDs may allow this or other types of digital information to be displayed directly to the wearer through the lens. This kind of augmented reality has already taken off in cellphones, with countless software apps superimposing digital data onto images of our surroundings, effectively blending the physical and online worlds.


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From WIRED


SCVNGR Unleashes Zombie Horde Through Social Check-In Feature
By Michael Andersen   October 27, 2010  |  9:54 pm

Image: Courtesy SCVNGR
Geo-locative troublemakers at SCVNGR have unleashed a zombie apocalypse on poor, unsuspecting smartphone users. What will you do to guard yourself from infection this Halloween season?

By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet

Geo-locative check-in app SCVNGR has pulled off some crazy stunts in the past few months. Modernista used the app to lead Dexter fans to a kill room set up at Comic-Con in San Diego, and the New England Patriots used it to help nose tackle Vince Wilfork recover his Super Bowl XXXIX ring.

But this time, SCVNGR has gone too far. It’s unleashed zombies.

Or at least, zombie badges. Just in time for Halloween, SCVNGR has infected 10 SCVNGR players with a Zombie badge. Once infected, these hapless souls will be informed of their sad state, and are doomed to wander the streets, spreading the infection.

The transmission vector? SCVNGR’s new social check-in feature, where players can earn points by bumping phones together. Normally, engaging in unprotected bumping lets players earn points, with the rewards increasing based on the size of the group. When a player bumps with a zombified SCVNGR user, all the users in the group become infected with the zombie badge.

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