“SNL” Parodies Google Glass

http://allthingsd.com/20130505/snl-parodies-google-glass/

by whosbacon • 13 years ago

40 58 13 years ago

allthingsd.com

zizee• 13 years ago

"We're sorry, but the clip you selected isn't available from your location. Please select another clip."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcpWxF9hbI

karpathy• 13 years ago

I only found out After they made me watch their 30 second commercial. Classy.

akandiah• 13 years ago

I'd encourage you to install AdBlock (on FF or Chrome). It should remove those pesky YouTube commercials.

skeletonjelly• 13 years ago

mirror

For the Ctrl-F people like me

Edit: And I can't reply to raldi for some reason but Adblock stopped the ad playing on NBC for me.

gkoberger• 13 years ago

It's too bad Google Glass seems to be going the way of Segways and Bluetooth headsets -- great inventions that everyone is too embarrassed to be seen with.

d23• 13 years ago

Hopefully if/when the technology gets small enough to resemble sunglasses or eyeglasses that will change. Bluetooth headsets never had a chance since they didn't resemble anything non-dorky.

gosu• 13 years ago

Why does the Segway qualify as a great invention? I had always thought of it as worse in every way compared to a bicycle or scooter for able-bodied people.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

Segways aren’t particularly useful but their balancing system is pretty nifty: http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/civil/ginger1.h...

conroe64• 13 years ago

You don't need to worry about parking your segway outside the place your going to if you enter the building with it. So, opposed to using a bicycle or scooter, someone stealing it while you're away is not an issue.

It's upright, so you can be seen crossing the street by motorists, which gives it an advantage over a motorized wheel chair.

It saves energy compared to driving a car and it's use would greatly reduce traffic where cars are normally used.

Avshalom• 13 years ago

Segways weren't a great invention that people were embarrassed by. They were an extremely expensive toy that didn't solve anyone's problems and were bulky enough that they made new problems when people tried to use them.

Bluetooth headsets... are still being used frequently? They haven't seemed to go any particular way.

cheald• 13 years ago

Segways were also massively overhyped.

speeder• 13 years ago

Well... I frequently see shopping center security personel at night using Segways...

I guess for patrolling long flat hallways they are nice (and faster).

baddox• 13 years ago

I see people with Bluetooth headsets every day. That was true when I lived in a Midwest town of 100k people, and it's true now in San Francisco.

adamisen2• 13 years ago

Eat up Martha, or how Google may learn a hard lesson of the 90s. You only get one shot at a first impression.

acchow• 13 years ago

Do you mean that users of glass risk ruining their first impressions with other people? Or that the company that introduces glass (like the introducer of the Segway) risks its first impression to the people? (Because, Google hardly needs a "first" impression)

adamisen2• 13 years ago

If the first public impression is that Glass is awkward and half-baked it will be very difficult for Google to generate mass market appeal. It happened with the Newton, famously mocked on The Simpsons.

Apple refined the hell out of the iPhone before making any public statements. That seems to have worked quite well. Better than the Newton launch did anyhow.

tvon• 13 years ago

SNL parodies everything. I suspect they did some iPhones in their time and that thing is still flying off the shelves.

jimbokun3• 13 years ago

iPod invisa.

http://www.maxmouth.com/view_video.php?viewkey=f4cc0ad3819a3...

supercanuck2• 13 years ago

I think the decision to let app developers and other software folks be the first to wear these in public is going to come back to haunt them from a marketing perspective since these sort of people will be the ones people will see wearing them in public first

kailuowang• 13 years ago

I think Google will pursue a smart enough strategy when it comes to marketing this device. The fact that they are working with fashion shows and Warby Parker is a good indicator.

That being said, I think the philosophy behind the product development of Google Glass (and most other Google products) is to to focus on being competitive in features, then the marketing is the icing on the cake.

From that point of view, having developers trying them first so that great ideas can be implemented before the mass market makes more sense.

mratzloff• 13 years ago

Google is great at producing technology. But most people don't want technology; they want products. Google is pretty clueless when it comes to making products.[1]

The fact that they are working with fashion shows and Warby Parker is a good indicator.

It's a good indicator that design is an afterthought to them. Which is more likely?

a) Google approached the company at the beginning of the project and worked with them throughout the process.

b) Google approached the company toward the end of the project, after the technical components were done.

Given the outcome and Google's track record, I'd say B is more likely.

Competitive with what? Smartphones? No one will buy Google Glass as a replacement for a smartphone. Marketing is everything for a product like this.

From that point of view, having developers trying them first so that great ideas can be implemented before the mass market makes more sense.

Google is doing this because they see developers (gadget geeks) as their evangelizers. They're replaying the Gmail strategy. But Gmail doesn't make you look like a guy with a cell phone clipped to his belt.

[1] There are some exceptions, like Google Maps and Google Now.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

The device is already being marketed--by SNL.

mc-lovin• 13 years ago

Isn't it enough that nerds are constantly denigrated in the mainstream media without having to put up with this on tech sites too?

mladenkovacevic5• 13 years ago

I hate to sound condescending or preachy (unavoidable), but small minds will look at anything new with a sense of derision and in particular with regards to how foreign that thing seems directly to them as a vapid consumer. They will not be able to engage their sense of empathy and imagine the possibilities where that new thing might actually benefit someone in a really meaningful way.

Bigger minds will look at new things not as a product or the "next thing all the cool people gotta have" but an opportunity to better ourselves, and our relationships with each other.

[Too long;Skipped the preachyness]: Those who don't create, critique. But then someone's gotta keep people entertained too.

ilink• 13 years ago

Pretty sure you missed the point of the /comedy/...

mladenkovacevic5• 13 years ago

Well I did laugh so I can't have missed by that much :)

michaelwww• 13 years ago

> but an opportunity to better ourselves, and our relationships with each other.

or an opportunity to worsen ourselves, and our relationships with each other. Why would you assume critics are small minded?

jimbokun3• 13 years ago

"They will not be able to engage their sense of empathy and imagine the possibilities where that new thing might actually benefit someone in a really meaningful way."

"Bigger minds will look at new things not as a product or the "next thing all the cool people gotta have" but an opportunity to better ourselves, and our relationships with each other."

Are you seriously invoking empathy and "better relationships with each other", in defending something explicitly designed to distract us even more than we already are from the people around us?

And can you elaborate on how Google Glass will benefit us in a "really meaningful" way? As this comedy sketch drives home, if the value proposition is for Google Glass to be less distracting from human interaction, that's a pretty self-evidently farcical position. If there's Google Glass between you and the person you are talking to, you have every reason to believe you are not receiving their full attention. At least with a phone you have to pull out to look at, there is some kind of social signal that you are paying attention to something else right now.

I'm sure there are good use cases for Glass I just haven't seen yet, where it can provide a better UI experience than a phone. The ones I've read so far, however, sound awful. Getting spammed with advertisements walking down the street? Getting background on that person you are talking to who's name slipped your memory seems like a nice thing. But I think it just sets a new baseline, where remembering your name doesn't indicate any human connection, as you assume the Glass wearer just Googled you and got a heads up display on how to steer the conversation.

So I really do believe there will eventually be some positive use cases for technology like Glass. What this comedy sketch shows is that most of the use cases proposed so far are not it.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

You know, one of these days we'll mature enough to put a "don't show me notifications for anything less urgent than a phone call" mode in our phones, and we'll all be better off.

I already feel much better that my work email account isn't on my phone.

mladenkovacevic5• 13 years ago

I didn't mention Glass at all in my reply. I was speaking of the general attitude people take whenever something new and foreign comes along. It's an experiment... it could go really swell, or be rather disastrous. I think the risk is worth seeing what comes next.

And speaking of Glass and distractions.. can you not imagine a future where you don't have to "interact" much with Glass at all? But rather, it just kinda knows what you want and presents that information at the right time?

Also by building "better relationships with each other" I didn't mean Glass will somehow make you and your girlfriend or boyfriend connect on a deeper emotional level. I meant that humanity as a while could discover deeper empathy for each other and be able to divert resources and take action more appropriately for the benefit of humans or the whole planet. Well Glass alone isn't going to do all of that, but I think it is a tiny screw in a system that perhaps will.

dannyr3• 13 years ago

"The ones I've read so far, however, sound awful. Getting spammed with advertisements walking down the street? Getting background on that person you are talking to who's name slipped your memory seems like a nice thing."

Do you have a source for these?

Are you just purposely reading bad reviews of Google Glass? I have read a lot of positive reviews of it along with bad ones. However, pretty much everybody who have actually tried it ended up liking it.

I have not seen Glass serve ads and Google is actually banning developers from serving them. Also, there's no face recognition for you to figure out people's names.

As somebody who have tested Glass since last year, I think it's a very useful device.

Google has been careful about Glass, not wanting it to be a device for distraction. It is pretty evident on the Glass API where they are very careful on what they opened to developers.

I'd suggest you read reviews from people who have actually used Glass.

peddamat• 13 years ago

The 'blog-o-sphere' seems conflicted on Glass.

Personally, it seems like a step towards the inevitable "Entire History of You" future:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/

I'm excited about it from a UI-design perspective. It'll give us practice designing the head's up applications of the future.

Here's an interesting video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8xgYcoH0tA

jessedhillon3• 13 years ago

The writing staff at SNL are prolific creators of works that capture the zeitgeist in a poignant and relevant way. I'm not really sure why you'd consider them to be clueless purveyors of circus instead of timely and informed critics. Apart from being preachy, your comment embodies the unqualified smugness of Silicon Valley, whereby every tool with a Github account thinks himself a world-changing entrepreneur cum artiste. There are a lot of people elsewhere doing amazing things, and a lot of people here are working on utterly banal tripe.

Some shit is just stupid, and I'd sooner trust the SNL writing staff's opinion on that.

magicalist2• 13 years ago

The OP does sound like an ass, but I assume you either haven't watched SNL before or you have a really, really low standard for "capture the zeitgeist in a poignant and relevant way".

mladenkovacevic5• 13 years ago

They have their moments (more in the early seasons than now), but it mostly follows a hive-mind, laugh-track recipe that re-tells the established, popular socio-political narrative and doesn't at all challenge anything or anyone.

I actually think some of their low-brow toilet humour, or the absurdist stuff is the funniest. For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with being all about toilet humour and absurdity, but I cringe when someone pretends they are doing "intelligent", political satire and ends up making a mildly funny skit out of a New York Times article.

The saddest thing of all though, is that this is exactly what's expected of them.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

Dismissing potential customers as having small minds is hardly the path to mass market success.

Products must be popular if they are going to change the world.

capkutay• 13 years ago

Will glass have any way to indicate to others that you're recording a video or taking pictures? If not, I would always feel a little uncomfortable with someone wearing glass present in the room...

ben1040• 13 years ago

You're either pressing a capture button on the device, or using a voice command to take a picture or video. So it's designed to send a social signal to others that you're doing it.

When a video is being recorded, the image appears in the screen. If you're at face-to-face speaking range or a little further away, it's actually not that difficult to see in the image in the display. And even further off you can see what looks like the screen being lit up.

waltz• 13 years ago

This is just marketing. This will spark conversations by providing arguments that are easy to refute.

doorhammer3• 13 years ago

Warning: IANA-Designer

At the risk of sounding like a small-minded narcissist (I'd like to think I'm a moderately minded narcissist) and being that guy, I really can't get over just how awful glass looks aesthetically, especially with the going-out-to-the-shooting-range sunglasses.

I'm pretty excited about it as a step forward in wearable computing and especially of various types of HUDs, etc, but being the shallow putz that I am, I won't wear it until it's a bit more inconspicuous.

Of course if adoption goes nuts, it might be a moot point, but who knows.

Even the models look like super attractive people wearing some thing on their face.

Then there's this guy: http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/image/491923008...

That guy's got the whole thing down, though. Full image package right there. That's the bar for me, as far as geek-chic goes with glass.

goronbjorn2• 13 years ago

They're in talks with Warby Parker about making more stylish models.

doorhammer3• 13 years ago

Nice. That would be cool.

I think the whole package will have to shrink for me to really be on board, but it looks like that would definitely be a step in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned.

turing• 13 years ago

Difference of opinion I suppose. I think Glass actually looks pretty cool. Not inconspicuous by any means, but cool.

doorhammer3• 13 years ago

Yeah. To be fair, I'm a bit of a dandy.

The hardware itself doesn't look too bad, but I'm really not a fan of the thin line visor-part it attaches to.

dannyr3• 13 years ago

How do you imagine Glass would look like?

Also keep in mind that it should be technically possible.

Contact lens should be best but right now, that technology doesn't exists.

yoster• 13 years ago

Good ol SNL. They haven't been really funny lately, but every once in a while they will come out with something hilarious like this.

taigeair• 13 years ago

Peacock!

magicalist2• 13 years ago

Discussion on this from a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659251

freejack• 13 years ago

Gotta love what passes as a story nowadays. I'm glad AllthingsD is so deeply embedded in tech reporting that they caught this gem. Imagine that - SNL did a skit. About something technology related.

Really, it was news in 1994 when folks were reporting on cyberspace and the information superhighway. Now? Now its just a bit tedious and sad.

Can't wait to see what AllthingsD has to say about the next time Homer Simpson uses a smartphone.

dannyr3• 13 years ago

I like Glass but I find the skit pretty hilarious.

It's nice that Google Glass gets the pop culture treatment. IPhone has been featured on SNL several times but never for Android.

“SNL” Parodies Google Glass

Related Stories