Taxis don't care that you're texting

Now, whether it’s on the streets of New York City or down the aisle of a local Walmart, its commonplace to see someone paying more attention to the tiny screen of their phone than to to the sights and sounds around them.

There has been, finally, a lot of forward progress in the world of augmented reality, and more importantly, the futuristic hardware that will drive it. Up to this point, virtual reality has required goofy looking eye-gear to perform its duties. Usually the viewer would be given an image made from small LCD screens that would “project” an image of 45-90 inches in front of them. Nothing behind these images were visible and because of the close actual proximity of the screens a eyestrain-induced headache was sure to follow.

Few people would be caught dead wearing such a contraption. In a society where bluetooth headsets have a certain amount of douchiness associated with them (at least according to The Daily Show), a Geordi LaForge piece of eyewear would be sure to cause one’s chase from town from an angry torch-wielding mob. The thing about those bluetooth headsets though is that there weren’t really necessary. In fact, they were often more trouble than convenience. The batteries on them had to be charged, they had to be readily accessible (or permanently attached to your ear), and you had to have already figured out how to pair it with your phone – usually not an obvious task. It’s was just easier to hold the phone up to your head when the phone rang, phone radiation be damned.

Google Project Glass headset

Bluetooth headsets will have its place though, but not exactly as we know them now. In the movie Minority Report, two of the main characters use cell phones that are not much more than earbuds. If I’m not mistaken the props used in that movie were actually Bang & Olufsen earphones that had the cords cut off. The technology to implement phone like this is right around the corner. Hardware has become smaller, and the idea of real voice recognition technology has become more mainstream thanks to Apple’s Siri technology. Who wants to bet that Apple has a screenless cell phone using Siri technology sitting in its prototype lab right now? It depends on the task, but a visual interface isn’t always the most efficient way to go.

But back to the screens. When you look down at the screen of your smartphone, are you truly aware of anything else around you? Do an experiment: pick a pedestrian-heavy street or a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon. Walk towards your destination while sending a long text message to a friend. When you send the message, stop for a second and see if you can remember what you passed while you were doing that. Did you almost walk into anybody? Did you see that two-for-one sale at that store along the way? Probably not.

The distraction of cell phones, especially smart phones is well documented, especially in driving situations. Driving a car requires a lot of multi-tasking even though its second nature to most people. When you look away from the road though, a lot of those multiple tasks fall by the wayside. Why? In order to interact with something you need to pay attention to it.

A fighter jet HUD

Fighter jet pilots have this problem as well. It’s information overload. We drive a car and have to worry about our speed and whether the light up ahead is red or green. A fighter pilot has an insane number of decisions to make in a combat situation. It’s all important, but looking down at an altimeter in the heat of a mission could be the difference between life and death.

To counteract this information overload, fighter jets have HUDs (heads up displays) installed. They are basically small pieces of glass tilted at a 45 degree angle that will have primary information projected on such as speed, altitude, pitch and targeting information. The key factor in the HUD is the glass – the pilot can see this projected information while still seeing the terrain directly in front of them. Instead of having to look down to gather technical information, the pilot can process it concurrently with the environment around him.

Heads up technology has made its way into a few cars over recent years. Okay, so perhaps driving a car isn’t quite the same challenge as delivering a smart bomb through an open window, bit its no doubt safer to keep the driver’s eyes focused on the road. Along with the basic information that can be given to a driver, a HUD can also supply secondary information such as navigation, radio preferences or even additional safety features such as obstacle avoidance. Pretty neat.

Uber sexy!

What would happen if we applied the same idea to our smartphones? Set aside the geeky look of the gear for a second. If you could process secondary information about the world around you as you traverse through it, how much of an advantage could you potentially gain? In addition to navigational items and location-based information, your entire daily information stream could be presented without you having to take your complete focus off of your environment. Wow, imagine being able to see that cute puppy being walked by the even cuter girl down the street as you are reading the latest tweet from your friend. I mean really – if you saw both, which one would you want to pay attention to?

A few years from now we’re going to look back at these smartphones and realize how dumb they were. Certainly portable small devices with screens will always have a place, at least for the foreseeable future. As the technology to reduce the size of projected-screen devices continues to improve you’ll see more and more people using them as their primary device. Information is a huge part of our society, and those willing to embrace and utilize it will lead the way. Hey, they laughed at the concept of a television too. And a microwave. And a – oh, you get the point!

Read more at Toxel.com

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Read the full article at Gizmodo