Headline, September 21 2021/ FACE : ''' '' THE COMPUTERS TAP '' '''

FACE : ''' '' THE

 COMPUTERS TAP '' '''

AUGMENTED REALITY :THE TECH COMPANIES have been experimenting with less immersive machines for your face - what some call augmented reality.

This is the world that Google imagined when it started selling its Glass spectacles in 2014.

As a matter of technology, Glass was a marvel - Google had stuffed a display, speakers and a camera into a machine built only slightly obtrusively into eyeglass frames. One knock on Glass was that it didn't do a whole lot to justify its price; it could snap short videos and display digital tidbits, like the weather, in the corner of your visual frame, for $1,500.

Yet function is rarely an obvious impediment in wearable tech. Wrist watches only tell time, and sunglasses only tell the world you're awesome. In some ways not doing too much was the point of Glass. The specs promised to offer you digital information more discreetly than your phone could.

It imagined a visual field one day enriched by information - the latest headlines and your incoming texts superimposed over your walk home.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO VOID SOUNDING VULGAR, somehow, when discussing the future of facial computing. There is something inescapably crude, isn't there, about the prospect of everyone walking around with computers on our faces?

And yet I suspect the world may adopt face computers anyway, and not long from now, perhaps even within the coming decade. People in tech have long been wondering what might succeed smartphones as the next dominant computing platform.

For a long time I've thought that nothing would - that phones would remain our primary computers for the foreseeable future. In the past few months, though, I've begun to face the fact that our faces are..... in trouble.

The face computer is coming - brace yourself for an onslaught of ''smart'' glasses, virtual-reality headsets and other devices that connect your eyes to the digital world.

So far there have been only a few such machines, most famously Google's failed digital specs., Google Glass. Facebook and Ray-Ban recently unveiled camera camera-enabled sunglasses; Snap, which makes Snapchat, also has such a device.

The sunglasses let you photograph life for the moment, from your eyes' point of view; when you're building sand castles at the beach with your kids, you can tap your specs to capture the memory while you're living it rather than reach for your phone with sandy fingers.

Facebook and Microsoft are making virtual-reality headsets, too. These function as powerful as powerful personal computers mounted to your eyes, creating an enveloping digital experience - video games and movies surround you, the real world replaced by the machine.

Though none of these devices has been a huge success, the tech that powers face-mounted computers is getting quite good quite fast. It is probably only a few years until a face computer hits big - perhaps when Apple releases the one it has been reported to be working on.

There are enormous social, cultural and legal reasons to worry about face computers becoming ubiquitous. Such devices could turn your eyes into constantly recording dashcams, superimpose Instagrammy toxicity over your real-life conversations and add a layer of reality-bending computer graphics to everything you see.

It doesn't help that they are being developed by some of the most intrusive, least trustworthy corporations in the world.

But if creepiness posed a fatal impediment to success in the tech industry, we wouldn't have smartphones or Facebook.

Here's the thing about face computers : With the right design, when their components inevitably become small and powerful enough, these machines could make computing much more visceral and accessible, which most likely means more irresistible, too.

I worry about the sudden inevitability of face computers - that, as happened with smartphones, they could become ubiquitous before society begins to appreciate the way they might be altering everything.

I say this having used a lot of pretty bad face computers over the past few years. Even the worst of them suggested a compelling goal. Face computers promise to improve the two things we most often do on our phones : watch stuff and take pictures of the stuff.

A computer you can always see paired with a camera always watching whatever you are - isn't it obvious how such a device might fit in during the age of YouTube and TikTok?

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Computers and Future Applications, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Farhad Manjoo.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Technologists, Innovators, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless