Mary Lou Jepsen, who leads the Google X display group, says wearable innovation moving fast.
Mary Lou Jepsen, head of the
display division for Google’s notoriously secret hardware innovation
lab, Google X–which is building the Google Glass head-worn computer–took
the stage at EmTech Thursday to talk about innovation, creativity, and,
naturally, wearable computing.
While Jepsen apologized a few
times for being unable to divulge what, specifically, she’s working on
over at Google (“Sergey insists,” she said apologetically at one point,
referring to company cofounder Sergey brin), she did share a number of
thoughts related to her division and the changing face of consumer
electronics, among other topics. Below are some of her distilled
thoughts.
- She believes wearable computers are “a way of
amplifying you,” saying that for years she felt that a laptop is an
extension of her mind. “It’s coming. I don’t think it’s stoppable,” she
said of wearable devices like Glass, adding that it makes it much faster
to do things like take photos, and “you become addicted to the speed of
it, and it lets you do more fast and easily.”
- Ten years from
now, assuming we can’t cure neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s,
she expects human-computer interfaces (such as the red Google Glass she
wore around her neck, presumably) to be able to do things like identify
the people around you.
- She pointed out the importance of varied
design in making commercially successful smart watches, similar to the
different kinds of clothes we all wear.
- Despite keeping
her mouth shut about what she and her team are building, she indicates
they’re working hard, saying they’re “maybe sleeping three hours a night
to bring the technology forward,” and that we may see what they’re
working on next year.
- She stressed that industrial design and
user experience design are “not the whole product,” when it comes to
consumer electronics, and that, if you really think about it, the
existence of the laptop was made possible by the creation of the
liquid-crystal display, and tablets by further innovations in hardware.
“There’s only so much you can do by styling the housing and icons,” she
said. “I think there’s a lot of room for diversity and innovation of
approach here.”
- She also stressed the importance of
understanding from early on in the product-development cycle about how
what you’re making will scale.
- She says Google’s driverless car,
which the company has long been testing on California’s roads, is
“safer than a regular driver now,” and that Google has driven more miles
with its driverless car than the ground covered by all other driverless
cars combined.
- She noted the importance of innovation at any
age. “I don’t think any one of us has an excuse on why we can’t get up
and do something relaly big, really bold,” she said.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/520231/google-x-display-guru-says-wearable-computing-is-unstoppable/
Off course:
Spoof radio signals convinced an online ship tracking service that this
fake craft had traveled on a path near Italy that spelled out the
hacker term “pwned,” which describes a system that has been compromised
by an attacker.
