You may remember the blog post that I recently put up regarding Instagram, how people are overusing it to take photos of dumb things in their everyday lives. Suddenly, many people think they have the ability to create amazing photos just because there's an app for it. I also talked about how Instagram is trying to bring back something that has been long gone, the retro/vintage style. Anyways, if you have the time you should read it and let me know what you think.
As if Instagram wasn't ridiculous enough already, a new concept is brewing that seeks total control of how you view your everyday surroundings. It is called...
INSTAGLASSES
Yes, you are unfortunately reading that correctly. But, I won't be boring you with the details, The Future Of Things reports:
German Designer Markus Gerke recently came up with a simple yet fetching design he called
Instaglasses or in other words a pair of glasses with the capability to
take pictures and instantaneously add filters to them and upload them to
the web.
The general usage is supposedly simple - look at anything you would
like to shoot, snap a picture by pressing a tiny bottom on the glasses
and by pressing a different bottom apply a filter or change it using a
tiny scroll wheel on the side of the glasses.
The only question I would have for these developers is, why? Why is there a need to change the way we perceive everything around us? Taking the concept of Instagram and applying it to glasses is most definitely an overkill. Now everything you see or perceive has been filtered. Essentially, what we perceive as reality will now become distorted. We will always see everything in cheery, vintage colors, not acknowledging the reality that lays underneath these filters. With the Instaglasses, any attempt for authenticity in a man's life goes out the window.
However, there seems to be some challenges in the execution of the Instaglasses concept:
Sound simple enough right? well not exactly. As ingenious as the
Gerke's design for the Instaglasses is, there are at least a number of
serious obstacles before you can start snapping those instagram images
from your own set of Instaglasses. Probably the most serious one has to
do with the display.
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If you want the option to snap a picture and watch it from
the glasses themselves (instead of say sending them to your phone and play with
them over there), you will need your glasses to be able to have some type of
see-through display. This kind of technology is still very rare (Samsung
showcased a prototype see-through OLED display back in 2010 but as far as we
know it did not get into any product on the market as of yet). There are other
options for adding a display to glasses - Google is working on the Glass
project and the Israeli company Lumus is said to be bringing its own solution
to the market next year. All of these are proprietary solutions which are
fairly complex and are far from being the simple one purpose tool needed for
the a product such as the Instaglasses.
Even if you somehow solve the display issue, you are still
left with other problems including packing WIFI or even 3G into the tiny
glasses frame as well as a battery that can last for at least a day of usage -
certainly not a simple task.
Gerke already stated that he is not going to attempt to
commercialize his design (not surprising given all the hurdles we just
mentioned). One the other hand a group of 3 other designers are claiming that
they are working on something similar.
Since the concept to Instaglasses coming to life has many hurdles to get through, It looks like the probability of the Instaglasses reaching consumers are slim, but three other designers are trying to make something similar to the concept of the Instaglasses. It also makes me wonder a little about the other projects that Instaglasses is competing with, such as Google glass and Lumus. How will those two affect the surroundings around us? I haven't heard about Lumus that much, but the Google glass project does looks interesting. In my opinion, both Google Glass and Lumus are better than Instaglasses because they only try to make our reality better or more efficient, not to change it and put filters in its place. Besides, wearing Instaglasses for a whole day could only do more harm to your eyesight than benefit.
Anyways, that's all I have to say about how our realities will change as soon as some of these products hit the shelves. Imagine what kind of a distraction it would be if you are talking to a friend with a Google Glass and a weather alert or an e-mail pops up right in front of your eyes. As if the smartphones we have today don't take away enough attention from us.
Thanks for reading,
Here are some pictures that I found of the Instaglasses, these are concept pictures:
And here's a neat video for the Google Glass project in everyday life, though at times it does look a little unpractical:
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