Gadget Blog

Are you prepared to manage the distractions inherent in a portal to the internet that you can’t  take your eyes off?

In the previous issue of this publication, Farhad Manjoo made  a plausible case that Google’s new augmented-reality glasses,  known as Project Glass, could make computing less distracting  by replacing every other device in our pockets and laps. Rather  than checking out of a conversation by looking down at our phones,  we could get in and out of our computing environment without  even turning our heads.

Someday, maps and  other applications could come up in your feld of view.

But here’s where human behavior comes in. We are really bad  at ignoring distractions at hand. And the more accessible they  are, the more addictive and distracting they can become. Let’s  take all those distractions and put them on our face, directly in  our line of sight? I don’t know about you, but when I want to  avoid distractions, I often have to physically avoid them. “Out of  sight, out of mind” isn’t just a cliché—it’s a commentary on the  narrow spotlight of human attention and our inability to ignore  something ever-present in our feld of view.

Already, computers grab so much of  our attention that savvy users deploy  apps like SelfControl and Freedom,  which switch of social media, e-mail, and  other distractions. Certainly, we could use  such aids on Google’s Glass. But I’ll bet most of us won’t.

Do you fnd it unnerving when the person next to you at the  grocery store is having a conversation with himself or herself,  and at frst you don’t realize it’s because he or she is speaking  into a phone headset? Google Glass is a camera, headphones,  and a display all in one. So now imagine that the person in the  grocery store seems to be having full-blown visual hallucinations. 

Don’t get me wrong—I fnd the prospect of augmented reality tantalizing. I’m just not sure we yet know how to manage the  ways it’s going to change our interpersonal relations.