Bits: Google Glass Offers More Tech Magic, if You Can Afford It

After some awkward fiddling, I managed to make the device work for me. It was a dazzling taste of something I’d previously seen only in science-fiction movies. I marveled at many things, but mostly at the magical way the display — a glowing, transparent cube — floated over my field of vision, showing maps, photographs and simple messages.

All too soon, my time was up. I handed the high-tech glasses back to a Google employee, with the sinking feeling that it could be a while before I’d be that close to them again.

 That’s because they cost $1,500, and they are being made available largely to developers and people who are eager to figure out how to build applications for them. When they go on sale to the rest of us later this year, they’ll probably be cheaper, Google says, but not by much. The company doesn’t have plans for a partnership with a carrier that might be able to subsidize the cost of the hardware, and it evidently isn’t seeking a mass market immediately.

Of course, there are very real-world business concerns behind the pricing, noted Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group.

“New technology is always expensive when it’s introduced because of the research and development costs,” Ms. Etlinger said. “It’s the same with drugs.”

My brief encounter with Glass doesn’t prove anything about its chances of success. The gadget might not work effectively all the time, and it might fall flat on its face in the mainstream consumer market, as many have predicted. But in some significant ways, the product is pushing the boundaries of the way we think about omnipresent computing, Web search and the ownership of data and privacy.

Surely, wearable computers are in our future, whether they are embedded in glasses or smart watches or even contact lenses. But the experience of wearing Glass raised questions for me about the future of new technology and who gains access to it first — part of a much larger debate concerning the undercurrents of power and privilege that course through the Web.

At the very least, the release of Glass could shape how we think about human and computer interactions, and — considering Glass’s abilities to quietly take photographs and record videos — how we influence policies about privacy and public spaces.

And it would be a shame if the only people who participate in this leap forward are those who can afford it.

It’s not just Glass that poses an inkling of a trend toward technology for the 1 percent, or at least for the relatively affluent. Facebook, for example, has been testing a feature that requires people to pay to send messages directly to people who are on Facebook but who have not agreed to be their “friends.” Then there is app.net, a Twitter-like service that promises a higher-quality stream of information and news, if you pay for it, with subscriptions starting at $5 a month.

Some analysts say the future of security and privacy on the Web will belong to those who can afford expensive, anti-hacking software and other protective services. That could be the antithesis of the rise of the social Web, which promised a utopia imbued with the ability to empower those who used it, regardless of their location, financial means and level of privilege.

“We used to have a distinction between early adopters and people with the most disposable income,” said Anil Dash, an entrepreneur and blogger who raised similar concerns last year in a post titled “You Can’t Start the Revolution From the Country Club.”  

“Ignoring the value of inclusiveness is tantamount to building a gated community,” Mr. Dash wrote. “Even with the promise that the less privileged might get a chance to show up later, you’re making a fundamentally unfair system.”

He says we are at an interesting inflection point where the cost of computing has never been lower, and services like Facebook and Twitter give people a free and relatively frictionless way to connect with hundreds, even thousands, of others with the click of a button. Understandably, many companies are trying to cash in on these developments. But will it be at the cost of excluding most people from the best and safest technology?

This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. When the iPhone came out, it cost almost $600, in its cheapest form, and I couldn’t afford one. By the time I’d picked up enough extra shifts as a waitress to pay the price, the second and third versions of the gadget were on the market.

There’s no doubt that the device changed my life. It made me a much more streamlined individual and eventually gave me a competitive advantage as a budding technology reporter who had firsthand experience as the Apple ecosystem evolved. Relatively early access thus proved beneficial, as it has for many others who were the first to adopt and use new services, like the early “vloggers” (that’s video bloggers) on YouTube or developers in the App Store.

AT the moment, the new Google Glass is also out of my price range. But it stands to reason that this won’t always be the case, says Bill Maris, managing partner at Google Ventures who is also involved with the Glass Collective, a venture fund devoted exclusively to financing the production of applications for the computer glasses.

“There’s an evolution curve to new technology,” he said. “This isn’t the endpoint.”

In other words, if Glass is good enough, and enough people want to buy it, the cost will come down significantly. It’s just a matter of time.

“If it is not useful, it will go away. That is the market force,” he said. “The latency between introduction and general availability is shortening.”

He pointed to the way that most smartphones have dropped in price. But for the most part, the cheapest devices aren’t the newest or fastest ones. And the implications of that — that hand-me-down technology is a good-enough for poorer people — are troubling in their own regard. 

David Lee, a managing partner at SV Angel, an angel investment firm, doubted that consumers would immediately embrace a shift as radical as wearing a computer in fancy eyewear.

“Unless you’re a Steve Jobs, a change in user behavior comes from the ground up,” he said.

Wherever the next innovations come from, I hope they are reasonably priced. Otherwise, the future may start to look a little more like another science-fiction vision: a Brave New World.

Bits Blog: Making Movie Magic More Efficient

DreamWorks Animation The character Eep basks in a rare taste of life outside her family cave.

“The Croods” is a caveman movie from DreamWorks Animation that comes out March 22. The subject may be paleolithic, but the technology approach may well be cutting edge.

“Croods” is a digital product of about 250 billion pixels, with high-definition sound that, along with the images and story, is designed to maximize emotional manipulation of the audience. It is the end point of a process involving hundreds of artists and engineers working in a closely organized system that DreamWorks has been working on for years.

Making a movie with a half-million digital files, containing things like hair waving in the wind or cliffs crumbling into dust, took several years of planning, writing and drawing. It also meant searching for efficiency in the face of escalating costs. Since 2006, DreamWorks Animation has released more than a dozen movies costing at least $130 million. “We’re hoping to reduce that expense while adding more to the experience,” says Lincoln Wallen, the chief technical officer at DreamWorks Animation. “A modern digital environment, whatever the business, has to be distributed and agile.”

While each film needs its own uniquely realized look, the company also keeps a digital catalog of every table, flame and character, so parts might be modified or retouched in a future film. More important savings come by rethinking how things are made. In 2009’s “Monsters Versus Aliens,” the relatively simple-looking destruction of a spaceship used 4 terabytes of data about pixels. In “Croods,” the same amount creates a far more detailed and longer destruction of a mountainside.

Instead of a straightforward pixel stash, DreamWorks hired a former quantum chemist and a former specialist in fluid dynamics to create a series of mathematical instructions about how different parts of the image should affect their neighbors once motion commences. That way the same amount of data is creating a more complex outcome.

The company has also worked to tighten the relationships between artists trying out different angles, through custom software that changes the angle of a character with the touch of a pen. Elsewhere, Wall Street trading software has been adapted to speed communication of changes in digital files among different groups of artists. A dancer wearing a special body suit generates an image of her as a cartoon character that many artists can look at together, and figure out how a scene should be structured.

“Siloed systems are too brittle,” says Mr. Wallen. “The key is a knowledge and management of all the interrelationships.” He and others at DreamWorks are now considered proficient enough at managing these big cloud systems that Intel and Hewlett-Packard, suppliers of much of DreamWorks’ technology, have them speaking to customers in such seemingly unrelated fields as energy and finance.

Viewed as a manufacturing process, what DreamWorks is doing is also a little like the old Six Sigma idea, practiced by General Electric and others, that problems are most easily fixed when they are approached as early as possible. There is also a “just in time” digital customization plan in the works, Mr. Wallen says, to shift the final product so characters’ facial reactions mimic those of, say, a Chinese person when the movie is playing in China. In both cases, the idea is to make high-cost enchantment more efficient.

The Magic of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion

It’s been quite a few years since the glory days of Disney platformers. Aladdin, The Lion King, Disney's Magical Quest - these titles and many more enchanted gamers by capitalizing on the magical nature of various Disney franchises, while at the same time providing a fun world and memorable gameplay experiences. But in the many years since gaming went three-dimensional, it looked like the Disney side-scroller was doomed to become a thing of the past - a forgotten relic from Disney’s gaming vault.

Just the sort of thing you’d expect to show up in Wasteland, in other words.

Disney’s Epic Mickey franchise has resurrected many bits, pieces and even characters from Disney’s past, all given second life thanks to The Wasteland - basically, the rug under which all of the company’s past is swept according to the Epic universe. But while Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two (the sequel to the 2010 Wii title) is just around the corner, the mouse-fueled game that has me most excited is easily Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion for 3DS.

Both games release the same day, November 18, but Power of Illusion has particularly piqued my interest with its retro style. Not just a mere port of Epic Mickey 2, Illusion offers a full, standalone adventure - one that continues the Epic story, while also acting as a sequel to the long-lost Genesis classic Castle of Illusion.

As you might have guessed, Illusion is a side-scrolling platformer, but one that spans countless Disney franchises and has some modern tricks up its sleeves - like dual-screen functionality and the paint/thinner mechanic from the core Epic games. During a recent demo I had the chance to further explore the castle, this time journeying into the second wing, and thereby the streets of Aladdin’s Agrabah.

As far as gameplay is concerned, Agrabah is similar to Peter Pan’s London area. You can perform a spinning attack or throw paint globs with your brush for enemies at a distance. If you keep watch on the bottom screen, you’ll find areas where objects can be either erased or drawn in, manipulating the environment in such a way as to allow you to progress or even find a secret or two. But the world itself is what’s most impressive, harkening back to both the animated film and Al’s old Genesis title with startling accuracy.

The look of the game is superb - with excellent sprite work and some really incredible background design bringing these worlds to life. Developer DreamRift even went so far as to make use of original working files for the animated films, and that extra mile really paid off in terms of visuals. The number of different characters you’ll run into is also quite impressive - during my short demo, I ran into Genie, the Peddler, Cinderella, and Aladdin himself (hint: cool things happen if you rescue the titular hero).

Searching each area to find and rescue the various Disney characters is a great incentive to scour and revisit every level, as are the handful of collectible abilities. For instance, using the Scrooge ability summons a certain duck to jump around on his pogo stick and make havoc for enemies. Small touches like this are much-appreciated throwbacks to Disney’s grand past, and go a long way in making this game feel like a modern incarnation of those beloved titles.

What I’ve played of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion has me really excited. Granted, it marks possibly the biggest waste of a magical carpet ever (why can’t I really fly the darn thing?!), but assuming it’s as fleshed out as I’m hoping it will be, this game could easily become one of the greatest new additions to the 3DS library in 2012.