by Tom Kaneshige

Is Computer’s Future a Glass House?

Opinion
Mar 06, 20131 min
InnovationMobileSmall and Medium Business

According to Google and Corning, glass surfaces and eyeglasses are where we'll do our computing in the future.

Google’s Project Glass is getting a lot of play lately, with Sergey Brin recently wearing a prototype while calling smartphones “emasculating,” and a Google video showing the computerized eyewear in action.

The video appeared a couple weeks ago:

Here’s another glass-inspired vision of the future that looks eerily like the “Minority Report,” only not as controversial and dark. It comes from Corning, a manufacturer of glass and ceramics products.

Corning’s 2012 video, the second of a two-part series, features a family going about its day. I prefer this video to the first Corning video because of the segment where a doctor helps in a surgery across the world (or at least that’s what I think is happening). That’s kinda cool.

In the Corning video, there’s background music but no speech, a throwback to Hollywood’s silent films. Apparently, the voice-enabled, ubiquitous Star Trek computer isn’t the future interface (sorry, Siri).

Slideshow: Apple Innovation: 10 Future Tech Ideas

Meanwhile, Apple wants to go back in time with a geeky iWatch that looks a lot like the calculator watch I wore as a kid but never used.

So what do these “Through the Looking Glass” videos tell us? You might want to invest in Windex.