Google renews sense of wonder
The things that create wonder or genuinely improve our lives are often those things that are not easily monetizable. It’s why the fun and novelty of the digital age gave way to the distracted, jittery, divided world we have now
About a decade ago, when my father was sick and couldn’t do much of anything, I gave him my iPhone.
To his-then septuagenarian eyes, it was a miracle, a limitless portal to what seemed like all the world’s information. In particular, after first leaving India 50 years ago, and the U.K. 20 years later, the plain, userfriendly nature of the iPhone let him connect with the literature, music, and TV shows he thought he had lost to time.
Years later, however, it can be hard sometimes to conjure that sort of wide-eyed wonder. Yet this week, as Google announced its newest wares at its annual I/O conference, I was once again reminded of what it’s like to be amazed by technology.
Though only a prototype, Google ended its presentation with a preview of augmented reality glasses aimed at translation. Looking much like an ordinary pair of spectacles, as someone speaks, the glasses pick up on what’s being said, and then display a translated stream of text in your field of vision in real-time — something the company said was like “subtitles for the world.”
In the clip, a mother and daughter — who each only spoke English and Mandarin respectively — talked of how a device like this might help bridge the divide between them.
Sure, it had that slightly implausible, idealized gloss of a tech showreel. But it was also touching and inspiring, in no small part because translation is a subject of particular interest to me — and a sore spot, too. After my parents moved to England and had children, they made the decision not to teach us their first language, Punjabi. Despite now being middle-aged, I have struggled for years to belatedly learn the tongue, and a distance between myself and the kaleidoscopic breadth of Punjabi culture remains.
The promise of technology that might somehow narrow the divisions between us, no matter how far-fetched that ideal might be, thus feels enormously promising.
After all, technology these days can often feel downright hostile.
One can buy a speaker to listen to music and discover it has been recording your conversations. You might hop on to a social network to connect with your friends but find yourself exposed to abuse or conspiracy theories. And all the problems of day-to-day life — the alienation, the congestion in our cities, the looming threat of climate change, the deep polarization in societies across the world — seem if anything to be exacerbated rather than ameliorated by technology.
Is it thus possible for technology to once again feel like a force for good?
Because even given the genuinely impressive nature of Google’s demo, whether or not their translator glasses will actually work as advertised is of course to be determined. What’s more, when it comes to Google there is, too, the sticky problem of privacy, and what gets recorded and sent to Google or put on a server somewhere is something the company will have to address.
That is the current situation we are in with modern tech: Even the most promising of inventions have to be approached gingerly because new devices and services are never just stand-alone products. Rather, every other new digital device, app, or gadget loops you into some nefarious thing, from a system designed to serve you ads by tracking you, to invading your privacy, to being designed so as to be addictive.
There is obviously a basic contradiction at work. The things that create wonder or genuinely improve our lives are often those things that are not easily monetizable. It’s why the fun and novelty of the digital age gave way to the distracted, jittery, divided world we have now — there wasn’t as much money in making people’s lives better as there was in making them worse.
How we get out of that bind is difficult to imagine. As a start at least, we might think about regulating or disincentivizing the way most digital tech is now structured — preying on one’s attention and tracking your every move.
It’s worth contemplating. A decade later, and now in his 80s, my Dad still loves his iPhone, but maybe a bit too much. He spends half the day on it — yes sometimes reading Urdu poetry or listening to ghazals, but often idly scrolling through silly Facebook videos, or reading dubiously sourced bits of news or medical information.
That is where we are now stuck — with most of the awe of tech gone and the harms on full display.
Still, ironically, Google’s glasses are a small reminder that the tools we use to live can still be cause for hope and optimism. If only we could break the systems which obscure that more optimistic vision of the future — and allow ourselves the chance to feel a little wonder once more.