Glasses provide subtitles for foreign language conversations
July 25, 2012
A translated conversation is displayed on a monitor (credit: Will Powell)
Drawing inspiration from Google’s upcoming Project Glass head-mounted glasses-style display, computer engineer and designer Will Powell put together a make-shift device to show some of the dramatic ways life will change in our augmented future, Smithsonian magazine reports.
The video shows Powell’s Frankenstein concoction cobbled together from 9 different pieces of equipment: a set of glasses with built in screens is driven by external computing power to translate Spanish speech into English, which appears live as subtitles floating in front of the wearer’s eyes.
Comments (9)
by chris
In this way, I will truly understand what they are talking about. I hope it comes in many different languages.
by krem1234
Amazing – is anything like this commercially available?
by MatthewQ
Wasn’t this one of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions? I think so. Or something very similar.
by Editor
Yes: in The Age of Spiritual Machines, 1999, he predicted “translating telephone technology” (speech-to-speech translation, not with reference to glasses) by 2009, which was accurate
by Ian Clarke
You know, I see lots of genuine progress being made, and I marvel at the advances that this site reports on, but am I the only one who’s expecting it all to go a hell of a lot quicker nowadays?
I think perhaps I read too much on what’s around the corner, which sadly results in a “Oh, have they only just done that?” reaction. The discoveries I am hoping to see are those that make you dizzy with excitement and leave you struggling to comprehend. I guess I’ll just have to learn patience. :)
by MatthewQ
No, you’re not the only one. I worry about this a lot. That we’re not going to make it to the singularity because we’ll screw everything up just before we do.
When I was a bit younger and more optimistic (note, this was also before 9/11) I figured that technological advancement had a certain impetus that would literally carry us across the finish line no matter what negative pressures there were. Similar to the ‘too big to fail’ pronouncement that gets trotted out with some corporations or government undertakings.
Now, I’m not so sure. But I’ve tried to modify my thinking a bit. I try to envision the singularity as a point where we escape the gravity well of our history. And just at that crucial point where we can either fall or with just that bit more impetus keep going- the booster rocket that is attached to us falls away, scaling down our mass dramatically and allowing us to achieve escape velocity. The falling stage booster would represent a failing paradigm and also all of the human history and struggle it took to get us to that point.
The way I figure it- just as half the technological advancement willl occur in the last year, half year, weeks before the technological singularity- so also will most of the badness/things going to hell occur in that last bit of time as well. (does that make sense?)
Creation is often an act of destruction as well. Perhaps the singularity will arrive with a big bang?
by Cybernettr
I think a momentous societal/technological change will come when glasses that project computer images onto the retinas become mainstream. Think of all the industries this could shake up: computer displays, smartphones, tablets, video games, television, movies, possibly live entertainment, not to mention travel, tourism and a whole host of other fields, depending on how well it works. The next earthshaking changes will come with the development of longevity escape velocity and of course strong AI. Click on my username to read more…
by GatorALLin
…and suggest the winning chess move please….
by Phillfrog
Why not then put it through a speech synthasyzer each way?