The Future Repeats Itself: What Science Fiction Has to Say About Google's Fancy Glasses

When science fiction foretells science fact, it helps prepare us for the future's arrival, if it comes at all. Thanks to George Orwell, society is on guard against “Big Brother.” Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Harrison Bergeron, we have a general understanding of the more dystopian effects of social equality. H.G. Wells showed us what might happen when the aliens make their grand entrance, or the dangers of rumor in the hyper-media era. Thanks to Terminator, we wait anxiously for any signs of Skynet and look askance at Watson. The possible future (as well as alternate realities) through science fiction has functioned as a kind of speculative history teacher, even if we tend to be at the back of the classroom, thumbing through comic books.

Which brings us to Project Glass, Google’s augmented reality glasses initiative. It’s led by Google X Lab, the search giant’s top secret facility thought to be located somewhere in the Bay Area of Northern California. While it’s been a little slow out the gate in a commercial sense (save a few novel apps), augmented reality is a staple of science fiction, the schizophrenia tech blurring of real and computer-generated worlds, used for everything from diagnostics to seeing through walls. While the military pioneered the technology, per usual, for fighter pilots, real-life head up display view has mostly been a sci-fi novelty on par with the self-driving car, the flying car, and the circular space station. In sci-fi, for the most part, this kind of technology is used by intelligent detectives or hackers or cyborgs, but pretty soon, thanks to Google, regular people are going to have the opportunity to fuck around with it too. Good luck, us.

On their Google+ page, the developers behind Project Glass say technology should,

work for you…be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't… A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.

That's an ambitious promise for a technology that quite literally covers your face with Internet vision. But I’m only one guy and Google’s sharing information about Project Glass because they want to start a conversation and collect everybody’s valuable input. Of course, the parodies have begun rolling in, pointing out just how annoying it would be to have ads and alerts popping up in your vision as you're sliding down the street on your hoverboard or what have you. But most of the 500 responses on Project Glass’s blog are variations on “Shut up and take my money already.”

But what can Google learn from Robocop? Or any of the many other sci-fi stories with face tech?

Google, like AT&T, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (both night vision and GPS came out of projects backed by DARPA) and William Gibson, who gave us "cyberspace," have helped usher all sorts of magical technologies from the pages of science fiction into real life. Suddenly, it looks like augmented reality has been catapulted into reality (then again, according to an article at Wired, maybe not). Whatever the case, augmented-head-up-display-reality has already been with us, in futuristic alternate realities, for some time. And so I submit for your consideration a collection of sci-fi scenarios that indicate, for better or worse, the way the world might look through a pair of Google shades.

With Google glasses, the world might be transformed into something like John Carpenter’s They Live, only reversed. People will become even more isolated and out of touch with each other than ever until some sort of revolution convinces us to remove our special specs, revealing the horrible anti-culture we’ve left choking on the fumes of techno-capitalism. Enter a Mack truck that Ryan Gosling will not save you from, mark my words.

This is a given but obviously there will be ads everywhere.

Sadly, Google glasses could mean less work for building superintendents and janitors.

On the other hand, there could be more work for the blind.

The Virtual Boy will make a long-awaited comeback.

Google glasses will no longer be necessary after your power level is over 9000.

After cops are outfitted with Google glasses, they'll be more robo.

Days will get a lot stranger.

Google glasses will definitely help level the playing field in the battle against extraterrestrials—if we’re not too busy trying to find our way around a bookstore.

This list hardly scratches the surface of the shiny projection displays we might all be wearing someday (I haven't even mentioned comics, videogames or novels). But it's a brief reminder that the folks at Google X Lab, who, behind their innocuous and goofy exteriors, drinking free Odwalla and taking power naps on Segways, are building a future we've already seen.

Let me know what I missed in the comments, email me at sean@motherboard.tv or follow me on Twitter @Yeatons