When the one-day opportunity to order Google Glass came up recently, I jumped on it. I had tried on Marta Rauch‘s pair a couple months ago, and had seen her presentations about it, and fell in love with them. This was wearable technology I could use, as far as I was concerned! I was able to order the Glass I wanted, and was very excited about it…until I told my husband. I didn’t tell him how much it cost, but I did tell him that I bought them. He totally flipped out, but not in a good way. He felt that whatever I did spend on them, it was too much money for a “toy”. I’m earning some good money now, and I felt it was an investment–I’d like to explore how they are used, and how technical communication and m-learning would be part of the wearable technology experience for myself. But no. I cancelled the order, as he had a good point about the cost being too high. Even so, I’m really sad about missing out on this opportunity.
Financial considerations aside, it got me thinking about technological “toys”, and what’s truly a “toy” versus adopting early technology, albeit at a high price initially. I’ve heard Neil Perlin talk about how he had some of the earliest portable computers around–nothing like the laptops of today–that cost a small fortune even by today’s standards. Sure, it’s outdated and obsolete technology now, but so are a lot of other technologies that were around just a few years ago. Children today don’t know what a Walkman is, or that telephones used to actually have a cord and you actually used a dial mechanism to connect your phone to another phone. Heck, pay phones are pretty much obsolete now. What did people think when the first iPhone or the first flip phone came out? Those are obsolete now, too. So, sure, perhaps Google Glass is a very expensive “toy”, but how does anyone know if perhaps I was really an early adopter and I’d be ahead of the curve for knowing how to make it work and use it for practical reasons if I had actually gotten one?
I remember when I got my first iPad–it was an iPad 2. I had saved up, and asked anyone who was going to be getting me a gift for my birthday, holidays, etc. to give me gift cards to Best Buy so I could purchase it. I was so thrilled when I got it, and my husband thought that was a waste of money. He insisted that I already had a laptop, and didn’t need an iPad, that again–it was just a toy. I insisted that yes, there were “toy” elements to it, but I considered it “computing lite”, where I could do many tasks that I normally do, but the ones that didn’t necessarily need my laptop to be powered up. Then, about a year later, I was fortunate enough to win an iPad3 so I could upgrade. My husband had insisted that I sell my old one, but for all his moaning that I should get rid of it, guess who’s been using it for almost two years now? Yep, him. It’s still a little bit of a “toy” to him, but he’s a news junkie, and he loves to read different news sources and some light research on it when he’s not using his desktop (nope, he doesn’t even own a laptop). So, it’s not going anywhere. My iPad has gone with me all over the country–on vacation, to conferences, and has entertained me when I don’t need to be in front of my laptop. I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of mine multi-fold. And yet…I feel like this is the same situation.
Of the emerging techologies that are coming out, whether they are wearables or something else, what do you think is a tech “toy” and what do you think could be the next big thing, or a step towards the next big thing? 3-D printers and Google Glass have my attention–I would love to own both of them. What has your attention? Add your thoughts to the comments below.
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