Image via CrunchBase
Google lifted the veil on its bold "Project Glass" project recently, and reactions were mixed. But now that a major tech company has officially raised the idea of wearable computers, it can't be long before other outfits start throwing around similar ideas. Two things that happened last week suggest that Apple and Valve might become powerful opponents in this sphere.
First, Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted visiting the headquarters of PC gaming giant Valve in Bellevue, Washington. It's possible he just needed directions. It's possible he had to use the bathroom. It's much more likely he was cooperating with Valve on new game-related projects.
But a post on a new Valve employee blog might offer some further insight into just what Tim Cook was doing at Valve. It's very long and covers a lot of topics, but the key here is that Valve's Michael Abrash says that he's working on "wearable computing:"
By "wearable computing" I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
separate display that you hold in your hands (think Terminator vision).
The logical endpoint is computing everywhere, all the time – that is, wearable computing – and I have no doubt that 20 years from now that will be standard, probably through glasses or contacts, but for all I know through some kind of more direct neural connection. And I'm pretty confident that platform shift will happen a lot sooner than 20 years – almost certainly within 10, but quite likely as little as 3-5, because the key areas – input, processing/power/size, and output – that need to evolve to enable wearable computing are shaping up nicely, although there's a lot still to be figured out.
Sound like any major Google projects unveiled recently?
This is all speculation, and Abrash makes it very clear that what he's talking about is R&D — Valve isn't unveiling glasses anytime soon. But Valve has what appears to be a friendly relationship with the most successful gadget manufacturer in the world. When it comes time to actually roll out any wearable computing concepts, that relationship could become a powerful alliance.
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