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Jonathan Taplin is a Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Taplin’s areas of specialization are[…]
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The Google Glass opens up new doors for technological and social interactions, but in an era where instant fact checking is possible, will Google Glass enable us to remain honest and open?

Jonathan Taplin:  I think Google Glass could be an incredible technology.  One of my grad students working at the lab is working on a simultaneous subtitled translation application for movies.  So you could go into a movie and be a Spanish-speaking person and you could go into an English language movie and it would show you the subtitles on the Google Glass while you were watching the movie.  That to me would be very cool.  And if we could do it in seven or eight languages, that would be a fabulous application for, and maybe even for people who are hard of hearing.  You could do that and it has a little, you know, bone conductor in the back of the thing so you can feel the shake of the buildings in an action movie, but also see the, you know, English subtitles so to speak.

But, that being said, I also think that if I was at a really interesting political dinner party say and someone had Google Glass on, would I be as honest and open and, you know, just completely loose, especially after a bottle of wine as I would if they didn't have Google Glass on?  I'm not sure I would because I wouldn't be sure, well are they recording me or am I gonna get home, am I gonna regret what I'm saying?  So that's an interesting question. 

Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton

 


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