WRIT 120

Technical Essay

The final assignment in WRIT 120 requires you to complete a technical essay on the article:Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act.

The expected word count for the final essay is 850-1400 words and itmustcomprise two parts - a critical analysis (15%) and an expanded definition (10%). It is up to you to decide which expansion methods to use in your expanded definition. Because expanded definitions are standalone documents, yours should also be a standalone document which is appended to the critical analysis section of your paper.There is no need to create a new title page for the expanded definition, but it should have a title which is centred at the top of the first page of that section of your final essay.

The critical analysis section of your paper must follow the format for critical analyses which we discussed in class. The introductory paragraph must identify the article, and must also contain both a thesis statement and a short summary of the article. The rest of the critical analysis section of your essay must critically analyze the article and should include some discussion of:

• The author's thesis
• The intended audience and purpose
• Their tone (including loaded language, if any)
• The claims and support used to defend their thesis (remember to use the STAR technique when thinking about this, but do not include subsections for this technique in your paper)
• Whether the author used logos, ethos, or pathos
• The effectiveness of their argument
• Their patterns of organization (ie. did the article follow a logical sequence)
• The technical details provided in the article
• A conclusion (one or two paragraphs) which summarizes your evaluation of the author's argument and provides final support for your thesis

Your essaymustfollow APA format, including a list of references, which does not count against the word count for the assignment. If you decide to include other sources in your paper (as background information, to support your thesis, etc.) then they must be included in your list of references.

You must also include an expanded definition of the technology discussed in the article. Which of the expansion methods you use is up to you (remember that not all expansion methods can always be used because you might not have the information necessary to employ them), but I would expect at least 2-3 of them be included. This section must include an introduction, which further includes a formal sentence definition. After that introductory paragraph, you would go into your chosen expansion methods.

Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act

By Stephen Levy

July 18, 2017

Don't call Heather Erickson a glasshole.

Yes, that's Google Glass on her frames. But she's not using it to check her Facebook, dictate messages, or capture a no-hands video while riding a roller coaster. Erickson is a 30-year-old factory worker in rural Jackson, Minnesota. For her, Glass is not a hip way to hang apps in front of her eyeballs, but a toolas much a tool as her power wrenches. It walks her through her shifts at Station 50 on the factory floor, where she builds motors for tractors.

No one at Erickson's factory is concerned that the consumer version of Glass, after an initial burst of media glory in 2012 (everyone from Prince Charles to Beyonce wanted to try it), was condemned for bugginess and creepiness, and seemed to lack a clear function. The original Glass designers had starry-eyed visions of masses blissfully living their lives in tandem with a wraparound frame and a tiny computer screen hovering over their eye. But the dream quickly gave way to disillusionment as early adopters found that it delivered less than it promisedand users became the target of shaming from outsiders concerned about privacy, worrying that their private moments would be captured by stealthily recorded video. Within three years, Alphabet (the parent company of Google and its sister company, the "moonshot factory" called X) had given up Glass for goodor so people assumed.

What they didn't know was that Alphabet was commissioning a small group to develop a version for the workplace. For about two years, Glass Enterprise Edition has been quietly in use in dozens of workplaces, slipping under the radar of gadget bloggers, analysts, and self-appointed futurists. Companies testing EEincluding giants like GE, Boeing, DHL, and Volkswagenhave measured huge gains in productivity and noticeable improvements in quality. What started as pilot projects are now morphing into plans for widespread adoption in these corporations. Other businesses, like medical practices, are introducing Enterprise Edition in their workplaces to transform previously cumbersome tasks. A recent Forrester Research reportpredicts that by 2025, nearly 14.4 million US workers will wear smart glasses.

It turns out that with Glass, Google originally developed something with promising technologyand in its first effort at presenting it, failed to understand who could use it best and what it should be doing. Factories and warehouses will be Glass's path to redemption. Workers who need real-time informationand both hands freewere natural beneficiaries of what Glass had to offer, even if Google hadn't figured that out yet.

It's a choice between an immersive form of augmented reality, which overlays digital information on top of the real world, and an alternative that lets workers shift between the virtual and the actual. Some companies in the enterprise sector have been singing the praisesof "mixed reality" helmets that overlay graphics and information onto a camera-captured display of the real world. But these are costly, bulky, and not well suited for routine tasks on a factory floor. In cases when all a worker needs is real-time access to information, a big helmet that takes over your entire field of vision is overkill. Smart glasses are a lightweight version of augmented realitysome people call this "assisted reality"offering a computer display that one could view simply by shifting one's gaze and taking in the rest of the world as it is. It's cheaper and more comfortable than going full immersive.

Without direction from Google, these companies began to purchase Explorer Edition units of Glass and use them with custom software to tackle specific tasks for their corporate customers. And Google noticed.

In April 2014, Google started a "Glass at Work" program that highlighted some of the early developers. And that year when a few people from X visited Boeing, which was testing Glass, they reported that their minds were blown by a side-by-side comparison of workers doing intricate wire-framing work with Glass's help. It was like the difference between putting together Ikea furniture with those cryptic instructions somewhere across the room and doing it with real-time guidance from someone who'd constructed a million Billys and Pongs.

Those still using the original Explorer Edition will explode with envy when they see the Enterprise Edition (released in January 2015). For starters, it makes the technology completely accessible for those who wear prescription lenses. The camera button, which sits at the hinge of the frame, does double duty as a release switch to remove the electronics part of unit (called the Glass Pod) from the frame. You can then connect it to safety glasses for the factory floorEE now offers OSHA-certified safety shieldsor frames that look like regular eyewear. (A former division of 3M has been manufacturing these specially for Enterprise Edition; if EE catches on, one might expect other frame vendors, from Warby Parker to Ray-Ban, to develop their own versions.) "We did a lot of work to lighten the weight of the frames to compensate for the additional weight [of the Pod]," says Jay Kothari, project lead on the Glass enterprise team. "So the overall package with Glass and the frames itself actually comes out to be the average weight of regular glasses."

Other improvements include beefed-up networkingnot only faster and more reliable wifi, but also adherence to more rigorous security standardsand a faster processor as well. The battery life has been extendedessential for those who want to work through a complete eight-hour shift without recharging. (More intense usage, like constant streaming, still calls for an external battery.) The camera was upgraded from five megapixels to eight. And for the first time, a green light goes on when video is being recorded. (Inoculation against Glasshole-dom!)

I saw Glass in action myself when I visited Heather Erickson at the AGCO factory in Jackson this month. AGCO is a $7 billion company that makes big farm equipment like tractors and sprayers under brand names like Challenger and Massey Ferguson. Its Jackson facility, which added the tractor assembly line in 2012, is a fairly high-tech operation, with a few autonomous robot carts roaming the aisles. 850 people work there. The expensive equipment that AGCO manufactures is most often custom-ordered by the user, so almost every unit constructed is a "snowflake" with a virtually unique set of features. In order to keep track of the specifications of each vehicle, AGCO originally had its workers consult laptopswhich required a walk of about 50 feet and disrupted the work flow. The company experimented with tablets, but even the heavy-duty industrial ones it bought typically lasted only a week in the punishing environment.

Watching workers on the floor, you can't always tell how much Glass is integrated into the process. You simply see people getting parts, bolting, ratcheting, and attachingevery so often swiping and tapping the side of their glasses. Once you see examples of what those workers are seeing, though, Glass's advantages become more clear. A typical task at AGCO takes 70 minutes, broken into steps of three to five minutes. When a worker begins a step, it's spelled out on the tiny screen. Menu items offer the options to go to the next step, take a picture, ask for help, and more. When a step is done, the worker says, "OK, Glass, proceed," and the process repeats.

For tasks they have mastered, workers don't need to look at the screen. But they can wake it at any time to see where a part must go, and even zoom into an object on the display for more detail. Glass tells them what kind of bolt is neededa wrong-sized bolt could seriously damage a motorand specifies which wrench to use and how much torque is required. If a part looks damaged, they can take a picture. Some workers prefer to swipe along the side of the frame to go to the next step; others work mainly via voice commands.

When a company like AGCO embraces new technology, one naturally wonders how far it might take automationand what that means for jobs. AGCO's executives think Glass helps tamp down such suspicions. "We're not using this to replace workers with a robot that does their job betterwe're helping them do their job better," says Peggy Gulick, director of business process improvement at the Jackson facility. The company is particularly excited about how Glass helps with trainingcutting the time from 10 days to only 3.

That's a theme that other early customers of Glass EE are promoting. Upskill's executive chairman and the chief economist of one of its customers, GE, co-authored a paper last month in Harvard Business Review entitled "Augmented Reality Is Already Improving Working Performance." "There's been concern about machines replacing human workers..." they wrote. "But the experience at General Electric and other industrial firms shows that for many jobs, combinations of humans and machine outperform either working alone. Wearable augmented reality devices are especially powerful."

GE in particular has been enthusiastic in its Glass tests, claiming a 46 percent decrease in the time it takes a warehouse picker using the product. (Using Glass in this environment is as transformative as in factoriesafter a successful test, DHL says it plans to roll out Glass in its 2000 warehouses across the globe, where appropriate.) Another pilot project, in GE's Aviation Division, used EE with a wifi-enabled torque wrench: Glass tells workers whether they are using the proper amount of torque. Eighty-five percent of the workers said that the system would reduce errors.

It's not just blue-collar labor getting results with Enterprise Glass. When engineer and self-described "medical device guy" Ian Shakil first saw a prototype of Glass from some Google friends in 2012, he quit his job and started a company called Augmedix to use the technology to make medical examinations more productiveand more satisfying for patients and doctors alike. When seeing patients, the doctor using this system wears Enterprise Edition glasses and livestreams the entire examination to a "scribe" who may be a pre-med student taking a year off before medical school or, more commonly, a medical transcriptionist in India, Bangladesh, or the Dominican Republic. The scribe takes notes during the exam and, when appropriate, accesses the patient's case history to provide relevant past readings, freeing the doctor to concentrate on the patient.

"The total time entering data has gone from 33 percent of our day to less than 10 percent," says Davin Lundquist, the chief medical information officer for Dignity Health, who uses Augmedrix and Glass himself in clinical work. "And direct patient interaction has risen from 35 percent to 70 percent."

Lundquist's enthusiasm for Glass underlines an irony: The very features that triggered criticism of the consumer version of Glassthe stealthy introduction of external information into real-life settings; the ability to record videos of bystanders unobtrusivelybecome the most valued features in the Enterprise Edition. "When you hear the word Glass, you think dehumanization, social disruption," says Shakil. "We're the oppositebeing close to the patient; being able to put your hand on his or her shoulder to comfort them."

Why does Glass work so well in those private settings when it so totally flopped in public? Perhaps because in the enterprise world, Glass is not an outgrowth of the intrusive and distracting smart phone, but a tool for getting work done and nothing else. The Enterprise Edition runs only the single application necessary to do the job. There's no Facebooking, Tweeting, Snapping, notifications, or rage-generating headlines. "Glass in an enterprise setting is not a toy," says Lundquist. "It's a tool that enhances our ability to perform as professionals."

Maybe Google should consult Ken Veen, a quality checker in the AGCO factory in Jackson. He's been using Glass EE for two years there as he tests tractors just off the assembly line. "Before, when I saw a problem, I'd have to write stuff on paper, then go to the computer and type it up," he says. "Now I hit NOT OK and describe my problem, and it goes right to [the quality team]."

Would he be interested in using Glass in his daily life? "I might be," he says, after some consideration. "I could wash dishes and check my email. That could come in handy." And then he goes back to testing tractors.

References

Adapted from Levy, S. (2017, July 19). Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act.Backchannel. Retrieved November 22, 2017, from https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here/

4

Google Glass Enterprise Edition: The full spec sheet revealed

By Stephen Hall

July 24, 2017

While Google Glass Enterprise Edition isn't for consumers and likely won't ever be (if for no other reason than it's more than 2 years old at this point), there are still plenty of enthusiasts out there that might want all the nitty gritty details on the Glass successor. So now, for the first time, we've gotten our hands on a complete spec sheet for Glass Enterprise Edition...

We already reported on the device's support for 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi on both 2.4GHz and 5 GHz bands,larger prism, Intel Atom CPU, optional externalbattery pack,foldable, more water resistant,and more. But now we have the full rundown of details.

Display

We don't have many new details on the device's display, and that's because not much has changed since the first Google Glass. As I mentioned in a report in 2015, the prism is ever-so-slightly wider than the first model, but the actual resolution of the display hasn't changed. It's a projected display that's the equivalent of a traditional640 x360screen. Unfortunately, we don't have any new information on the maker of thedisplay.

Audio

The original Google Glass famously has a bone conduction speaker, and Google decided to ditch that hardware feature with the Enterprise Edition. The new model hasasimple speakerthat audibly plays sound next to the right ear. The quality of thisspeaker is much better than that of the original Glass.

Sensors

One place that Google Glass Enterprise Edition is notably different than the original Google Glass is its sensor suite. Like the original Google Glass, it has an ambient light sensor, a digital compass, a wink sensor, and a blink sensor. The newer model adds abarometer, acapacitive head sensor(in place of the proximity sensor),a hingesensor(for determining whether the hinge is open or closed) andassisted GPS & GLONASS.

WiFi and connectivity

WiFi, as previously reported, has been upgraded todual-band 2.4 + 5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. On the Bluetooth front, the Enterprise EditionsupportsBluetooth LE and HID, and supports multiple Bluetooth connections at once.

Camera

The camera is spec-wise the same as the original Google Glass, supporting5MPstillsand720p video. We're told by multiple sources that the quality of footage on thenew model looks slightly improved in terms of field of view and color accuracy, but we don't have any primary source material to back up these claims. There's alsoan LEDon the front of the devicethat illuminates when the device is recording a video.

Chipset

As we reported a couple of years ago, Google Glass Enterprise Edition ships with Intel silicon. The chipset is anIntel Atom, but the specific model is still unknown. One source says tells me that it's a custom Intel Atom chipset that hasn't been used in other devices.The OS is 32-bit.

Storage and memory

The newer Glass Enterprise doubles the amount of storage space from the original up to32GBfrom 16GB. On the RAM side of things, Enterprise Edition sports the same amount of RAM as Glass Explorer Edition:2GB.

Battery and charger

Glass Enterprise Edition ditches micro-USB in favor of a new pin-based charging system, and that means that many of the XE accessories such as its earbud are no longer compatible. This new pin system works with a charger that is5V and 1.5A, and the battery it charges is slightly larger than the original Google Glass at780 mAh. Battery life was one of the biggest complaints with the original Google Glass and its measly 570 mAh battery.

Accessories

As we reported, Googledevelopeda battery packfor Enterprise Edition that extended the device's battery life significantly, although we're not completely sure what the capacity of that accessory was. Google also developednew as-yet-unannouncedframesfor the Enterprise Edition with some partner companies,including 3M, thatwere for a variety of purposes. Some with support for custom prescriptions, and some for eye and sun protection.