GIS as media?

In early 2012, Google announced Project Glass, a device worn as glasses that augments the user's vision through communication with the user's mobile device. The glasses display images for the user's eyes and listens for audible commands. In a promotional video released by Google to announce the device (2012), the user navigates urban spaces augmented by the device, including city streets, the public transportation network, and even the internal, private spaces of a bookstore. While moving around the city, the user takes phone calls and responds to instant messages, taking photos of what he sees and enters into a video chat. The device functions through minimal gestures and human interaction, responding through voice commands and the framing of the user's gaze. Project Glass anticipates a future where the seemingly immaterial online spaces created through the internet are made material through embodied manifestations of the mobile user. In this present future, media are both social and spatial, and understanding the phenomenality of life requires hybrid approaches and new conceptual footings.