Thad Starner on Google Glass: Reduce the Time Between Intention and Action

Nikola Danaylov / Podcasts

Posted on: July 9, 2013 / Last Modified: September 26, 2021

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Thad Starner is a wearable computing pioneer who coined the term “augmented reality” and a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a technical lead on Google Glass – a self-contained wearable computer. And so I was very excited to interview Prof. Starner for my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast.

During our conversation with Thad we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: how he coined the term augmented reality (AR) and the definition thereof; what is wearable computing and how it is different from AR; Google Glass – its major breakthroughs, popular apps, misconceptions and implications; Starner’s other cutting-edge projects such as the passive haptic learning mobile music touch glove; his personal advice for young augmented reality designers and developers; Vernor Vinge‘s Rainbows End and the technological singularity…

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Who is Thad Starner?

Thad Starner is a wearable computing pioneer and a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a Technical Lead on Google’s Glass, a self-contained wearable computer.

Thad received a PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory, where he founded the MIT Wearable Computing Project. Starner was perhaps the first to integrate a wearable computer into his everyday life as a personal assistant, and he coined the term “augmented reality” in 1990 to describe the types of interfaces he envisioned at the time. His groups’ prototypes on mobile context-based search, gesture-based interfaces, mobile MP3 players, and mobile instant messaging foreshadowed now commonplace devices and services.

Thad has authored over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications with over 100 co-authors on mobile Human Computer Interaction (HCI), machine learning, energy harvesting for mobile devices, and gesture recognition. He is listed as an inventor on over 80 United States patents awarded or in process. Thad is a founder of the annual ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, and his work has been discussed in many forums including CNN, NPR, the BBC, CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s 48 Hours, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.