SmartGlass

SmartGlass

The Technology:

SmartGlass is electrically switchable glass that is able to change its light transmission properties when voltage is applied. There are several uses of this technology. One of the applications would allow you "fog" or "frost" out a glass plane or window, changing the window from open and public to closed and private. Another application of SmartGlass is the SmartWindow by Samsung, a window that is not only a window, but can also be a computer or television when you might want it. Either using natural daylight or electronic illumination, the window has a touch-screen display similar to a SmartPhone and allows the user to browse the web, check the weather, watch tele, etc. To the outside, the window is a mirror. An interesting feature of the technology is the virtual set of blinds that the user can adjust for brightness.

Whats Cool

This technology is practical, pretty, and power-conserving. You can now use any window alternately as a computer and a television. Streamlined glass replaces comparatively bulky computer and television monitors. In the daytime, the sun provides the screen’s

illumination, thus cutting down power use.

Have you ever wished you were elsewhere? The SmartWindow, installed as the passenger’s window of your car, will bring you there. You can bring up the fleeting scenes of Barcelona’s busy main street, La Rambla, or a bumpy road in Cairo, right outside your window while driving down Perkins Road in Baton Rouge.

This technology represents another step closer to ubiquitous virtual reality. Instead of looking through windows at the scenery outside, we are going to be looking at the window itself to provide us with scenery of our choosing.

- Nikki

What's Not Cool

Having network access in essential parts of the home or office will likely continue the usability issues we already experience with our internet technologies today. Spam and viruses are all too common, and the SmartWindow is more opportunity for ads and propaganda to seep into our everyday life. The SmartWindow seems simliar to the telescreen in the book 1984, that continually broadcasted propaganda. The digital world brings a complexity of life that many find undesirable. The opportunities for social interaction become all too more of a distraction. Sherry Turkle, MIT professor of Social Studies of Science and Technology and author of Alone Together, believes that essential conversations have been lost to the social network. Having SmartWindows around will likely further increase the amount of time spent social networking, exaggerating the effects of having a digital social life.

With the digital age, the gap is wide and growing between people who know how to use the technologies, and the people who make them. Therefore, there are unknown implications of relying on technology to perform normal daily functions like closing your blinds. Who will fix it when it goes broken? Many people will know how to install blinds, however they will not how to fix their broken virtual blinds. People against this technology may argue that there

is something very natural about interacting with the 3D world without the use of a digital interface. The blinds and other features are simulations of reality, and some may see a SmartWindow as an extraneous, faux filter, rather than a tool.

It's purpose is questionable. We want a window, yet we get a computer. Are we looking out into the world, or into a digital interface? Why do we have windows in homes and buildings? The applications of SmartGlass are ones that need careful consideration. SmartGlass may not belong in a car for obvious safety reasons.

This technology is very expensive and still in very early phases of mass-production, but can expect to see it used more in the future. However, once SmartGlass is common, they may be able to attach a film to preexisting glass planes in order to cut down the total cost of the glass once it hits the mainstream market, increasing the availability.

- Steven