Ok, Glass…

This box is 100% paper. So use it to write a letter to your Grandma. Or at least, please, recycle it. All of it.

That's what it says on the side of the box my Google Glass came in. Perhaps it says something about the demographic Google is targeting for their Explorer program.

Google Glass is a pair of glasses you can wear with a little screen above your line of site you can use to communicate online. It connects with your cellphone, with BlueTooth and Wifi. It has a camera you can take pictures with and a speaker you can listen to things with. It takes voice commands and you can send additional commands by touching the side of the Google Glass.

The Explorer program is for about 8,000 people that responded on social media; Twitter or Google+ about what they would do with Google Glass. Back in February, I tweeted,

#ifihadglass I'd look to improve #healthequity using augmented reality for Public Health and #fqhc

They liked the quote and invited me to join the Glass Explorer program. I told people at work and they were very excited. They kept asking me when I would get Google Glass. I waited and waited. Finally, on June 5th, I got a message from Google:

Your Glass is now ready! Please purchase within 14 days. Follow this link to pay and schedule your pickup:

Yesterday, I joined two of my coworkers in New York to pick up Google Glass.

Hack Portal
I caught the train from Milford, CT. Before I got on the train, I stopped to capture some enemy portals in the game, Ingress. Ingress is an augmented reality game for cellphones developed by a NianticLabs at Google. As you walk around an area, you see an overlay of game pieces on you cellphone. There are portals which are controlled by two different teams, the resistance, sometimes called Smurfs, since their color is blue, and the enlightened, sometimes called frogs since their color is green. If you destroy an enemy portal and capture it for your team, you gain points. Your level in the game is based on the number of points you've accumulated. I was about 90,000 points away from reaching Level 8, the highest level currently possible in the game. I gained about 30,000 points in Milford waiting for the train.

There are many Ingress portals in New York City, and everyone said I should easily be able to gain the remaining 60,000 points there. Yet I didn't have a lot of time. Along the way, I captured a few portals and then visited my brother, who was already Level 8. He gave me some items for the game that would help me reach Level 8.

I met with my co-workers and we discussed how we would use Google Glass in health care. This is a discussion just getting going. We sat down for my Google Glass fitting. My account was set up for Google Glass, connecting it with features on my cellphone. We tested out various features and details about Glass were explained. It was all very exciting.

To activate Google glass, you tap the side of the glass, or glance upwards. Then, to send a command, you start with, "Ok, Glass…" You then tell Glass the command you want. Take a picture. Record a video. You can also send messages, call people, look things up in Google, get directions, and join a Google Hangout. There was not an option to "Hack Portal".

On my way to the train station, I captured a few more portals. Down to 30,000 points needed to achieve Level 8. I could have easily reached level 8 if my battery hadn't died on my cellphone. It appears as if the battery also died on my Google Glass. On the train, I plugged both of the devices in to recharge and had a good discussion with people sitting next to me on the train about Google Glass.

With Glass partly charged, I tried to power it up, but I get a blank screen. I'll get back to that later.

I arrived in Milford and found that all the portals I had captured in the morning had been recaptured by the opposing team during the day. This was actually fortunate for me. My phone was now about half recharged, and there were plenty of portals to try and recapture. Using some of the items my brother gave me, I quickly gained the remaining 30,000 points and reached Level 8, even though members of the opposing team appears to be actively trying to stop me from capturing their portals.

Geek Cred Restored

The past year has been a challenge for me. I ran for State Representative. I often tell people that I didn't get elected, but I won. I won by talking with people about issues like education and health care, about the failures of test based education and about the inequities in our health care system. I did my fellowship in the Connecticut Health Foundation's Health Leadership Fellows Program. I mourned the death of my mother, and through all of it tried go be a good husband, father, and employee.

At the same time, I have been trying to spend more time writing, improving my craft. Yet with all of this, I've spent less time on more geeky pursuits. My old linux based Nokia N900 cellphone is on its last legs. I played a little bit with Raspberry Pi, but not a lot more.

When you capture a portal in Ingress, the game voice says, "Portal Captured, Good Work". Even though can't hack a portal with Glass, the combination of getting Google Glass and reaching Level 8 in Ingress, perhaps, restores a little geek cred.

"Good Work."
My mother was born in 1931. The youngest of seven children. Her mother was born in 1897, 116 years ago. I was the next to the youngest of my siblings, so my grandmother was 62 when I was born. My father's mother had died of cancer before I was born, so I never got to meet her.

My earliest memories of my grandmother are from when she and her husband lived in a small house in central Massachusetts. She would have been in her late sixties or early seventies. My grandfather would have been in the living room, watching a ball game on a small old black and white TV. He would offer us candies. My grandmother would be in the kitchen with her daughters, preparing the food for the family gathering. I would be running around with my siblings and cousins. With the exception of my younger sister, everyone would be older, perhaps much older.

My mother's mother died on flag day, June 14th, 1977. Yesterday was flag day, the thirty sixth anniversary of my grandmother's death. She died before cellphones, the internet or digital photography became ubiquitous. So, I won't be writing a letter to her on the box that my Google Glass came in. All of this is from a much different world. Yet what remains the same is the importance of being connected with one another, through pictures and videos shared via Google Glass, through getting together with people who have a shared interest in a game, whether it be golf, tennis, or Ingress.