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"To many geeks the new Moto X phone, announced yesterday, is, well, lame.\r\n\r\nTo me it\u2019s a game-changer, but it is way over the freaky line. More on what the freaky line is in a second.\r\n\r\nThe critics are missing just how deeply Google and Motorola are changing the game with sensors and new contextual features -- the new voice feature isn\u2019t just a small thing, it\u2019s a whole new sensor package and represents a new approach to hardware and software.\r\n\r\nThis is a big competitive advantage for Google and reshapes the game. Just last week,\u00A0the new Nokia phone was looking pretty cool with its 41 megapixel sensor. Today? Not so much. This refocuses the mobile competition, once again, on Apple and Google.\r\n\r\nOnly Motorola\u2019s devices let you talk to them at any time without turning on an app, or touching something and it does that in a way that doesn\u2019t use much battery life (even more remarkable because the screen on the Moto X is kept on full time too). It\u2019s contextual too, because it remembers what you were just asking it. Ask \u201COK Google Now, what is Michael Jordan\u2019s shooting percentage?\u201D and then \u201COK Google Now, how tall is he?\u201D and Moto X will remember to answer the with Michael Jordan\u2019s height. Look for more contextual stuff to be built in over time.\r\n\r\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXyCbrdQEyA\r\nThe joy of context\r\nThese new sensors bring a cost, though, that counteracts the promise of contextual features (and I\u2019m hearing from inside Google that Google is working on a contextual OS that might see the light of day in 2015). That cost? I call it the \u201Cfreaky line.\u201D It means giving up a little more privacy. Whether or not we\u2019re really giving up privacy doesn\u2019t matter. Many people have the perception that their privacy is being given up by these \u201Calways on\u201D and \u201Calways listening\u201D devices and that is a cost that Google will need to deal with.\r\n\r\nMoto X is just one in a string of products and services that will bring radical new functionality to users. Examples? Google Now, Google Glass, and the new Moto X phone that keeps the microphone open full-time. The Xbox One, coming this winter, will have a 3D sensor on it so sensitive it can see how fast your heart is beating just by watching your skin.\r\n\r\nThese new contextual, sensor-based features are game changers and I\u2019m hearing Google has a raft of other product announcements lined up that will turn on even more freaky features. Why? Because the more Google can get you to communicate with your phone, the more context it can slurp up.\r\n\r\nThe more sensors it can turn on, or put on you, the more it can learn about your intent and your context. Today your phone doesn\u2019t really know that you\u2019re walking, running, skiing, shopping, driving, or biking, but in the future, Google will know that and will be able to build wild new kinds of systems that can serve you when doing each of those things.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nContextual thinkers (I was just at PARC, the famous research lab that brought us Ethernet, GUIs, and Object Oriented Programming and they are working on a ton of contextual stuff) are already building all sorts of systems that will assist you in your life. Let\u2019s just take driving, for instance.\r\n\r\nIn California it is illegal to touch a smartphone while driving. So, most people keep their phones off. Not me. I have a dashboard-mounted holder where I keep mine and I keep Waze or Google Maps on it almost full-time. I\u2019ve been playing a lot with ways to turn on the voice features without touching the phone. I have a little button for Siri, for instance, for when I use an iPhone (which I haven\u2019t for months because Google Glass got me to switch to Android).\r\n\r\nThe more I can talk to my device in the car the more I\u2019ll give it even more data. If Google figures out where my favorite gas stations are, if it figures out where I like to stop on the way home for flowers, food, groceries, etc, the more likely I\u2019ll be monetizable and not just by ads, either. In the future everything will work like Uber. You\u2019ll ask your phone \u201COK Google Now, bring me a chicken sandwich\u201D and someone will deliver one to where you are sitting and the system will charge you for that.\r\n\r\nToday my phone could know I\u2019m driving (my Samsung S4 has a setting where I could tell it to sense my car\u2019s bluetooth radio) but, in practice, that doesn\u2019t do all that much and, due to Samsung\u2019s poor UI, got me to turn it off. In the future, though, Google\u2019s system could hold my non-important messages, tweets, etc, until I\u2019m not driving and could tell me where the next place I could get gas or a quick meal on my route might be.\r\n\r\nFor instance, I want to tell my phone something like:\r\n\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, note to self, buy more milk before I get home tonight.\u201D (It could remind me when I drive through a geofence on the way home, in time for it to navigate me to the local grocery store).\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, post on Twitter \u2018There\u2019s a big accident on Freeway 280.\u2019\u201D (Waze gives you points for that).\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, find me the cheapest gas on the way home.\u201D (Gas Buddy already does something like that but it requires poking around on your phone, which is illegal).\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, make a restaurant reservation at a nice steak restaurant in Half Moon Bay for my wife and I tonight at 8 p.m.\u201D (it should already know, contextually, what kind of restaurants we both like, based on our reviews of past restaurants).\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, find a place to buy flowers on the way home.\u201D\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, find a babysitter for tonight.\u201D\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, send a message to Maryam Scoble and say \u2018I love you, I\u2019m taking you out to dinner tonight at 8.\u201D\r\n\t\u201COK Google Now, find me tickets to Turbo nearest Half Moon Bay for 11 p.m. tonight.\u201D\r\n\r\nAdmittedly this all doesn\u2019t quite work the way it should.\r\n\r\nWhy? Because the Moto X\u2019s system can only do singular commands, so you gotta repeat &amp;quot;OK Google Now&amp;quot; for each command (and many of these don\u2019t work because the infrastructure to, well, find a babysitter tonight, just isn\u2019t built out and isn\u2019t connected into Google\u2019s systems).\r\n\r\nThe voice commands, though, are hardly the beginning of Google\u2019s Contextual OS. Google Glass is unique because it is a sensor platform. It\u2019s the first device I\u2019ve owned that knows both where I\u2019m aiming and where I\u2019m looking (there is a 16x16 infrared eye sensor that watches my eye full-time). Your smartphone doesn\u2019t know where you are aimed or looking. So this world will get even freakier next year.\r\n\r\nAdd onto that the Xbox One, and other wearable computers like the Basis device I often wear on my wrist. That has a monitor for my heartrate and activity levels. If I don\u2019t get enough exercise it reminds me and gently prods me to go for a walk.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nGoogle hasn\u2019t yet explained how all the pieces of this contextual ecosystem will work nor has it explained how it will convince people to get over the freaky line. For instance, I asked Larry Page, Google\u2019s CEO and co-founder, at its Google I/O conference earlier this year what the eye sensor is and what it would be used for. He, instead, made a funny joke that he didn\u2019t like me wearing Google Glass into the shower.\r\n\r\nMaybe that joke was right on point: did he have a live feed to what I was looking at and seeing while wearing the Glass? Of course not, right? But in this \u201Cpost Snowden world\u201D where we all know the government is spying on us nearly all the time that sort of makes all of us uneasy.\r\n\r\nWhich gets to the freaky line.\r\nFreaky\r\nYes, Google is more transparent about what they are collecting on us than most companies, but it is asking an awful lot of us. Some won\u2019t go into the contextual age easily. Lots of my friends are getting freaked out by just how much Google is collecting on us. I think that\u2019s a marketing opportunity, even while those of us who like this kind of stuff adopt it.\r\n\r\nWe\u2019ll see a new kind of digital divide open over the next couple of years. Not a divide between people who can and can\u2019t afford technology but a divide between people who are willing to go over the freaky line and those who aren\u2019t.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019ll be interesting to see who will go over the freaky line and who won\u2019t and what that will mean for each group. It is the biggest social shift since the Web came on the scene in 1994.\r\n\r\nHow about you? Are you ready to give companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft even more data? Are you willing to buy a phone that listens to you? A video game console that listens AND watches you?\r\n\r\nMe? I\u2019m in 100%. I\u2019ve already seen how this stuff will serve me and will help me have a better experience in life. I\u2019m living the \u201Cover the freaky line\u201D experiment full tilt and I like it. Will you?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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