Homework 3

Google translate allows for users to look at different languages and attempt to translate the language to the one you have set. At the moment this application is quite shotty and doesn’t tend to work correctly half the time, however if we look into the near distant future we might be able to think of ideas that work with a more improved version of google translate. I believe that this idea would be best for tourists visiting other countries. Going to different countries can be extremely difficult if you can’t read any of the signs on businesses. If this technology is improved then people who couldn’t read the language might be motivated to go to places they’ve never been. However this may discourage the learning of new languages since your glasses would be able to do it for you. Is this a bad thing, well it depends, what happens if they is a bug with the software, then your kind of out of luck and might be even more lost than before. I think that maybe using this system as a safety net while in other countries would be better, people should still know some of the language just in case the AR system stops working.

Another downside to this system is censorship. In many parts of the world there are countries that wish to censor ideas that go against their ideas. So what happens when a government start to take patterns of writing that they disagree with? Well they can manipulate the text displayed by the app and show a completely different message. For example, let's say a protestor is handing out documents speaking anti government. The government then gets a hold of this paper and takes note in it inside the translator program. When a person who doesn’t read the language natural looks at the paper, the government can have them read anything they want. They could have it spread propaganda of the protestors and have the protestors doing it without them even realizing it. I think that for the most part, AR glasses that translated languages for people would be great, but there are some issues we need to consider before going gung ho on the idea.