The Future of Communication?

  When I initially set out to pick a definitive major, the difficulty was having a sort of purpose or mission behind what I wanted to do.  Just "being in education" or being a teacher wasn't by itself an appealing idea as a general concept, because it felt too random, but I'd also decided the last thing I wanted to do was make a career, even a teaching career, out of my artwork because my philosophy is you run too great a risk ruining a thing you love if you make a career out of it.  It tends to suck the joy out of that thing you love spending your free time on, and so you don't want to spend anymore time on it.  Obviously that doesn't jive with the millions of people who set out to make careers out of their passions, but I love art too much to want to risk ruining it by making it a full time job, or teaching it.  So the problem after that became what to do instead and where to focus my education.
  One strong possibility I liked was teaching English and being able to help those who are aspiring in their English studies to excel, because I do care very much about the use of good language for American native speakers, and figured if students who were studying English as their second language were taking the time and energy to make it happen for themselves, they needed someone who cared enough to make sure they were doing it right.  Combined with that my love of all things Japanese and being told while I was taking a visit to Shimonoseki, Japan, that Japanese school systems were always looking for good English teachers, and I figured it was as good an avenue to try as any.  I have a good friend who has made a successful life of teaching English in a Japanese school, and someday it may still prove to be something I would like to do.
  But one snag that has concerned me the whole time has been the language barrier.  Much as I try Japanese is a struggle, and not just because of my general lack of discipline and skill in learning second languages but because Japanese is VERY tough for Westerners to learn, and always has been.  That was why I'm very intrigued with a piece of technology on the horizon that may or may not prove to be a fantastic asset to the process of language exchange between English and Japanese speakers, and potentially far beyond that.  I was randomly linked to a video on Youtube, designed for humor but admittedly coming off extremely creepy, of an English man running around the streets of Tokyo with a small device in his hand and declaring it would translate his voice into Japanese and then immediately translate their Japanese back to him.  His purpose?  To ask Japanese women if he could kiss them.  Here's the original video, and bear in mind it's since been updated in the description to assure the world that yes all the women involved are actresses and not being accosted by some strange British freak asking them for kisses, but it barely makes the video any less uncomfortable or goofy to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6ngM0LHxuU
  However it did get me fascinated with this iLi device, so I looked into it further. Designed by Logbar, a software developer in Shibuya, Tokyo, and founded by Takuro Yoshida, this yet unreleased technology promises to be able to instantly translate between English, Chinese and Japanese with a pre-loaded translation engine that doesn't require any internet connection to use, merely the push of the main button translates your speech via speaker and does the same back to the party you're speaking with.  Logbar promises that the technology will be affordable, quotes at this point estimating around $200, and intends to revolutionize convenient translation technology, replacing more time consuming apps and internet-needy programs.  Pre-orders are expected to go up around March or April of this year.

  Is it too good to be true?  There are concerns that it's merely flashy vaporware with no definite provable value as of yet, but Logbar is confident enough that it's going to be a success that they're already planning a second edition that will include French, Korean and Thai, and more after that.  If it pans out and proves to be worth its salt, it may seem like a massive crutch for the linguistically-challenged like myself, but it's also rather exciting.  This is more or less the realization of Star Trek's greatest dream, the Universal Translator, and even if it's only an asset in communication, it appeals to me great should I ever decide to follow through on that dream of working with the Japanese.

Further links and information:
http://logbar.jp/
http://www.wired.com/2016/01/ili-necklace/
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/01/ili-wearable-translator/
http://thebridge.jp/en/2016/01/logbar-unveils-ili-wearable-translation-device-ili