Thanks to my job at American Eagle Outfitters, I was able to get Google Glass before they were publicly available. I was one of the “Glass Explorers”—who were quickly renamed “Glassholes.”
I never had the guts to wear them, other than to show them to people at my house or in the office. However, I did take them out to shovel snow one day.
Google Glass lasted only eight months before they were discontinued. My Google Glasses are currently in a drawer in my office.
This is a cool memory with a bit of a lesson. It reminds me of the Apple Newton, which was released too soon. Tablets and “e-readers” were mocked. However, the Kindle and the iPad were released at the right time and were huge successes. Ten years after Google Glass, Meta’s VR glasses are struggling to catch on broadly. Apple has discontinued the Vision Pro. Snap’s Ray-Ban glasses never really took off.
The biggest hurdles with mixed reality are it either makes you look silly or creeps people and violates privacy.
I wonder how much society will tolerate embodied robots walking around. I’m assuming there will be backlash until they start folding our laundry and doing the dishes. Then we’ll basically be house cats.
Leave a Reply