this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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I dunno, if all the glasses did was quickly find out the name and short bio of the person I am talking to and display it visible to only me, then that does sound like a big market. I could see demand from managers in big firms, polititians and activists, all customer oriented roles, and meee because I keep forgetting :3
I mean, I'm listing it because I believe that it's something that has some value that could be done with the information. But it's a "are the benefits worth the costs" thing? let's say that you need to pay $800 and wear a specific set of glasses everywhere. Gotta maintain a charge on them. And while they're maybe discrete compared to a smartphone, I assume that people in a role where they're prominent (diplomacy, business deal-cutting, etc) probably know what they look like and do, so I imagine that any relationship-building that might come from showing that you can remember someone's name and personal details ("how are Margaret and the kids?") would likely be somewhat undermined if they know that you're walking around with the equivalent of your Rolodex in front of your eyeballs. Plus, some people might not like others running around with recording gear (especially in some of the roles listed).
I'm sure that there are a nonzero number of people who would wear them, but I'm hesitant to believe that as they exist today, they'd be a major success.
I think that some of the people who are building some of these things grew up with Snow Crash and it was an influence on them. Google went out and made Google Earth; Snow Crash had a piece of software called Earth that did more-or-less the same thing (albeit with more layers and data sources than Google Earth does today). Snow Crash had the Metaverse with VR goggles and such; Zuckerberg very badly wanted to make it real, and made a VR world and VR hardware and called it the Metaverse. Snow Crash predicts people wearing augmented reality gear, but also talks about some of the social issues inherent with doing so; it didn't expect everyone to start running around with them:
I think that Stephenson probably did a reasonable job there of highlighting some of the likely social issues that come with having wearable computers with always-active sensors running.
Yes, true, but imagine future versions of this looking more like normal glasses, and displaying information like all the managers people report to, items on the todo list concerning them, etc. Or it displays what the customer ordered, what his bill is, etc. All things you could do with your phone on a one on one basis, but with glasses you could look across the room and get the information of the specific people in that corner without having to stop and looking all of them up.
Perhaps the wow factor for knowing the first name of your business customer or voter will be greatly lessened, but referencing personal things still makes an impression, even when your memory of it has been externalised to the database in your note app.
And concerning the creepy aspect: its what our world is converging to. I feel creeped out every time I spot a surveilience camera, or every time I walk by someone making a tiktok or instagram reel or whatever. Every time someone walks by with a phone out they could be recording.
But most people dont care. All the articles about how creepy wearables with integrated cameras are is only because its still new and rare.
But yes, I agree. The current glasses are solutions looking for problems, with barely functioning features, a horrible price point and lots of drawbacks. The stuff ive described above can be done with the technology, but right now all they do is make photos, record video, and gimmick features like "AI powered" note taking and giving you poor map directions.