I really enjoyed this piece by Mat Honan, “I, Glasshole: My Year With Google Glass”:
It is pretty great when you are on the road — as long as you are not around other people, or do not care when they think you’re a knob.
When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an asshole. My co-workers at Wired, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.
Do you know what it takes to get a professional nerd to call you a nerd? I do. (Hint: It’s Glass.)
I’m not so sure about his conclusion that face-mounted computers are inevitable, though, especially with their ever-present surreptitious cameras:
And here’s the thing I am utterly convinced of: Google Glass and its ilk are coming. They are racing toward us, ready to change society, again. You can make fun of Glass, and the assholes (like me) who wear it. But here’s what I know: The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face.
But it’s certainly possible that acceptance is inevitable.1 Eventually cameras will get small enough that we won’t be able to tell who’s wearing built-in-HUD-and-camera glasses and who’s just wearing regular glasses.
My problem with Google Glass is primarily not about the basic concept of eyewear with a built-in HUD, or even the camera, but with the actual design and execution of Glass. It is ugly and clunky and ridiculously expensive for what it does. To me, that’s everything. Same thing with all existing smartwatches — the problem isn’t the idea, it’s the actual execution. There are no points for being first to market with a bad product. It’s a cool lab demo that they’re presenting as a finished product.
Maybe Google will be the first to release something like Glass that is actually elegant, beautiful, graceful, and reasonably priced. But I don’t think Google’s releasing and promoting Glass as it stands today makes that any more likely. Perhaps, though, releasing the hardware now — years ahead of its time, while it is physically grotesque and glaringly obtrusive — will help grease the wheels for social acceptance when good — attractive, unobtrusive — Glass-like products do become available.
In the meantime, to me, Google Glass is the new Tablet PC.