Flickr/Karlis Dambrans
Google announced today that it is ceasing production of smartphone-on-your-face Google Glass, and although they are characterizing it as just an end to the beta version, everyone else seems to be calling it a failure. There were certainly some reactions the company didn't anticipate, like the fact that most people thought they look ridiculous, the coining of the term "Glasshole," and the sometimes violent reactions people had to being recorded by someone else's glasses. Jake Swearingen says the camera was the problem: "it turns out very few people are willing to be viewed as walking, talking invasions of privacy."
But I promise you, wearable augmented reality will return before long. I looked back at what I wrote when the device was first announced two years ago, and I still hold to what I said then:
...one of the consequences of this being a technology we've all expected for a while is that its first iteration inevitably looks like a clunky preliminary version of what it will eventually be. We're spoiled by how small electronics have gotten, so the fact that the glasses need to have a rectangular hunk of plastic on one arm that houses the components is a little disappointing. In 2013 we aren't able to make it all fit into the frame of a regular pair of glasses, though we will be eventually. And at some point, it will all fit into a contact lens, so no one even knows you're augmenting.
If that sounds like this incredibly disturbing episode of the terrific British series "Black Mirror," that's not because I'm some kind of genius futurist, it's because it's the almost inevitable endpoint of this technology, the convergence of electronics miniaturization and immediate access to large quantities of information. As the "Black Mirror" episode demonstrates, when you can put a camera and the entire Internet in a contact lens, there are going to be enormous and profound social consequences. And someday, we will.
But between now and then, I'm guessing this technology in its next widely-used form could be specialized versions of Glass-like devices for certain professionals with much more specialized needs, like firefighters, police, and the military (they're already working on it). Once that becomes common, it'll start to spread to other professions, and eventually it'll make its way back to consumers. And once you can put an Oculus Rift in a pair of contacts, watch out.
