Smart glasses are the future, but who will get there first?

in the August 1990 issue of Popular Mechanics P the article on Juiced up roads Power electric cars you'll find a new way to see on page 48 this was the $795 private eye one of the world's first wearable computers once Tethered to a computer it's display shot light through a magnifying lens into a small stabilized mirror that provided a 720x 280 red and black screen in front of a user's eye but as the article States sometimes a company develops something so Nifty that it takes takes a while befor

e anyone figures out how to use it effectively and that sentence written in 1999 would continue to be true about smart glasses for nearly 30 years after it was written there were companies like cybernaut with a Mobile Assistant in 1995 that had an entire IBM compatible computer that sat on your waist followed up by the ma5 in 2001 then there was The microvision Nomad in 2004 the vvix rap 1200 in 2010 and epson's muo BT 100 in to name a few more but in 2012 when Google Glass was announced it felt

like smart glasses might actually become a viable product I had just moved to New York City at the time of Google Glasses launch and I remember actually seeing people on the street wearing them it was mindblowing at the time and with their launch came a flurry of more capable more polished smart glasses as well there was magic leap and Microsoft who were revolutionizing AR there were companies like Oakley embedding realtime Fitness coaching into sporty frames Snapchat brought cameras to your te

mples with spectacles and there was even a hint that apple is going to get into the game when it released its own AR toolkit not to mention Tim Cook's continual talk about the technology I think AR is one of these very few profound Technologies I'm super excited about augmented reality I'm excited about AR there's virtual reality and there's augmented reality both of these are incredibly interesting but uh my own view is that augmented reality is the large of the two probably by far but what qui

ckly became clear from these next attempts at smart classes is that the experience they were giving us wasn't more useful or any better than the experience we were having with our phones until hey everyone we've believed for a long time that glasses are going to be an important part of building the next Computing platform and unlocking a whole new set of experiences for people that videos from 2021 at the launch of the meta Ray band stories and it wouldn't be until this second generation that th

e smart glasses actually gain a following these are the metay band smart glasses small name change and they have one very important feature a very crisp POV camera that I have heard best described as a GoPro for influencers it's this camera that made these glasses so popular you see like every Tech reviewer I know fell in love with these glasses including myself but what has kept them in love with the glasses because there's so many smart glasses that also have decent cameras speakers mics it's

the fact that these glasses kept getting smarter hey meta what am I looking at through firmware updates meta's AI assistant can now describe a scene in front of user by taking a photo and then analyzing it you are looking at a snow covered landscape with trees and what appears to be a building or houses in the distance what am I holding sadly though the assistant cannot yet read or interpret physical objects so the magic Fades quickly you are holding a smartphone specifically the most popular br

and in the US this month with a 34 .6% market share statusa but meta is promising that this Tech is going to evolve and be able to do more complex tasks it's this slow trickle out of tech that has both kept folks talking about these glasses but also getting them more used to using a pair of smart glasses kind of think of them as like training wheels for something bigger and better and more capable and they represent a different type of computing one that Google references a lot with Ambi and Com

puting as our Northstar most notably at Google IO 2022 an ambient Computing new ambient experiences building on our ambient Computing Vision back in 1991 Mark Weiser who was a CTO at the prolific Research Center Xerox Park wrote that the most profound Technologies are those that disappear they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they're indistinguishable from it he called this idea ubiquitous Computing or what is more commonly known as ambient Computing he thought that our Te

ch should eventually blend seamlessly into our our natural environment so that we don't see it we aren't sucked into it but we can still utilize it and gather information from it without losing touch of each other and the physical world the theory of ambient Computing is so beautiful and smart glasses are kind of a perfect pair of Hardware to make it happen if you need to make a call you already have a pair of headphones by your ears um if you have to ask a question there's mics waiting for you

on your nosebridge and the promise of AR is that when you need a screen it can be right in front of you to see notifications or translation it's right there when you need it and gone when you don't the problem is much like private eye companies are still trying to figure out how to make AI or Tech that they can fit into glasses useful um and also make the glasses themselves Nifty enough that you'd want to wear them so here's where we are now the smart glasses that look the most normal are still

typically focused on getting one feature right there are wearable displays like X re's air2 pro wearable cameras like snaps spectacle 3 or wearable smart speakers like the echo frames a step further from those are the meta Rayband smart glasses that are able to bundle a few of those features together it's a rare device that is somewhat useful and Visually appealing and beyond that are AR glasses but the most compelling devices we have seen in that space are still reserved for developers or Enter

prise customers like magic leap 2 snaps AR spectacles or xra air2 Ultras although recently brilliant Labs launched frame which are open- Source AR glasses with an integrated AI assistant in a package that looks sleek and compact those will be available April 2024 so make sure you stay tuned for when we get our hands on those of course there are many XR headsets like the Apple Vision Pro or meta Quest 3 that pack really impressive spatial Computing abilities into a pair of goggles but those are n

owhere near looking like glasses and they're certainly not ambient and then there's of course what's to come Google showed off a real-time translating pair of smart glasses at I/O last year Oppo has teased the airglass 3 that will integrate an AI Voice Assistant like metas into glasses with a heads up color display Apple hasn't demoed anything but is reportedly now exploring the idea of smart glasses and then there is meta who is the loudest about their investment in making smart glasses reality

there have been two rumored pair of AR glasses dubbed project nazer and hypernova and a third generation of meta Rayband smart glasses that will reportedly have a small viewfinder for notifications or translating text it may also include hand tracking technology we're expected to see that in the next few years smart glasses will be a part of our more ambient future so one question remains what company can convince the masses that its microphone its speakers its AI systems can be trusted with al

l of the data we see and hear every day I mean think about a Computing system like the most intelligent Computing system that we've ever had sitting on the bridge of your nose that opens up a treasure Trove of privacy concerns so ultimately the winner of the smart glasses race is likely to be the company that we all trust the most want to give a shout out to Popular Mechanics and the private eye truly this video got jump started when I found that August 1990 issue what an incredible publication

I miss it so much but I also hear that they're doing great things on YouTube these days um so go check that out for sure anyway bud I appreciate you um let me know what you thought of this down below and of course I'll see you in the next one