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| Sergei Brin sporting the Google Glasses prototype |
Google's augmented-reality smart glasses made their public debut Thursday night, taking center stage at a charity event to raise money for research into blindness in San Francisco.
Technology pundit Robert Scoble ran into Google founder, Sergey Brin wearing the glasses, which connect to the Internet to display maps, video chats, photos and captured the nation's attention this week. Scoble was so excited about the big meet up that he had to share the news on Twitter.
"The Google Glasses are real!" Scoble tweeted Thursday night. "The glasses look self contained but I am not sure," he wrote later, adding "hope to learn more after dinner."
Google gave a first glimpse of "Project Glass" and the amazing smart glasses in a video and blog post this week. Still in an early prototype stage, the glasses open up endless possibilities -- as well as challenges to safety, privacy and possibly fashion sensibility.
The prototypes Google displayed have a sleek wrap-around look and appear nothing like clunky 3-D glasses. But if Google isn't careful, they could be dismissed as a kind of Bluetooth earpiece of the future, a fashion faux-pas where bulky looks outweigh marginal utility.
If it takes off, Google Glass could bring reality another step closer to science fiction, where the line between human and machine blurs.
"My son is 4 years old and this is going to be his generation's reality," said Guy Bailey, who works as a social media supervisor for a university outside Atlanta, Ga. He expects it might even be followed by body implants, so that in 10 years or so you'll be able to get such a "heads-up display" inside your head.
"There is a lot of data about the world that would be great if more people had access to as they are walking down the street," said Jason Tester, research director at the nonprofit Institute For the Future in Palo Alto, California.
It doesn't take much to imagine the possibilities. What if you could instantly see the Facebook profile of the person sitting next to you on the bus? Read the ingredient list and calorie count of a sandwich by looking at it? Snap a photo with a blink? Look through your wall to find out where electrical leads are, so you know where to drill?
"Not paint your house, because the people who looked at your house could see whatever color they wanted it in?" pondered veteran technology analyst Rob Enderle.
Wearing the glasses could turn the Internet into a tool in the same way that our memory is a tool now, mused science fiction writer and computer scientist Vernor Vinge. His 2007 book, Rainbows End, set in the not-so-distant future, has people interacting with the world through their contact lenses, as if they had a smart phone embedded in their eyes.
Unlike Google's glasses, at least in their current state, Vinge's lenses know what you are looking at and can augment your reality based on that. That could come next, though.
"Things we used to think were magic, we now take for granted: the ability to get a map instantly, to find information quickly and easily, to choose any video from millions on YouTube rather than just a few TV channels," wrote Google CEO Larry Page in a letter posted on the company's website Thursday.
In Google's video, a guy wearing the spectacles is shown getting subway information, arranging to meet a friend for coffee and navigating the inside of a bookstore, all with the help of the glasses. It ends with him playing the ukulele for a woman and showing her the sunset through a video chat.
Google posted the video and short blog post about Project Glass on Wednesday, asking people to offer feedback through its Google Plus social network.
"It's coming. Whether Google is going to do it or someone else is going to do it, it's going to happen," Enderle said. "The question is whether we'll be ready, and given history we probably won't be. As a race we tend to be somewhat suicidal with regard to how we implement this stuff."
Google CGPlanet I wants one
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