I think we will need this type of display if we are ever going to be able to do any meaningful work on mobile devices. My present project SoLaTiDo requires a near eye display, in order to make a wearable computer capable as a word processor, CAD system, gaming platform, and musical instrument. With the present input/output limitations of mobile devices, we will only be able to download and tweet.

This and the implications of it for society are covered in immense detail in Vinge’s “Rainbows End.” In RE, published 2007, Vinge predicts the Google self-driving car as well as “wearing” – a term that Google has been using just recently to describe wearable computing, integrated with their glasses. Vinge goes one step further, with haptics and instead of glasses, contact lenses. If there is any one book that I would recommend to the layman for a comprehensive overview of the near future, this is it. I also liked his version of UPS, circu 2025, in which packages are fired ballistically to their destinations, effectively parachuting right into the recipient’s arms – requiring, of course, a close coordination with other air traffic, but perfectly doable when virtually everything is wired.

And, of course, when you are “wearing,” then you can carry ghost riders who experience what you are experiencing, or do the same yourself, creating a new kind of profession, in which people compete for ride shares of their lives, making it important to pack one’s life with desireable experiences.

The main worrry that I have is that this can become yet another sensory overload, distracting us from serious thought. I recall in the early ’90′s using a system on my little Amiga 500 that could do realtime video capture at a rate of 1~2 frames per second. So I was streaming the stop-frame video of the TV news while retaining the full audio, and, right away, I started noticing that suddenly I could SEE the camera angles and other details that normally went right thru me. I realized later that the “normal” TV experience is calculated to keep you in a state of sensory/cognitive overload, in which all your processing is devoted just to following a fraction of the stream flooding through your senses. Slowing that flood and reducing the largely useless detail – like all the milisecond changes in expression of the newsreader’s face – freed up a whole lot of processing power, a factor in my decision to forego TV altogether and stick with the net. I fear that the glasses will cause a similar plumetting of available cognitive resources.

So, if you don’t wear – or turn off much of the system, then you pay the price that I do today in terms of not having the fashionalbe cultural/artistic references to the most popular TV shows. On the other hand, you may preserve more of your analytic capacity. I predict that many people will make their whole lives revolve around the wearable experience, while others will choose to be the new nerds, oblivious to fashion and focused on meaning. Shades of Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

nice bit of transitional technology but the ultimate method will be direct stimulation of the appropriate areas of the brain. eliminate the middleman entirely.

I would worry about using these devices while driving.

We certainly live in exciting times! I take 8th grade students to Washington D.C. in the spring every year. One of the best places we go is to the Gettysburg battle site in Pennsylvania. It would be truly amazing for the students to look at Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, Little Round Top etc. with these glasses. They could instantly see information about these places projected on their eye. This could all be done without intruding on the tour. This is just one small example of how this kind of technology will change the world. I look forward to watching these devices come to the mass market.