Google has apparently allowed some prototypes of its Project Glass augmented reality glasses out in public for testing. Google co-founder Sergey Brin wore the glasses at Dinner in the Dark, a Benefit for the Foundation Fighting Blindness in San Francisco.
One person who had used the glasses said: “They let technology get out of your way. If I want to take a picture I don’t have to reach into my pocket and take out my phone; I just press a button at the top of the glasses and that’s it.”
Technovelgy readers may recall the earlier article Google Glasses With Heads Up Display Coming Soon?, which reported early comments that they resembled Oakley Thump glasses. However, a more slender look is shown below.
A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.
Blogger Robert Scoble tweeted that "Sergey wouldn’t let me wear the Google Glasses but I could see they were flashing info to him" and added that Brin said that the glasses were many months from being a consumer product.
An idealized view of the near future of this technology is presented in this Google Project Glass video.
(Google Project Glass video)
For the science-fictional view point, see the overlay specs from Charles Stross' 2007 novel Halting State or the videoshades from Bruce Sterling's 1988 novel Islands in the Net.
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