Smart glasses have long been on the minds of just about everybody looking towards the future of technology, from qualified engineers to sci-fi fanatics. And now, not only are they a reality, but industry experts believe that they’re going to become part of our everyday lives.
In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has boldly asserted that he thinks smart glasses are going to replace smartphones as we know them today by the year 2030.
This claim comes as several industry big shots have released their own innovative versions of smart glasses, from Google to Meta. And it seems fair to expect that just like with every other tech trend we’ve seen over the years, other companies are likely to follow in their footsteps in the coming years.
What Are Smart Glasses Supposed to Do?
The idea behind smart glasses is to eliminate the need for a handheld device – that is, a smartphone. Rather, glasses can be worn allowing users to be hands-free.
The technology is intended to integrate your physical world with the digital world, allowing you to interact with a powerful AI assistant that can (and will) constantly feed you information useful to your current situation. Essentially, these glasses have the ability to project holograms into your field of vision.
Who’s Developing Smart Glasses?
Plenty of different companies have attempted to create their own versions of smart glasses, and while some of them have included some promising features, they’ve mostly been too bulky or way too full of cables. And, on top of that, they’ve been more like augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) glasses rather than full-on smart glasses.
One case that’s really stood out from the rest is Meta’s Orion glasses, the so-called newest version of Meta’s previous Ray Ban glasses.
So, what do the Orion glasses do? Well, they include both eye and hand tracking, as well as voice controls and a neutral interface. It reads signals from the user’s wrist, and it comes with a wireless compute puck that looks pretty much like a power bank. The puck, however, needs to be within close proximity to the glasses, so users will, most likely, need to have it in their pocket.
Google, on the other hand, announced their own set of smart glasses that were set to feature AR. They were released for the first time in 2014, but after being pulled from the market, re-released and pulled from the market again multiple times between 2014 and 2022, Google’s smart glasses simply haven’t made the cut.
They involved concerns surrounding privacy, limited functionality and high prices, making them, ultimately, unrealistic for everyday use in the form they were in at the time.
Indeed, Google’s so-called “failure” in the world of smart glasses has made Meta’s expected release of new Orion glasses all the more exciting, even though there are still plenty of obstacles standing in the way of their total success.
In fact, Zuckerberg himself has been incredibly realistic about the future of smart glasses, projecting that their success will peak in about 2030. Indeed, Meta’s CEO has been open about the fact that although he’s confident about the future of the Orion glasses, there are still several practical issues that stand in the way of the product’s widespread adoption in the general public domain.
For instance, the product is still very expensive, which means that “ordinary” people won’t, realistically, be able to get their hands on smart glasses until they become more accessible. So, much like other pieces of technology, smart glasses are only going to be owned and worn by wealthy people for a while until they become more affordable.
Another obstacle standing in the way of the widespread adoption of Meta’s Orion glasses is the practicality of wearing them. Although the idea of wearing fancy, high-tech glasses is exciting, it’s still going to be a while before it becomes normal for people to wear glasses everywhere they go and to actually get rid of their physical smartphones.
Ultimately, in addition to the fact that the technology is still being properly developed and refined, the other issue is whether or not the world is actually ready for something this advanced. Of course, the same could’ve (and was) said about things like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and even smartphones at some point, but over time, people warmed up to these exciting new innovations.
Meta’s Orion glasses have been in the making for more than a decade, and although Zuckerberg and other experts don’t necessarily think that they’re quite ready for the world yet, it certainly seems likely that in time, they may very likely take over from smartphones as we know them today.
