Facebook's quest for wearable tech superpowers and the curse of the 'glassholes'

[Chewy_fox]

Remember the "glassholes," those idealistic, starry-eyed pioneers of wearable tech who enlisted to be Google's Glass guinea pigs in 2013 only to be greeted by the public with derision and hostility?

In the years since that fiasco, wearable tech has steered clear of sci-fi stylings and worked on improving familiar products that consumers are already comfortable with: Snap made relatively normal-looking sunglasses with a built-in camera and Apple focused on wireless earbuds and a wristwatch. 

It's been working. Apple's gadgets now dominate the wearables business, accounting for 36% of the market in the last quarter of 2020. But sure enough, with sales of these ordinary-looking wearables growing, tech companies are getting excited and drifting into sci-fi territory again. 

Facebook showed off a neural bracelet prototype this week that reads motor signals for hand movements you intend to make, allowing you to control a computer with your brain (while wearing a pair of augmented reality glasses of course). "It's sort of like having a superpower like the Force," Facebook promises. 

Google is working on secret project code-named Wolverine, as Insider's Hugh Langley exclusively reported this month. The gadget, a sensor-packed device that can be worn near or in your ears, would deliver "hearing superpowers" like the ability to tune different speakers in or out in a crowded room. 

And Apple is working on a virtual reality headset that The Information reports includes dozens of cameras to track hand movement as well as an 8K display and support for advanced eye tracking.

Will any of these futuristic doodads catch on? It's generally not wise to bet against technological progress, even when the ideas initially seem silly, ugly or just unnecessary. Clunky and rudimentary smartphones were around for at least a decade before Steve Jobs finally cracked the code with the iPhone in 2007. 

This next generation of wearables being cooked up in the labs by Big Tech will probably fall short of the mark. But eventually someone will figure out how to make brain-reading headsets that actually work and that don't look ridiculous — and like it or not, we'll all be glassholes some day.

[Silent Watcher]

Avoid unnecessary posts such as 'Thank you', 'Welcome', etc. Such posts will be deleted and user will be warned if it happens again. If caught spamming, the following actions are applicable -

• First time - Warning
• Second time - 5000 Points will be deducted
• Third time - Ban for 7 days
• Fourth time - Permanent Ban

If the post helped you, reward the user by reacting to the post like this -