Google’s Glass integrates smartphone applications with an eyeglass-like frame so that one can see commands (there's a tiny screen attached to one side of the frame) without looking away from the world, and activate them by voice alone. What’s most impressive is that Glass isn’t science fiction; it’s almost here. Google announced a 2014 product release with a retail price of $1,500. It’s just a matter of time, I think, before the screen image is realized as a hologram floating in front of our faces, and then a tissue embedded right within our eyes.

A happy two-minute marketing video, One day…, follows a young man as he moves through his day using Glass. He uses the new technology to arrange to meet a friend, to make a voice memo to buy concert tickets, to navigate his way from East 23rd Street to the Strand bookstore, to locate the music section inside the store, to post photos of graffiti online, and, finally, to broadcast a song he performs on his ukelele to a girl named Jessica. Glass Man is a downtown hipster dream boy, free from work and personal (and even pet) obligations, who only plans things an hour or so in advance, and who spends the day roaming around the city with his buddy. He doesn’t use Glass to do anything vital, and doesn’t use it to do anything an ordinary smartphone can’t do. The video diminishes the most astonishing features of Glass –its almost seamless interface – to spotlight a laddish lifestyle.

The video brought to mind the SNL short Lazy Sunday, where two young men (played by Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell) wake up late, plan to see a matinee of The Chronicles of Narnia, get cupcakes from Magnolia, catch a cab to the Upper West Side, and pick up snacks and drinks at a deli before the show, all the while rapping about their exploits with mock gravity. One day… comes dangerously close to that kind of parody.

Image courtesy of Google Project Glass.

February 14, 2013 by Nalina Moses

Vision-impaired, temporarily, from dilating drops administered during a routine eye exam, I stumbled home from the doctor’s office like a movie drunk, navigating by counting blocks, and attaching myself to other pedestrians to cross the street. I couldn’t read street signs, gauge the distance of oncoming traffic, or see clearly into store windows. For the hour or so that the drops remained in effect, I was unable to read, write, use my phone, or move around my neighborhood with any degree of confidence. Powerfully, if only temporarily, disoriented, I came home, sat down, and waited for the effects of the drops to subside. It all made me acutely appreciative of my eyesight.

At their design triennial last year the Cooper-Hewitt included a pair of self-adjustable eyeglasses designed by Josh Silver for Adaptive Eyewear, a non-profit overseen by the Centre for Vision in the Developing World. A wearer can adjust the lenses with the turn of a dial to correct refractive problems, without an eye exam or prescription. Silver was trained as an atomic physicist, but now he’s working to bring improved vision to one billion people internationally before 2020. A pair of these eyeglasses can be life-changing for someone without access to formal vision care; it’s some kind of gift. And the frames have a nice retro, Encyclopedia Brown-goes-steampunk feeling. Elaine Scarry has written about the deep beauty of the light bulb, describing how this seemingly inert object transformed our lives, releasing our bodies and imaginations from darkness. I’d say that eyeglasses are similarly transformative.