The signs are all there. We live in a society where money, wealth, and happiness are just a post away. Now sharing is king, attention spans are at an all time low, and society as a whole becomes increasingly self-centered. Each individual must produce and absorb a vast amount of media just to maintain the necessary web of connections to an army of acquaintances. Constant access to any piece of information isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation. The problem of our time is no longer ease of access, but how to know what the user wants before the user does.
The solution, of course, is to be always connected. Why simply take photos of your dinner and tweet from the restroom, when you could live the Truman Show every day of your life? Why tell Google what you like when it can constantly watch you and find out. The future is Augmented Reality and the future is here with the META glasses.
META glasses produce what sci-fi has always promised; multi-colored holograms which can be interacted with as easily as any physical object. It does this by having users don a pair of glasses with projectors on either side to produce these holograms directly onto the glass lenses and a Microsoft Kinect like device built in to the brim of the glasses that scans the world around you and allows you to interface with the device using a series of simple gestures.
Only months away from release, the story of the META glasses reminds me very much of WIllie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Great promises have been made to those who would be permitted entry in to this magical augmented reality world, but little has been shown to back it up to the outside world. As of right now, those that have been shown the device report that the results are not nearly that which has been shown in the META’s marketing campaign.
Personally, I cling to all that META promises. I’m can’t wait for a future where all my tech devices are compacted into a single pair and any part of my world can be digitally modified on the fly. I look forward to virtual butlers, extreme laser tag, digital haunted houses, and many more things I can’t even imagine yet. The device described in the original article interests me as it promises to be everything I want out of the future. I just hope that when the time comes this “Chocolate Factory” turns out to be more than an empty warehouse of false promises.
See the full article at:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/11/5297162/meta-developing-iron-man-interface-augmented-reality-glasses
