SPY - EYE GLASSES

"SPY GLASSES help you do what you want to do," said Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, finally, after years of rumors, introducing Project Glass at Google’s annual developer conference.

"The glasses work like a hands free smart phone, displaying messages, images, and maps onto the world in front of you. The glasses have built in cameras that allow you to capture moments without disrupting them."
Sergey Brin tossed his baby son into the air and explained, “If I tried to capture that with a camera I’d drop my son.”

Wowee -- what a gesture, what a way to show to us that Project Glass is a harbinger of wonderful things to come!

I remember hearing about "spy" glasses a year or so ago, but I shrugged it off as one of those things that would never happen -- you know -- like driverless cars, and other farout "cloud" stuff, but gee ...

Project Glass is a big wow -- it enables you to WEAR a computer, take a picture -- a bunch of pictures -- and record what’s happening without anyone knowing that’s what you’re doing. There is no movement of your hands, no clicking, no buttons pushed -- nothing that tells the subject that he or she is being photographed.

What a convenience! It's progress with a capitol P.... Okay, it’s not a capitol P yet, perhaps, but aren’t you overwhelmed by the possibilities?

What’s a bit iffy, a little uncertain, right now, is who owns the photos? Google? And won’t the courts and trial lawyers be demanding access to the photos, as they’ve already done with Google, smartphones, and Twitter?

Well, the courts, the police, and the law school experts will iron that out the way they’re ironing out Internet stuff, like who owns what -- like controls, rules, laws, access, copyrighting ... all those things they've been trying to iron out for quite a while.

Meanwhile, what concerns me ... gee... wearing these glasses you look sort of outer-space-ish weird.

The glasses, as seen in the design photos Google provided, are a silverish band that wraps around the forehead and a slim white (or black) band that rests just over the right eye containing the small view finder. Nose pads also extend from the silver band, keeping the device in place. Unlike traditional glasses, they do not cover both eyes.

Undoubtedly someone will figure out a way for it to look like ordinary eye wear -- probably, design-savvy Apple will. They recently patented a similar device. Also, the digital photography guys are working on eye-wear, using nanotechnology (teeny batteries) to reduce camera size. They’re also experimenting with “gesture-based” technology that lets you take photos with the blink of your eye.

Gee, maybe we'll be wearing batteried contact lenses?

Anyhow, cheers, applause, bravos for Google’s Project Glass-- it’s definitely giving us a preview of coming attractions -- an early version of what’s to come.

As with Facebook, smartphones, and the Internet in general, this new wearable tech stuff promises wonderful convenience and connectedness. Oh sure, it might cost you some privacy -- how much remains to be seen. The thing to do is keep your eyes wide open, and go with the flow of it.

Hey, currently we’re flowing toward more and more texting -- buying, selling, eating, sleeping, flirting, being entertained, going to the doctor, to school, as well as the gym on our phones.

Hey .... "row, row, row your boat.. gently, down the stream ..." Did you know that there are more smartphones than toilets -- that in many parts of the world the average smartphone has more computing power than Apollo II when it journeyed to the moon?

Is it possible -- it might be possible, could it be that Goggle's got a plan for glasses to replace our phones and give us a new mobility, more mobility -- utter Mobility-- global, universal, ultimate freedom from lots of things that make us human?

Whoopee? Or ... whoa, wait a minute -- row, row ... upstream? downstream? are we heading for the rapids? A waterfall?