{"id":107670,"date":"2024-06-22T05:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-22T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=107670"},"modified":"2024-06-26T08:15:07","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T12:15:07","slug":"future-of-smart-glasses","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/consumer-tech\/future-of-smart-glasses","title":{"rendered":"What will it take for smart glasses to replace smartphones?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by <\/em>subscribing here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 2030. You wake up, and instead of reaching for your phone, you pop on a pair of sleek smart glasses. Throughout the day, you converse with a powerful AI assistant that uses the specs to pepper your view with useful information, seamlessly merging your physical and digital worlds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smart glasses era <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990s, mobile phones could make calls or text, and PCs (with a modem) could send email, surf the internet, or play games. The following decade combined them and gave birth to the smartphone \u2014 changing practically everything about how we navigate the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart glasses<\/em> that combine personal computing, AI, and augmented reality could be the next life-changing consumer tech device. To find out how, let\u2019s take a look back at the history of smart glasses and the trends that could lead us into a future where our tech literally alters how we see the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where we\u2019ve been<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Where we\u2019re going (maybe)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Google Glass may have been an expensive<\/a> failure for Google, but it was a valuable case study<\/a> for the rest of the tech industry, teaching developers a lot about what people do not <\/em>want, and those insights are shaping the current crop of smart glasses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Google Glass looked like a prop from \u201cThe Matrix,\u201d for example, most of today\u2019s smart glasses have a much more low-key design. This helps wearers avoid being stigmatized as modern-day \u201cGlassholes\u201d trying to film others without their consent (even if it doesn\u2019t actually<\/em> stop this from happening<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the smart glasses market is growing<\/a>, there\u2019s still no guarantee the devices will ever become mainstream, let alone replace smartphones as our go-to personal electronics. The industry is still searching for its \u201ckiller app,\u201d the feature that people just can\u2019t get without the tech \u2014 and this might be the one thing Google got right <\/em>about smart glasses with Google Glass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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