I’ve never gotten excited about the wearables trend, probably because I don’t like wearing things and I don’t even use my ordinary, non-wearable smartphone very much. And yet, Kaitlyn Tiffany’s piece about the latest attempt at making smart eyeglasses is intriguing. They cost a fortune and have to be personally fitted—and they’re currently available only in two cities in North America—but they seem oddly friendly and perhaps genuinely useful:
I get lost really easily and even Google Maps on my phone doesn’t always save me—which makes a heads-up display like this sort of appealing. The strange thing is that although the glasses themselves seem OK to me, I’m less excited at the idea that you control them via a “loop” that you wear on your finger:
So you have to wear a joystick on your hand all the time? Half of me hates this idea and half of me thinks it’s actually very clever, almost James Bondish. Unfortunately, it would cost me a thousand dollars plus a plane ticket to New York to try it out, so I suppose I’ll let other people be the guinea pigs. In any case, the company that makes these glasses, North, is funded by Amazon, so if they’re as useful as they look I’m sure they’ll be available in a city near me soon.
The future is here. Or in Brooklyn, anyway.
