Meta has unveiled their Orion AR glasses to a room full of crickets

I know a few people that have been working over at Meta on these new AR glasses and have been unable to talk about what they were working on the past few years. So it is cool to see a press release about what they have been spending their time on. However, it is a bit unfortunate that these glasses are actually not a product anyone can buy because they could not get the price tag low enough to bring them to market. It is an interesting exploration of what types of devices might be possible in coming years, but it is also an admission that billions of dollars have been wasted with not much to show for it.

It actually calls to mind the comical release of the Metaverse, a digital playground in AR that no one wanted or enjoyed. Which is an interesting phenom iron of tech-bro product development. They don't think about if anyone actually wants or needs their products, just if the idea seems cool enough to create a hype cloud around.

So a question we should all ask ourselves is, do we actually want a digital overlay on the world around us? For me the answer is an emphatic no, and I have been a robotics research scientist for fifteen years. I don't even want to wear glasses to correct my eyesight. I had lasers shot into my eyeballs burning off and reshaping their surface because I don't want to place tiny glasses on my face. I really, really don't want giant fat goggle-glasses on my face that make everything harder to see and need to be charged all the time. I think the only time I might want AR glasses is if they are sunglasses for wear outdoors and they rarely need to be charged and have a high enough resolution AR display that they blend perfectly with the world around me.

So I'm glad that Zuck is putting money into research for exotic computing devices and event camera eye tracking sensors. That is actually moving the needle of technology forward, but the Orion glasses can go into the Warehouse of Products Developed for No One.

While we are at it, I guess we need to talk about the Ray Ban Meta glasses that are actually commercially available. They are basically spy cameras with bone conduction headphones built in. The only possible use for these things is filming your hot classmates without their permission. Oh, or using a web connection to look up personal details on the net about people you see like these Harvard dweebs did. Like, who cares, honestly? It's basically just using a smart phone app with a hidden camera. Hidden camera glasses are going to be banned along with all over hidden camera devices as soon as a few cases get through the courts of women and children being filmed and photographed by pervs. The legal system is reactive, but it is coming. There is no legitimate use for hidden cameras and we already have the insidious phenomenon of people using their smart phone cameras irresponsibly.

References

• Orion @ Meta