Google to Release Augmented Reality Glasses

What’s the Latest Development?

Later this year, Google will begin selling eyeglasses that work like transparent computer displays, allowing users to see all the information currently accessed using smartphones. Location information, such as GPS and motion sensors, will figure prominently in the new technology. Information will displayed like any other object in a wearer’s field of vision, perhaps giving you historical information about a landmark you are looking at, or what your friends have said about it. Users may also see advertisements with the glasses.

What’s the Big Idea?

Putting artificial data into a person’s field of view will not only alter their visual landscape but the very way we experience strangers on the street. Computer scientists at the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, have experimented with similar technology and say that people duck and dodge while using the glasses, reacting to information as thought they were actual objects. Ethical issues have risen as advocacy groups have asked the government to suspend facial recognition software which could be used to violate citizens’ privacy.

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