Hands up, who enjoys looking ridiculous?
No one? Oh, right.
Once upon a time, Google announced Glass.
And loads of people went crazy for it.
Unfortunately, not many people got.
See, Google Glass gave us a glimpse of the future, but that future only looked cool in theory and on well-made YouTube videos. As soon as you put a pair on, or saw someone else wearing them, a problem emerged.
They looked a bit stupid.
Plus, they were pretty creepy. It was difficult to tell when the wearer was recording, and the Glass could snap pictures with not much trouble at all.
It was just too much for the privacy parade to handle.
But that was four years ago, back when capture-it-quick-and-share-it-quicker Snapchat was just in its infancy. Video is now everywhere, photos are taken by every kind of device and, in the UK at least, we’ve never been more addicted to smartphones.
The world has changed a lot in four years, which suggests that while privacy is still a massive issue — and probably always will be — Google Glass may have just been slightly ahead of its time, both in terms of design and creepiness.
Snapchat (now Snap Inc.) clearly felt the same way, and so today announced a product that drops us gently in at the shallow end of wearable cameras by introducing Spectacles.
Aside from the basic name (which may end up being genius, because who actually says spectacles anymore?) these are nothing like your average sunglasses.
They sport a camera capable of resembling human perspective with a 115-degree field of view, while also recording in a circular format to allow both portrait and landscape playback. There’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in there too, so you can share straight to your phone.
Oh, and the battery lasts around a day.
Impressive right? We’re about to enter a world where we charge our sunglasses.
Thing is though, and here’s the kicker, these look kind of stupid too.
I don’t think the world is ready for camera-sunglasses, or camera-glasses in general. I certainly don’t think it’s ready for camera-sunglasses which look like this.
But we’ve been wrong about Snapchat before, haven’t we?
