The Biggest Hurdle to Facebook’s Bold Vision for AR Glasses Is Trust
The project’s chief scientist speaks about the challenges of creating a computing system that integrates with your world — in the hope that you might eventually trust Facebook enough to wear it on your face
By Mark Sullivan
Imagine your smartphone morphing to wrap around your eyes. But instead of a dark black screen, now it’s see-through. Your apps can suddenly interact with the things you see in the real world in front of you.
Like many tech companies, Facebook believes that augmented reality (AR) glasses will eventually replace the smartphone as our primary personal computing device. It’s a tantalizing possibility for the social networking giant, which hopes to use AR to integrate its social apps and content with the world around us. With Facebook AR, the company hopes you’ll one day chat with a faraway friend’s avatar sitting across from you at your kitchen table, or see a stranger’s most recent Instagram post as they approach you on the street.
Beyond providing a whole new mode of interaction between you and its social networking services, Facebook sees AR as a chance to control an entire hardware-software…
