With Those AI Smart Glasses I Could Rule The World!
(And look super cool while doing it)
When I was a little lad, I’m going to say around 1974, which would have made me seven or eight years old, my dad came home from work one memorable evening with a marvel in his pocket. At least, I have to assume that it was in his pocket because it was… a pocket calculator! I had told him that I wanted one and my dad, the hero of the hour, had actually bought one for me.
If you belong to a younger generation, you might not realize that this hand-held computing machine was an almost impossibly modern invention at the time. I can still picture a salesman demonstrating cooking frozen peas in what he called a “microwave oven” several years later, and that was nothing compared to the excitement I felt when I stared in wonder at that Texas Instruments instrument (made in Japan). I mean, all you had to do was press a few buttons and it would calculate the right answer. It was practically sorcery.
The power I felt was insane. I could do literally any sum with it! With this device, nothing would ever stop me from ruling the world if I was so inclined.
But what I was actually inclined to do within a few short minutes was turn it upside-down to create the words HELLO and BOOBS. Aaaaand… that was it. The thing I wanted most in the world, this ingenious feat of silicon engineering that promised me access to the deepest secrets of mathematics, with which I could explore the outer limits of square roots, was soon discarded to languish on the sofa while I switched my attention to The Clangers.
I learned a lesson from that pocket calculator. Not “be careful what you wish for” but rather, “don’t ever get excited again for the rest of your life.” Being an Englishman, this goal has proven to be extremely easy to achieve as the years have gone by.
Until two weeks ago.
I was reading an email about artificial intelligence and saw the news that AI-powered smart glasses are a thing. And that they are being released to the general public on October 17th. I MUST HAVE THEM, I thought, feeling that same megalomaniac adrenaline coursing through my veins (or whatever organic internal piping my hormones slush about in) as I had when I cradled the calculator in trembling fingers for the first time. But that wasn’t all. As well as being windows to a never-ending world of wonders, these glasses are Ray-Bans and will therefore instantaneously transform me into a twenty-first-century Marcello Mastroianni. Okay, a quick online search as I write this reveals that he wore Persols, but folk-rock-poet-god Bob Dylan did wear Ray-Bans and anyone who is so cool they can snub the Nobel Prize for literature is worth imitating.
The possibilities for this life-changing product seemed infinite. I mean they are AI-powered smart glasses!
I could use them to take secret photos and videos, which, let’s face it, is one short step away from being a peeping John. (Sidebar: thank god for Tom, who entered British folklore several hundred years ago by taking a peek at Lady Godiva in her naked-on-horseback phase before she moved to Belgium and started making high-end chocolates. If Tom had been called John, he would have added to the long list of awful/boring/sad examples we all know in Anglo-Saxon culture, from a euphemistic toilet to a loser being dumped by mail, and from a guy who pays hookers for sex to the worst king England ever had. Also, John Doe: a nobody.)
I could use them to make phone calls and listen to podcasts and music without stuffing things into my ears. This would be a genuine benefit if it actually worked, since I own Google earbuds rather than Apple ones, meaning that my cool factor would instantly leap from minus twenty million to minus eight or thereabouts.
I could use them as sunglasses. (I already own three pairs of sunglasses, but none nearly as expensive and stylish as Ray-Bans.)
And aside from this multitude of uses, the Meta website says that they are “designed for living in the moment”, which would be a huge benefit for someone like me who can’t stop thinking about 1974.
But of course, the whole point of this new gadget is that it comes with built-in AI. You can talk to it and it will talk back. In other words, I can be out and about and stand in front of a tree and ask my glasses what species it is, then get an answer. I am completely aware that to any third party happening upon the scene, I would essentially look like a man talking to a tree, but who cares, I’ll be able to address this passer-by as they sidle quickly away and tell them that it’s a linden tree (or whatever) and they will go home and hug their loved ones a little tighter that night.
Before I knew what was happening I had chosen a size, frame colour, and those lenses that get darker in sunlight, adding yet another layer of cool to my astonishingly stylish new identity. They were in my online cart. I was one click away from pressing the “pre-order” button. And then I hesitated and was lost. I looked up the returns policy. These things aren’t cheap, especially in Canadian dollars. I’m a freelance writer, not a movie star or legendary singer.
But what really stopped me at checkout was remembering that evening with the pocket calculator.
I tried to convince myself the glasses were a worthwhile purchase. I’ve coveted a device in the past, then bought it and genuinely enjoyed using it for years, so that could happen again in this case, couldn’t it? Smartphones are a perfect example. Why would smart glasses be any different?
Deep down inside, though, I know that my emotional response to the Meta glasses could range anywhere between apathetic neglect and Gollumesque depravity. And did I mention that they cost quite a lot? I can wait, right? Right…?
Who knows, maybe one of my Medium pieces will go viral (hint, hint) and I’ll rake in enough paywall pennies to justify the purchase.
Or maybe I’ll just put on my crappy sunglasses and go ask a tree for advice.
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