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While wearable computing has been in development for decades, with Glass, Google is the first to bring augmented vision to the consumer space. There will be, and already are, other examples—Baidu Eye [2] in China and The Technology Partnership’s prototype [3] in Cambridge, UK. If the uptake of every technology that first incited both fear and wonder—electricity, telephones, moving images—is anything to go by, ubiquitous computing will become, well, ubiquitous. So why not that which intercepts your sight?
Just as the diffusion of eyeglasses in the Renaissance began with an elite set of Italian monks and cardinals,
so Google closely gate-keeps the spread of Glass through Valley technologists and their circles. The closely managed alpha launch called for a limited set of “Explorers” chosen for their responses to [#ifihadglass], issuing a kind of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Golden Ticket effect, whereby scarcity creates desirability.
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