I’m a little late to the punch (twenty-some days) but a recent news story makes it pretty relevent again. Google showed off their augmented reality glasses late last month with a demo video.

I have been saying for the last several years that augmented reality is the way of the future, and that whoever manages to make the right glasses is going to be king. From the looks of it, google is making a product that looks okay enough to wear, which is the major obstacle to conquer in getting someone to actually wear the things.

Their actual features are still being worked out, and so far it doesn’t do anything a cell phones can’t. I have a feeling it will end up a little more Layar reality browser before it’s done and be pretty cool. This won’t take off until it can offer something a phone can’t or in a way one can’t, and google knows that.

Anyway, now we have a guy who has “worn a computer vision system of some kind for 34 years” according to his own blog post was apparently assaulted by staff at McDonalds for violating their no video policy. He says that they will have to get used to it because this stuff is going to be mainstream soon with products like Google Glass around the corner. He’s right, but this sort of thing shows just how crazy this idea is to the public. For some reason we were able to adapt to smartphones despite how sci-fi they were. Now we have the first real Ironman/Terminator/whatever you want to reference glasses set coming out.

In my post, Universe, I was thinking about how amazing the rapid technology pace of late is. And it is, but is this too big a leap? I have been calling it for years as what would happen next, but not everyone has. I’m hoping this stuff sells, because I still feel like augmented reality is the next technological revolution. We needed the headset and this might be it.