Glasses make you look smart

I've worn glasses since the sixth grade. Now I have two pair at all times, my regulars and a set of reading glasses. So that's wallet, keys, reading glasses, and the digital camera I try to keep handy at all times.

In truth, that's probably why I quit smoking all those years ago. Glasses, prescription sunglasses, wallet, keys, cigarettes, lighter - that's five items to keep track of at all time (not counting the glasses on my face.) That's about one too many and I was always leaving one of those somewhere. I had friends who always had a lighter or pack of cigarettes of mine lying around. When I quit I had two less items to look after.

Glasses are supposed to make you look smart. My children often want to try them on to see what they look like with glasses.

Well, maybe everybody is going to be wearing glasses someday. Google has announced something called Project Glass, a product kind of like a smartphone built into a visor, or retrofitted onto a pair of glasses.

Their advertising video shows the world from the point of view of the wearer of the device. He looks at the clock, and a heads-up display of his days appointments appears. Look out the window and a temperature reading and weather report pops up. It's got navigation to tell you how to walk to your destination, videophone service, you can take your own videos with it...

They call it "an augmented reality system" https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts#111626127367496192147/posts

It's becoming clear that someday soon, we're all going to be cyborgs.

I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this. I do enjoy gadgets, and lately I've been having fun with my new Tracphone with keyboard, web capabilities, etc, and it's not even top of the line. I traded in a very simple phone I'd been using for three years now.

I do enjoy gadgets, but I'm not what they call an "early adopter."

In fact, I almost never buy the first model of a new tech product. I figure, let them get the bugs out and the price down before I'll buy one.

But this one...

The first thing I wonder about is, how could I use it on my job. It appears to have voice-to-text typing, photo and video capability, sound, Internet access for research. I could get out of the office a lot more than I do, and file stories and pictures from wherever. Of course you'd probably be reading/watching/listening to the on your visor too.

I'm wondering if this could be one of those things like the Internet itself. Something that changes the world in ways we never imagined, until we got so we couldn't remember the world being any different.