Glimpse of the future: eye-tech takes off | The New Daily
reprinted from The New Daily – Jackson Stiles Advisor Editor
Take a look at the future of smart eyewear.
In the race for tech supremacy, smart eyewear is one of the next battlegrounds, although the industry is off to a rocky start.
Japanese company Sony has begun taking orders for the Smart Eyeglass, an internet-linked wearable frame that superimposes text and images onto the real world.
But will consumers warm to the devices? In January, Google halted the testing phase of its smart eyewear product ‘Glass’, following complaints of limited battery life, privacy issues and eye strain, but the tech giant has sworn the technology will live on.
Tech futurist Morris Miselowski is convinced this ill-fated first attempt was simply a marketing failure, and that we are “absolutely” seeing a trend towards visual gadgets.
“Google Glass was lauded for about two years and it kind of fell on its own sword. By the time it came out, we were over it.”
“But there has always been this fascination with seeing more than we have before,” he says. “It’s not new, we’re just adding more technology onto it.”
Humans are very comfortable wearing glasses, so it makes sense to some that wearable tech will head in this direction and eventually catch on, but some are still dubious.
Tech expert Paul Lin says the technology may never take off for the general consumer market because it is socially unacceptable, at least in its current form, with privacy a major concern.
“It’s not quite a trend yet because nobody has had success,” he says. “It’s still a niche market.”
But there is vast potential for the devices to assist in the workplace, Mr Lin says, where social acceptance is less of an issue.
Glasses
Sony’s eyewear will debut in March, but only for developers. Photo: Getty
Experts predict that high-tech glasses could help factory workers quickly find boxes in giant warehouses or surgeons to views x-rays and medical records right in front of their eyes before making an incision.
Military pilots already use helmet-mounted displays when flying jet fighters and bombers to help them navigate and fire weaponry.
A version of Sony’s eyewear tailored for software developers will be sold to software developers for $1,075 in March, with a full commercial release slated for next year.
Toshiba and Samsung have also unveiled prototypes, although both of these are yet to be released.
Virtual Goggles
Whereas smart glasses would allow us to look up from our phones and engage with the world, another variant of eye tech aims to immerse us fully in virtuality.
And unlike glasses, virtual reality goggles, like the Samsung Gear VR, can already be bought, with Facebook’s much anticipated Oculus Rift expected to be released sometime this year.
Microsoft has also announced the HoloLens, a mix between glasses and virtual goggles that it boasts will immerse users in “a mesmerising world of augmented reality”.
Smart contact lenses
Contact lenses containing tiny telescopes that will allow wearers to zoom at the wink of an eye are also in the works.
The lenses magnify objects 2.8 times, allowing the visually impaired to see and read clearer without normal glasses.
Funded by the Pentagon, the prototypes were intended for use by soldiers, but have since been adjusted for civilian use by the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
A Swiss drug company has also been contracted by Google to build smart contact lenses to help diabetics to track their blood glucose levels. These lenses would measure glucose in tear fluid, removing the need for constant finger pricks.
OrCam
The visually impaired seem to be some of the biggest winners from eye tech.
For example, an Israeli company has developed the OrCam, which straps onto reading glasses and can tell the user what they are pointing at and read out text.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the genuine signals behind the eye-technology trajectory, beyond the Google Glass headline?
The eye-technology signals that matter go beyond any single product: the fundamental capability trajectory — miniaturisation of displays, processing, and sensing into wearable eyewear form factors — was advancing on a clear cost-reduction curve regardless of any specific product’s commercial fate; the enterprise and professional applications (surgery, manufacturing, field service, logistics, military) were advancing more consistently than consumer applications because the value proposition was clearer and the user tolerance for form factor compromise was higher; and the visual computing capability being developed for augmented reality headsets was creating foundational technology that would diffuse into less obtrusive form factors over time. Google Glass’s commercial failure was a product execution signal, not a technology trajectory signal — the underlying capability continued advancing.
Q: What is the genuine human experience implication of information overlaid on visual perception?
The augmented reality overlay on human visual perception creates genuinely novel human experience questions that go beyond technology capability: when information is continuously available in the visual field, what happens to the experience of being in a place without contextual data? When navigation instructions are overlaid on the visual field, what happens to spatial memory and orientation capability? When facial recognition is available in the visual field, what happens to the human experience of encountering strangers? These are not hypothetical questions — they are the questions that emerge from a technology trajectory that is clearly progressing, and they reveal that the most important implications of visual augmentation are not about what information becomes available but about what human experiences and capabilities change when that information is always present.
Q: How has the eye-technology signal developed since 2015?
The development since 2015 has been consistent with the underlying capability trajectory while proving optimistic on consumer timeline: enterprise AR (Microsoft HoloLens, enterprise AR headsets for manufacturing and field service) has advanced substantially and is commercially deployed in multiple industrial contexts; consumer AR has developed primarily through smartphone cameras (AR filters, Pokémon Go, IKEA furniture preview) rather than dedicated wearables; and the smart glasses category has been repositioned from general-purpose computers to more specific use cases (audio-only smart glasses, safety-certified industrial smart glasses, prescription-integrated displays). The technology capability has advanced; the form factor and use case clarity challenges identified in 2015 have proven real and ongoing.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a augmented reality, human-technology interface, or wearable technology keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
reprinted from The New Daily – Jackson Stiles Advisor Editor Take a look at the future of smart eyewear. In the race for tech supremacy, smart eyewear is one of the next battlegrounds, although the industry is off to a rocky start. Japanese company Sony has begun taking orders fo.
The window between a signal arriving and it demanding a response is shortening. Glimpse of the future is already shaping strategy conversations in forward-looking organisations. Treating it as a future concern rather than a present one builds a preparedness gap that will have to be closed under pressure.
The most important question is not whether Glimpse of the future will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
