On Google Glass

Announced three weeks ago, the Diane Von Furstenberg accessory set offers five new frames and eight shades designed specifically for ladies. They're available for sale individually (i.e., separate from Glass, for existing Explorers) in the official online Glass store, and they're available with Glass on the luxury fashion site, Net-A-Porter. I haven't spent a whole many words on Google Glass on OSNews thus far, partly because these things are quite expensive and only available to a select group of Americans. Since this is as good a time as any to show my cards on Glass: I think Google has been botching, and continues to botch, the publicity around Glass in a spectacular way. They've been positioning it as a consumer product that you wear all the time, through all your daily activities, but I don't think that's where the real value of Glass (and technology like it) will come into its own. Glass is geeky, and while that's not really a bad thing in my book (no matter what certain looks-obsessed bloggers say), it does limit the device's appeal. They can make it really small and unobtrusive, but that'll raise concerns regarding privacy even more than Glass already does today. On top of that, I simply doubt that most people have any need for Glass in their regular, day-to-day life. No, I think the real value of Glass lies in an entirely different area Google seems to have been ignoring so far. It's a far less sexy area than the world of designer glasses and paragliders, but one that offers far, far more potential: 'traditional' workplaces. Construction. Road works. Law enforcement. The military. Farmers. Firefighters. Plumbers. Roofers. You name it. People who work with their hands in potentially dangerous environments, who can use the heads-up display for at-a-glance, crucial information while out in the field. In short, I think Glass could be huge for people who do what I admiringly refer to as "real work" (to differentiate it from my own job, which comes down to sitting behind a desk translating crap). Sadly, Google seems to ignore this area, overflowing with potential, completely, continuing down its path of trying to make Google Glass hip and fashionable. I am much more interested in seeing what Glass can do for the kinds of professions I just mentioned. Those traditional workers might not be VC-sexy, but I'm convinced they'd benefit a whole lot more from Glass than privileged tech bloggers, supermodels, and translators.



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