Smart glasses, like the newly revealed Meta Ray-Ban Displays, solve lots of problems. They can provide live translation and captions while chatting with a foreign friend, they can use provide turn-by-turn directions and a mini map so you don’t get lost on the way to that new coffeeshop, they can take pictures so you’re not fumbling with your phone while enjoying a sunset or nature walk.
But they also create a lot of new, thorny issues that we’re not yet sure how to handle as a society.
An esthetician can covertly record her client’s Brazilian wax. A student can cheat on their medical residency exam in plain sight. A hacker can put facial recognition software on their smart glasses in order to dox strangers.
There is a huge, maybe insurmountable, problem with smart glasses that must be addressed: privacy.
Glasshole 2.0
The problem, and the appeal, of new generation smart glasses like Meta’s is that they can blend in with the…