Facebook For Your Face
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg models the Ray-Ban Stories (image: Ray-Ban Films).
Another day, another tech company designs a set of smart glasses that are nowhere near as cool as the eyewear from 2002 cinematic masterpiece Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams.
Following the dorky-looking damp squib of Google Glass and the retro-futuristic but ultimately unprofitable Spectacles from the makers of Snapchat, Facebook has decided to throw its hat into the ring for wearable products you didn’t know you didn’t need – but that it hopes you won’t be embarrassed to wear.
Facebook, the social media network best known for radicalising boomer grandparents, has partnered with anodyne eyewear brand Ray-Ban to produce a collection of smart glasses and sunglasses. Reality Labs, Facebook’s research and development arm, has piggybacked on Ray-Ban’s classic Wayfarer frame to produce glasses that can take photographs and have a microphone and speakers to allow you to play music obnoxiously in a public space, presumably, or take calls without headphones in.
“Ray-Ban Stories are an important step towards a future where phones are no longer a central part of our lives.”
Facebook, inventor of the status update, unironically wants you spend £299 on the glasses so that you can – finally – live in the moment. “We want to create a sense of social presence, the feeling that you’re right there with another person sharing the same space, regardless of physical distance,” said Realty Labs director of product management Monisha Perkash, which is tech jargon for “hand over your data and attention so you can feel less lonely and disconnected, a problem that social media definitely did not create”. The collaboration is called Ray-Ban Stories, because that is a nice and cosy name about ancient human ways of communing through shared narratives and was sexier than “just some glasses with a camera”.
Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook’s billionaire CEO, said: “Ray-Ban Stories are an important step towards a future where phones are no longer a central part of our lives”. I’m not sure Apple will be quaking in it’s boots just yet over the iPhone being rendered obsolete; Ray-Ban stories as yet has no functionality to allow you to ignore all your WhatsApp notifications or start posturing arguments on Twitter.
There are a few pros that Disegno can generously muster. They’re only 5 grams heavier than standard glasses, so they won’t weigh you down. You won’t look like too much of an idiot wearing them. The hands-free wearable element will make photographing touching moments with family easier to capture without the distraction of a smartphone getting in the way. Tourist hotspots and concerts could become less crowded with annoying people waggling their camera devices in the air if your specs could do the job just as well.
“We’re delivering the first pair of smart glasses that blend form and function.”
You could also use the smart glasses to cosplay as a private eye and skulk around town taking creepshots of your friends and enemies to collect a useful stash of compromising photographs to blackmail people with. Which brings up the tech industry’s bette noir: privacy issues. Presumably glasses enabled with recording devices will be a copyright nightmare for places such as galleries and cinemas, as well as just a little unnerving for the general population. Facebook said it has cunningly circumvented this issue by putting a little LED light the glows red whenever someone is taking footage with their Ray-Ban Stories. Comforting!
Most disappointingly, there is no augmented reality offering from the product. “As we wait for the technology to be good enough, we’re focused on what we can enable right now,” said Perkash. “We’re delivering the first pair of smart glasses that blend form and function.” So you will look good but you won’t be able to catch any Pokémon on Pokémon Go, which is the only reason we’d be forking out for smart specs.
Story source: The Guardian and The Financial Times