If you walk into any coffee shop this evening, you will encounter a familiar scene. A few customers will be huddled around tables talking to one another. Most, however, will be sat in comfy chairs, their bodies slightly scrunched up, their necks tilted forward, their eyes focused on the small backlit phone cradled in one of their hands, while their fingers gently swipe away at the screen in front of them. Almost all of these people will be wearing an expression that is best described as a half-smile – an enigmatic Mona Lisa like gaze – as the phone owner processes the data flowing from their mobile.
Some of that might be about to change. As The National reports today, Google Glass headsets are now on sale at a Dubai retailer. This so-called computer on your face is being sold for Dh10,000. While many have pointed to the ugliness of the product’s design, most of us long since gave in to the practicalities of tablets and smart phones. We’ll no doubt do the same with Google’s latest wearable technology.
Fast forward to that same coffee shop a few years from now and those once-slouching customers will be sat bolt upright, their faces pointed towards a blank wall as data flows before their eyes, their gazes still fixed in that strange half-smile, their glasses half-full of streaming data.
