Google glasses – how groovy life could be. But when will they really work? (+video)

Google has sparked an online tizzy with its Project Glass video, a breezy, aspirational clip depicting life after we all sport the search giant’s snazzy new designer spectacles that put the digital world at our, er, nose-tips, from the moment we rise.

This snappy online montage shows just how groovy it might be to wake up and have the world flow your way through voice and even (gasp!) eye commands.

Straight from the reels of any good sci-fi flick in the past half-century or so, the hi-tech-bespectacled hipster in the video gets weather data just by looking out the window and subway updates by simply walking outside. He snaps pix and shares them with his circle of friends, and locates and talks to his buddies.

But this is not a promotional ad for a real product that consumers may snap up at any time in the near future. This is a gambit from the team at Google X, the search giant’s experimental lab, reaching out to users for comments and feedback.

“We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the online posting said Wednesday.

And so the video has already spawned spoofs and biting commentary about the wisdom of such a product, suggesting, at a minimum, a new relationship between tech entrepreneurs and a public that has grown weary of new products falling below expectations (iPhone’s SIRI, anyone?)

One satirical take-off would be at home on Saturday Night Live, with a hapless dude flailing through his day trying to ward off a stream of unnecessary and unwanted information hitting him literally between the eyes, endangering not only his personal safety but possibly his mental health.

Bloggers such as Blair MacIntyre, director of the Augmented Reality Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, ask the obvious questions, such as “is it a good idea for Google to hype expectations about a product that it cannot possibly deliver?”

The future product’s technology builds on many existing smart functions, such as location-based technology and targeted advertising. But, points out Mr. MacIntyre, many of those technologies have also fallen short of expectations.

1 | 2

Next