![the climb vr user is not entitled the climb vr user is not entitled](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/e190fef9-7baa-4a3b-babc-5b3873fc7857.ca581ce26cd3d0ba631e3c7c161de47f.jpeg)
There are enormous social, cultural and legal reasons to worry about face computers becoming ubiquitous. It is probably only a few years until a face computer hits big - perhaps when Apple releases the one it has been reported to be working on. Though none of these devices has been a huge success, the tech that powers face-mounted computers is getting quite good quite fast. These function as powerful personal computers mounted to your eyes, creating an enveloping digital experience - video games and movies surround you, the real world replaced by the machine. The sunglasses let you photograph life in the moment, from your eyes’ point of view when you’re building sand castles at the beach with your kids, you can tap your specs to capture the memory while you’re living it rather than reaching for your phone with sandy fingers.įacebook and Microsoft are making virtual-reality headsets, too. Facebook and Ray-Ban recently unveiled camera-enabled sunglasses Snap, which makes Snapchat, also has such a device. So far there have been only a few such machines, most famously Google’s failed digital specs, Google Glass. The face computer is coming - brace yourself for an onslaught of “smart” glasses, virtual-reality headsets and other devices that connect your eyes to the digital world. In the past few months, though, I’ve begun to face the fact that our faces are … in trouble. For a long time I’ve thought that nothing would - that phones would remain our primary computers for the foreseeable future. People in tech have long been wondering what might succeed smartphones as the next dominant computing platform. There is something inescapably crude, isn’t there, about the prospect of everyone walking around with computers on our faces?Īnd yet I suspect the world may adopt face computers anyway, and not long from now, perhaps even within the coming decade. It is difficult to avoid sounding vulgar, somehow, when discussing the future of facial computing.