On September 23, Mark Zuckerberg, along with Meta and EssilorLuxottica, produced new smart glasses capable of live streaming, taking high quality photos, playing music, making calls, and answering everyday questions. Mark Zuckerberg shared an Instagram post showcasing the new invention, demonstrating how when shown an ordinary polo shirt, the glasses told Zuckerberg what type and color pants would fit best with the selected shirt.
The Ray-Ban website offers a wide range of options for consumers to choose from, all the way from rectangular shaped lenses to more circular ones, with a selection of seven different colors. Customers can start to pre-order the glasses at $299 USD on meta.com and ray-ban.com starting on October 17, 2024.
If you have ever wished to take a photo from your point of view while you were walking outside or looking at something, that desire is now very much achievable. “Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses let you snap a photo or video clip from your unique point of view — allowing you to not only relive the moment, but really live in the moment, too,” Meta said.
However, even with all the great things that come with these glasses, there are also some faults. Some argue that the glasses can be used to invade others’ privacy. The Ray-Ban sunglasses look no different to ordinary sunglasses, so it’s extremely difficult to see if someone is secretly taking a photo of you with the glasses. “For the past two weeks, I’ve been using a new camera to secretly snap photos and record videos of strangers in parks, on trains, inside stores and at restaurants,” Brian X. Chen, a journalist for the New York Times, said. Another argument against the use of Ray-Ban smart glasses is that they act as distractions for users when they’re trying to perform simple tasks. According to Chen, when trying to climb a rock climbing wall (which he had successfully completed many times before), he performed at a much lower level, because “the pressure to record and broadcast a smooth climb made me do worse,”
All in all, the Ray-Ban smart glasses are great for taking great pictures and videos from a different perspective, but they also have issues with privacy and with the distractions presented due to its smart features.. However, despite the controversies, they really do reinforce the idea of the future coming to life. Smart glasses, electric cars, and AI are the kinds of things that we always thought would be in the future, and here they are in a world where all these things exist. It’s these kinds of events that make me certain that many more things—maybe even flying cars— will be available for us in the near future.
