Slick, stylish and they might even be useful: Google glasses….Credit: Google

Google calls it Project Glass. You may call it futuristic, fantastic or just let’s wait and see. These highly sophisticated computerized specs are intended to receive and process information from the Web and display it to one eye. It’s called augmented reality. For example, using voice commands, you can ‘ask the glasses’ to locate a nearby French restaurant, say in New York City. The glasses will more or less instantly show a list of restaurant names. You call out one of them, and a map to the restaurant, based on your present location, will appear. Or something like that. Since nobody except Google employees have actually used these glasses, the details are unknown. What is known is that the glasses will be able to operate like a phone, send video (from a built-in camera), and do – Google searches. Much depends on the reliability of voice control, the quality of the image on the glass (under various lighting conditions), and whether people can get used to having wearable computers participate in their reality. It’s a fascinating concept, very sci-fi of course, until it isn’t sci-fi anymore, which may be relatively soon. Imagine half the population running around with this kind of phone/computer and nobody knowing whose recording what while talking to somebody on the street…