The Evolution of Face Computers: From Glass to Goggles
Description
This is a two-panel meme in the popular "How it started / How it's going" format, illustrating the evolution of wearable augmented and virtual reality hardware. The left panel, labeled "How it started" in red text, displays the Google Glass device against a plain white background. It's a pair of eyeglasses with a small, noticeable electronic module and a transparent prism display over one eye. The right panel, labeled "How it's going," shows a person wearing the Apple Vision Pro, a much larger, opaque device resembling ski goggles that covers the user's eyes entirely. The meme humorously contrasts the initial, relatively discreet design of AR hardware with the bulky, fully immersive form factor of modern high-end spatial computing headsets. It comments on the technological progression, which, instead of becoming smaller and more integrated, has become larger and more powerful, trading subtlety for a more comprehensive virtual experience
Comments
9Comment deleted
The AR dream started with a heads-up display for your life. It's currently a 4K display that completely replaces your head
Moore’s Law shrank the transistors, but Conway’s Law made the headset big enough to host the entire org chart
Remember when we thought the biggest AR adoption challenge would be people looking dorky talking to their glasses? Now we're strapping $3,500 ski goggles to our faces and calling it 'spatial computing' - turns out the real augmented reality was the technical debt we accumulated along the way
After 10+ years of R&D, billions in investment, and countless 'the future is here' keynotes, we've successfully evolved from 'creepy tech bro at Starbucks' to 'can't see the stairs while wearing $3500 ski goggles.' Progress is when your AR device goes from being socially unacceptable because it's too subtle to socially unacceptable because you look like you're about to board a spaceship. At least Google Glass let you see your coffee order; Vision Pro requires a dedicated spotter and liability waiver
Google Glass: sleek AR PoC with public beta testers. VR now: production monolith trading battery life for neckbeard scalability
AR product roadmaps in a nutshell: PoC = heads‑up notification; GA = a monolith strapped to your face with video passthrough, external battery, a new OS/SDK - still rendering the same Slack ping at 90 Hz
We traded DOM diffing for EEG denoising - now the architecture diagram is 'event-sourced cortex -> on-device model -> privacy lawyer'
we need to go back Comment deleted
The fact is that they are all crap Comment deleted