My AR glasses daydream

I love reading science fiction books. I especially love science fiction books that have a friendly and benevolent AI helping the protagonists. I really like it when the friendly and helpful AI is the protagonist. Characters in the books have implants in their heads that let them connect directly to The Feed. Many have some version of augmented reality glasses or vision that allows the friendly AI to superimpose digital overlays onto what they see. The books portray these things as a net good for humanity.

Andreas' post (opens in a new tab) has me thinking about how wrong sci-fi writers were when writing about the future and how people would use technology and their attitudes about it.

All you have to do is read the news to see many examples of people in real life being really mad about Meta glasses, "AI" especially, and technology in general.

I think the main disconnect between the imagined world and the real world is the capitalist. I personally would love to have AR glasses that worked well, but I do not trust any for-profit corporation to have my best interests in mind when they sell me the glasses. They're going to collect my data and sell it. They're going to give police access to whatever data and feeds the devices collect. They're going to prevent the glasses from doing things the big corporations don't like. And never mind the corporate side of that. It's possible someone could beat up a person wearing any sort of smart glasses out in public in today's environment because people hate those glasses so much.

If you will allow a nerd to daydream for a minute, imagine glasses that looked like normal glasses, very much in the shape and spirit of sunglasses. I imagine a digital overlay on the real world, like directions. Indicators would tell you where to go if you're trying to find something in a large office building, for example, or you're visiting a large new city. Having those instructions on the HUD instead of glancing down at your phone would be cool.

Imagine a translation overlay that could translate signs from local languages into yours. Imagine you're at a large venue, and you're trying to meet friends. Your friend could activate a "find me" mode that would let you find the big red arrow over their head by glancing around. And maybe there's the overlay map directions to your friend. Hell, any of the overlay apps on your phone would be better as an AR layer. Planets and stars, airplanes flying over, the sex offenders list! What about Pokemon Go as an AR app strapped to your face? Pretty much anything that works on a phone (opens in a new tab) will work better in AR glasses.

I've heard of developers leaving tech to go live off grid and raise farm animals. Living on a farm with pet pigs does sound like a good time. But imagine living on a farm with your pet pigs and having an app on your face that can ID the plants for you when you want. Or identify snakes by looking at them, which is basically Google Lens functionality but on steroids. That seems cool to me.