Smart Glasses and Smarter Identity

Dateline: Davos, 22nd January 2025.Wandering the streets of Davos hoping to bump into the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Sir Tony Blair or whoever, I wandered past the Meta house which was prominently displaying a nice pair of spectacles with the slogan “the future is wearable” underneath them. I don’t think this is in any way hyperbolic.Subscribe nowSmart GlassesIn our book Money in the Metaverse, Victoria Richardson and I wrote that while your Apple Vision Pro will remain at your desk and replace your computer, smart glasses of one form or another will likely replace your mobile phone. Those comments may have seemed futuristic when the book came out last year, but now that Mark Zuckerberg is saying the same thing, I think that the financial sector should begin thinking about what this means for the next generation of services.Victoria and I also quoted Louis Rosenberg (CEO of Unanimous AI) predicting that a decade from now people will laugh at images of us walking down the street staring down at a small screen because virtual and augmented reality (with layers of rich virtual content overlaid on the real world) will become the primary digital gateway, with the transition beginning in the middle of this decade. Here is what Mark Zuckerberg said about this at Meta’s annual Connect developer event:I think that it’s pretty easy to wrap your head around [the idea that] there are already 1 to 2 billion people who wear glasses on a daily basis. Just like everyone…Smart Glasses and Smarter Identity