Happy Nice Mall

SAN FRANCISCO – Last Saturday, after a three-mile walk through the Presidio, I stood in a crowd of tourists overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. While the crowd was taking pictures of the landmark, I decided to join in.

But instead of reaching into my pocket to get my iPhone, I tapped the side of my Ray-Ban sunglasses until I heard the shutter sound. I then downloaded the photos my sunglasses had just taken to my phone.

The process is instant, simple, unobtrusive – and powered by facebookWorked with Ray-Ban. The new line of glasses, called Wayfarer Stories and unveiled Thursday, can take photos, record videos, answer phone calls, and play music and podcasts.

All of this made me feel like I was being dragged into an inevitable future, imagined by far more technical guys than me, in which the connections between the real world and the technology that supports it have almost disappeared.

For years, Silicon Valley has pursued a similar vision. William Gibson novelwhere sensors and cameras touch the daily lives and clothes of billions of people. Still, tech companies that pursued these ideas often failed to achieve them, as people avoided wearables, especially on their faces.

Remember Google Glass, the smart glasses that Google co-founder Sergey Brin introduced during the game. jump out of plane? This project fell through with bars in San Francisco at one point. glass users – also pejoratively known as “Glassholes” – from the entrance. came later Snap’s Glasses, more fashion-focused smart glasses and the innovation of recording 10-second video clips. This product has never really broken either.

Now, Facebook aims to usher in an era where people are more comfortable sharing their lives digitally, starting with what’s before them.

“We asked ourselves how do we build a product that helps people be in the moment they are in?” Andrew Bosworth, head of Facebook Reality Labs, said in an interview. “Isn’t that better than pulling out your phone and holding it in front of your face when you want to capture every moment?”

Mr. Bosworth has denied that Facebook has picked up where others left off. He added that Facebook and Ray-Ban focus on eyeglass fashion rather than the technology inside the frames.

“Glasses are a very specific category that changes your look,” said Rocco Basilico, head of wearables. LuxotticaOwns Ray-Ban and wants to expand into the wearable market. “We started this product from design, and we refused to compromise that design.”

Let’s be real for a second. Starting at $299 and available in more than 20 styles, Wayfarer glasses are facing obstacles outside of Silicon Valley’s stop-and-go history with smart glasses. Facebook has long been under scrutiny for how it happened. processes people’s personal data. Using glasses to surreptitiously film people is bound to raise concerns, not to mention what Facebook can do with the videos people collect.

I asked if Facebook’s trunk was the brand because the glasses didn’t have his name in the title. The company said it wasn’t like that.

“Facebook isn’t naive to the fact that other smart glasses have failed in the past,” said Jeremy Greenberg, policy advisor to the Future of privacy Forum, a privacy nonprofit that is partially funded by Facebook. However, he added, “the public’s expectations of privacy have changed since the days of previous smart glasses launched.”

With all that in mind, I took the new Facebook Ray-Bans out for a few days last week.

Looking closely, I saw that the bezels contain two cameras, two micro speakers, three microphones, and a Snapdragon computer processor chip. They also come with a charging case that plugs into any computer with a USB-C cable. On a full charge, the glasses can be used for about six hours.

Glasses require a Facebook account. They are also paired with Facebook View, a smartphone app. After recording the videos (Wayfarers can record up to 35 30-second videos or take 500 photos), people can wirelessly upload their content to the app where the photos are encrypted. From Facebook View, people can share content on their social networks or messaging apps and save photos directly to their phone’s device storage outside of the Facebook app.

To avoid privacy concerns, a small indicator light flashes while Passengers is recording, letting people know that they are being photographed or filmed. When you set up Facebook View, it also displays alerts asking users to “respect those around you” and asking if it “feels appropriate” to take a photo or video at the time. The app even invites people to “do a little demo” to show others they’re being recorded.

However, users may have other hesitations like me. Wayfarer has a voice-activated feature called Facebook Assistant that can be turned on to take photos and videos hands-free by saying “Hey, Facebook”.

For me this was a key point. What do people around me think when they hear me say “Hey, Facebook, take a photo”? Can I still look cool doing this? Can everyone do it?

Moreover, to help Facebook improve the assistant, people are being asked to allow the device to store transcripts of their voice interactions, which will then be reviewed by a mix of humans and machine learning algorithms. I didn’t like it and imagined that no matter how benign the voice interactions were, others wouldn’t be too enthusiastic either.

(It is possible to opt out of using the assistant, and users can view and delete their transcripts if they wish.)

Many of these privacy concerns are irrelevant to technologists, who view wearables as relentless for society. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the ultimate goal is to finally launch a fully functional pair of smart glasses. augmented realityputs a kind of virtual overlay of the world in front of people.

This idea is another step on the road to the future. metadata storeZuckerberg’s term for how parts of the virtual and real world will eventually merge and share disparate parts of each other. Maybe one day I can use a pair of Facebook AR glasses to order a digital hat for myself, order a digital hat that other people wearing AR glasses can see.

For a few moments during my walk last Saturday, I was able to grasp the vision of the future that Facebook executives were so excited about.

Driving down the many trails in the Presidio offered stunning views that I could capture using just my voice while holding my dog’s leash in one hand and my backpack in the other. Capturing the cityscape was as easy as giving a voice command with my phone in my pocket.

Better still, I looked like a normal guy wearing sunglasses, not a weirdo-faced computer wearer.

An added bonus was that no one (except my dog) could hear me say “Hey, Facebook” when I was alone on the trails. But I have to admit that in the city surrounded by people, I can keep tapping the edges of my frames to take pictures.