Thoughts About Meta Connect’s 👓 Product Announcements

Shared this on a few other spaces, so it made sense to also note here. Pasted without much of an edit.

• excellent updates to the Meta-RayBans from a specs end. These have been a sneaky buy for many.
• the two Oakley models are solid. The HSTN remind me of the exact use case my Snap Spectacles have served for years
• the Oakley Meta Vanguard will make some run/hike/bike shops step up their game in terms of selling connected 👓 and the Garmin/Strava integration is 🤌🏽
• I’d love to see bike computer head units connect directly to the Vanguard 👓
• The Meta RayBan Display 👓 def stole the show. At their $800 price and Sept 30th availability, I’d expect quite a few folks cosplaying “Sayans with scouters” by Halloween. The use of transition lenses by default mirrors my usual 👓 and also how I speced my Brilliant Labs Frame 👓 (and the upcoming Halo)
• the EMG wristband to control the Display 👓 is slick. Looks easy to learn, and is almost invisible tech. Def makes me long for similar with my TapXR ⌨️
• the “agentic AI” video was well done. Reminded me too much of how I desired to use the Humane AiPin (and how I hope folks are using Rabbit R1 now with RabbitOS2). Makes sense, even if there’s some potential “dread” to what admin behaviors folks need to add to their daily
• failed demos, nah… yea things didn’t work, but overall this was either going to be not polished enough, or too polished. The errors in presenting lend some validity to the approach. Now, there’s some software tweaks def needed, and I saw quite a few 🫤 bits, but what was shown was decent.

Lastly, I have this duality about my Frame 👓 where I want to create some adversarial aspect to it. I’d love for it, or similar hardware to emit a scrambler signal for the times I don’t want someone else’s 👓 (or camera wearable) to be taking me in. A “Black Mirror future” of this would be folks paying Meta (or whomever) to be obscured in another’s wearable recordings. We aren’t far from this… and I can see the small flyers at shops, and the HR terms at businesses restricting 👓, even for those of us who wear them, because of the lack of agency/agreement in being recorded/re-viewed. This part makes Meta’s announcements (last night) hit the side of leadership folks “doing life with AI” aren’t paying as much attention to. And they should… lots of 👁️ on more stuff isn’t just about being 😎 Read the TOS folks, then buy & use connected 👓 with discretion.