Prescription Lens Judgement
If I do prescription lenses into the Brilliant Labs Frame, does this mean that the experiment to see if these could replace (or augment) prescription lenses is a failure?
Is just considering prescription lenses a judgement of a failed experiment?
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Saw a few renewed takes on Meta’s Orion and Snap’s latest Spectacles. Ended up throwing on YT one of them. Grabbed my Brilliant Labs Frame glasses, and let the ideas wash over me a bit.
I’m hearing Meta’s Orion as the “demo that never dies” kind of thing that some of our design/UX folks get stuck in. Not that Meta isn’t intentional to bring this to market… but the “demo culture” that enabled or empowered it to be shown well before it could launch.
Brilliant Labs, on the other hand did a thing often mentioned by a friend - pushed past the noise and asked directly: so what about this is useful and functional enough to ship and support now? Ok, do it and stop talking
I’m scribbling thoughts on my Frame experiment and finding that voice and Meta’s demo a really interesting juxtaposition…
…there’s so much excitement about the novelty of these glasses, but very little “what is useful and functional enough to be used now?”
AR, XR, and MR aren’t taking a disability and making it fashionable. If anything, in the context of “glasses are the way,” they are reversing the very bit which made glasses normalized. They are trying to graft FOMO into the lenses, so that those who miss out are deemed disabled.
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Do people really portend to simply transfer the barrage of attention-pings from a screen which can be pocketed or covered with a sleeve to one which will require removing visual capabilities? I don’t think so. Same with others.
Life isn’t a museum, no matter what Instagram/Pinterest/TicTok have put forth. And a failure of broadcast media can indeed be pointed to people being tired of being pulled by the nose to mediated experiences. Do people like stories? Yep. Movies and compelling story content will continue to be a part of who we are. Needing glasses to make that story accessible? Well, it was a niche in the 1980s with the 3D glasses revival; it may end up also being the case.