Productivity Future Vision - StumbleUpon. A beautiful but creepy vision of the "smart glass" future. Two things: First, considering the touchscreen maps at my local shopping centres ae almost always down or only half work, and smeared with public finger goop, the maintenance factor would be huge in this kind of world.
They'd always need constant repairs, cleaning, and upgrading. And the other thing is, though the touchscreen concept works okay at a small handheld level, if every single button you push has no tactile response, that satisfaction of a physical reaction to pressing a button, it can get quite exhausting for the fingers. Typing, which would be slowed down on a vertical or flat horizontal surface anyway, would be very painful to tap away at, with your fingertips repeatedly hitting solid glass with no give.
I can see the small scale, and informative aspect, like temperature gauges on mirrors and windows, or dashboard info on car windscreens, but this kind of epic interactivity just wouldn't work. Will Smart Contact Lenses Be the Bluetooth Headsets of the Future? Imagine instant access to the latest market segment information at a meeting, or seeing the fourth quarter earnings for a company in (literally) the blink of an eye.
Although it might sound like something from a science fiction novel, scientists at the University of Washington are working on solar powered contact lenses with transparent LEDs embedded onto the lens. This technology could be applied in countless ways, from health monitoring to text translation right in front of the wearer's eyes. In 2006, my team at SKD designed a very similar concept for our "Cautionary Visions" project.