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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, am I the only one who really, really wants the AR glasses from Daemon by Daniel Suarez? I would very much like a pair of glasses that records information, helps me to recognize faces, and bring information further into my reality.

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I read Daemon in middle school and became so obsessed with augmented reality that I essentially devoted the next seven years of my life to working towards making it happen: attending conferences, conducting research, and starting an AR hardware company.

So no, you're not the only one :)

Also, unrelated to my previous obsession with AR, I have prosopagnosia, so having glasses that could tell me who I'm looking at would make a major improvement to my life.

>devoted the next seven years of my life

Was that a while ago? Or is that still what you're doing?

I'm a senior in college now. This was something I worked on from the beginning of high school until this May.

What happened in May?

Right? Don't leave us hanging!

I was curious as well. Looks like he worked on Mira, an AR company that is working on shipping hardware that works with your phone. Reading the about section (https://www.mirareality.com/about), it's kind of funny, lists only three founders, who are not him, in the copy, but the photo at the top of the page has 4 founders. Looked like it could be an interesting product, though I'm sure the right AR glasses that customers will purchase need to be far less bulky.

The fourth person in the picture is Evan, our CTO. He wasn't a founder.

Cool. Thanks for the clarification. I assumed it was you since you weren't in the copy ("founded by Ben Taft, Matt Stern, and Montana Reed"). Any reason you left the AR world when it seems to be heating up now?

I left the company to pursue other interests

For a moment you got me excited thinking that such a thing actually exists, givens today's technology wouldn't be actually rocket science, until I realized its a book :)

https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731

If they could tell you when did you see this person in the past and recognize from your contacts, and if it didn't "sync to cloud" or that crap, I'd buy three just for gifting.

Unfortunately, it's just not realistic right now, I think. The Spectacles battery life lasts less than 30 minutes of recording, and they don't even have a screen.

Sounds useful, but I'm not comfortable with the idea that anyone can recognize my face and pull up information about me by virtue of wearing something on their face. Sounds a little too much like Black Mirror to me.

I wonder how many other people feel the same way. My belief is that if you don't recognize me, you should have to ask me for information about myself. I'd rather not any random stranger be able to just know.

Ok let's try this: What if wearable cameras the police are using do this? What if I mounted a phone around my neck with the camera facing out, and used it to record everything it saw, and then compiled my own database of facial features, comparing, recording, etc. [0] The problem is that in public you have no expectation of privacy. Same with private communities (and some private citizens)[1] using license plate readers. I think eventually we're going to reach a point where facial recognition, and public recording will be omnipresent, in private hands, and we either ban cameras in public, or...stop going outside.

[0]. https://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potent...

[1]. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/new-o...

Daemon is a great series with interesting tech ideas. That's exactly what i hoped we could be moving towards when i got google glass. Still waiting for something capable.

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