> AFAIK nobody has declared that the purpose of Glass is to "free us from having to look at [oure] phone[s]".

Here's a quote on that topic from Isabelle Olsson, lead industrial designer for Google Glass:

"One day, I went to work — I live in SF and I have to commute to Mountain View and there are these shuttles — I went to the shuttle stop and I saw a line of not 10 people but 15 people standing in a row like this," she puts her head down and mimics someone poking at a smartphone. "I don’t want to do that, you know? I don’t want to be that person. That’s when it dawned on me that, OK, we have to make this work. It’s bold. It’s crazy. But we think that we can do something cool with it."