I always wonder if it's possible to replace all computer monitors - could you plug your glasses into your work pc and see the display as virtual monitors floating in front of you? Or is there a resolution/eye focusing at wrong distance/strain issue?
Also I think (have opined this before) could be huge for local social network - suppose you walk into a tech conference and you can see what everyone is currently interested in talking about floating in bubbles over their head. Or flirting using only show indicator if both parties show they're interested. Or a waiter can see who's ready to order/pay etc..
On the other hand, exactly getting surprised by people is one of the charming characteristics of meeting new people. The future you're envisioning scares me: we will move around in our own safe social cocoons without any need to interact with the Other. I fear that segregation will become an intrinsic part of life, being guided through society with clear guidelines on who to interact with and who not.
Interesting, yes like social news aggregation it's quite possible to end creating reality-bubbles. I still feel like bumping into interesting people by trial-and-error is less than optimal, but I am generally introverted so my number of trials may be below average.
But beyond filtering of people, there's many other social-augmentation things you could do - I'd quite like a face-recognition remind me of their name thing. Or people to annotate people with notes so I can say last time I bumped into them we were talking about X.
Kind of like storing all your IM conversations. Yes, you can continue where you left off and you can prepare for the conversation better, but what about spontaneity?
What will be the effect of knowing people's name only through your augmentation? Of a small number of people you see very often you'll learn their names (and you would have also without augmentation). But what about the large number of people in between acquaintance/friend and "have seen before"? Will we try less to get to know people as we have all the information about them we need for our purposes via augmentation? Don't we care less about people unless we see them very often? Will people become symbols of their information in our database only to activate the augmentation to recall that information?
I probably am too pessimistic (I call that realistic :-), but in the end, I wonder, do we control where our future is going with technology like this or do we wake up someday to a world we don't fit in anymore?
Also I think (have opined this before) could be huge for local social network - suppose you walk into a tech conference and you can see what everyone is currently interested in talking about floating in bubbles over their head. Or flirting using only show indicator if both parties show they're interested. Or a waiter can see who's ready to order/pay etc..