The Next Big Thing Is Still … Smart Glasses

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg stood on a stage in California holding what appeared to be a pair of thick black eyeglasses. His baggy T-shirt displayed Latin text that seemed to compare him to Julius Caesar--aut Zuck aut nihil--and he offered a bold declaration: These are Orion, "the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen." Those glasses, just a prototype for now, allow users to take video calls, watch movies, and play games in so-called augmented reality, where digital imagery is overlaid on the real world. Demo videos at Meta Connect, the company's annual conference, showed people playing Pong on the glasses, their hands functioning as paddles, as well as using the glasses to project a TV screen onto an otherwise blank wall. "A lot of people have said that this is the craziest technology they've ever seen," Zuckerberg said.