Hero to Zero. How Google Glass went from being the best thing ever to being cast aside on the family sideboard. What happened when Digital Dad, Dave Wallace, took Glass to road test with his family?
I had Google Glass up and running in about an hour - I deliberately avoided the instructions to see if it was possible to do it intuitively- give or take 20 minutes faffing about with the US app store (technology still has some geographical boundaries).
I gave Glass to my ten-year-old son who hadn't even heard about Google Glass. Within about 5 minutes he had got them working and was showing me how to take pictures with winks and basically giving the family tutorials.
When I first tried Glass in San Francisco about 12 months ago, the voice command was a bit temperamental and it didn't understand my English accent. But now, I have been impressed at the voice commands. It's worth remembering that they connect with your emails and Google plus so might be inadvertently putting up pictures publically without realising it, so be warned.
My teenage daughters initially thought they were fantastic but desperately unfashionable. After a few days of being excited about the novelty of Glass - we were all scratching our heads and thinking - what next? So they just sat on the sideboard while we thought of ways it could be useful. When friends of the children came over - there was momentary excitement but then they went back on the sideboard.
My own predictions are that Glass is really useful in B2B use, for example in the doctors surgery. So the days of doctors Googling your symptoms maybe over as they can have access to data a little less obviously. Google Glass will really come into its own for people who need access to large amounts of data from doctors to librarians etc.
You're certainly not going to be using Google Glass for driving - let me tell you, its hard enough concentrating on the road as it is - the last thing you need is to be focusing on your second screen.
But did I feel like a Glasshole? Yes, with the sunglasses on top - even more so. Glasshole is a perfectly apt description. I'm a bit embarrassed of wearing them out, not quite as much as my teenage daughters, but still enough.
The only way they will become mainstream is if they become more fashionable but that means becoming less obvious they are Google glasses. As a dad, I don't know how I feel about that. I don't want people taking pictures of my kids without them knowing about it. There are all sorts of considerations that need to be made.
There are reports of Glass being ripped off in San Francisco. Can't see that happening now. In the UK we're just embarrassed of wearing them, which is a very British response.
So in theory Glass is great but the reality is that after a while we all got bored. As my youngest said: "What's next Dad?"