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Comment by madrox | Hacker News Reader

I get where you're coming from, but I think we all forget how much we looked like dorks out playing pokemon go. The difference was we were dorks in large groups. If you and a friend are doing this together, you're no longer a dork. You're going your own way.

This is where I think Glass got it wrong. They made it feel exclusive when they should've been giving them away.

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Looking at your phone is a thing that everyone does, including the coolest people you know. Just looking at your phone is socially acceptable.

Waving a stick around and shouting fireball while wearing a goofy headset is, at present, still unacceptable.

Pokemon Go players don't look like normal people looking at their phones. They look weird, all grouped up ignoring each other.I happened upon some sort of event that attracted like 30 of them and it was unsettling - some people had 2 phones and it was silent except the sound of tapping.

After watching the HoloKit press, though, I should be thankful for silent and grouped up as opposed to running around in a crowded area being an annoying jackass.

When I worked in San Jose every workday morning I waited at the bus stop with other employees (generally no one I knew however) waiting for the Corporate Bus to arrive. Invariably everyone was engaged with their phones except me. I guess I'm old — I haven't found anything interesting on my phone to look at when I just want to pass the time.

I guess I mention this because I suspect that without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited for the bus to arrive.

Oh well.

> without phones, we might have chatted with one another, got to know one another while we waited

If I'm an employee on a company bus, I'm just as likely to be a (mostly) silent meeting attendee on a status meeting as listening to an audiobook or podcast. Sometimes I've done this and just communicated via meeting chat to give feedback/add to meeting discussion.

Without phones, I'd probably be WFH so I could attend the meeting.

This is not the form factor that will change the paradigm. The smartphone was. I agree with you that if you had your face slammed against a Gameboy as an adult in the 90s, people would have judged you. That changed real fast, but it had to be the right product/form.

Whoever gets the AR glasses that look like glasses out first wins the game.

> Just looking at your phone is socially acceptable.

Was it socially acceptable to use a brick sized phone?

Tech evolves, I am sure the size of the glasses will reduce.

An AR set that comes in pairs could be neat. Plus they could come ready out-of-the-box to interact with each other.

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