Smart glasses are only smart if we train them to be good. Then they'll be fantastic

Smart glasses face mounting bans across venues — from Seattle cafes to tech conferences like DEF CON — over genuine privacy and surveillance concerns. The Register makes the case that blanket prohibition overlooks a significant benefit: for people with visual impairments, smart glasses could provide AI-powered navigation and accessibility in spaces otherwise inaccessible to them. The columnist proposes a regulated middle ground — make glasses transparently identifiable through color-coding or QR markers, and adopt context-specific policies akin to guide-dog exceptions. Allow them where they meaningfully help, restrict them where they pose real risks. The challenge, The Register argues, isn't the engineering; it's the years of social norm-setting required to make transparent smart glasses culturally accepted.

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