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It is a universally accepted truth that any art history buff must see the Sistine Chapel in Rome. It is less accepted procurement Getting there from the Vatican Museums will likely take longer than Frodo Baggins’ entire journey to Mordor.
Apparently, a well-prepared art lover can have a decent or, at least, a working audio guide to help navigate the approximately two to three hours it takes to traverse the countless statues of naked marble men and Greek amphoras. I was No well prepared. My family’s tickets were purchased at the last minute. I made the short stick with a solo self-guided tour during one of the last slots of the day.
I had a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, a T-Mobile international data plan, and an iPhone 17 with a dangerously low battery. Imagine my surprise when I actually had one. Great Time.
Twenty-five days ago, I arrived in Italy as a dry straw. Technically, the holidays had started. Chores completed, bags packed, and cat sitters arranged, I should have been able to relax. Instead, I spent the nearly eight-hour flight to Rome pondering my recently published Meta Ray-Ban Display review and the mini existential crisis it caused.
In short, the glasses were an impressive piece of engineering. I felt conflicted about the real opportunities offered by the technology, along with the privacy and cultural questions raised when using them in my daily life. I was curious to see how well the glasses’ live translation feature worked. As soon as I landed in Rome, the glasses came out.
The irony is that live translation is kind of useless. (Hence why I didn’t mention them last week.) adapter.) I’m sure this would have been fine in a face-to-face conversation, but it almost never happens when you’re a tourist in a tourist area. Crosstalk is inevitable, public announcements are often distorted, and on my viewing No Italian face? Experienced retail and hospitality workers usually make a mandatory sum good morning And changed to English.
So, when my audio guide suddenly died just ten minutes into my visit to the Sistine Chapel, I wasn’t expecting much. If you have seen a naked marble man… have you seen need How about knowing how the next 20 are infinitely different in the next 1.86 miles? Still, Meta specifically called for using AI glasses to contextualize art in a museum in my hands-on demo. Here was an opportunity to test it in the wild, away from the railings of a corporate demo.
This was not right. On a special marble statue, where she a wisdom LTE’s Meta AI told me I was looking at Belvedere Torso. Before he could explain anything else, my signal went out. Still, I felt relieved from my frustration by the labyrinthine layout of the Vatican Museums. And if the Vatican will one day invest in Wi-Fi (it likely won’t for security reasons), I can see it making for a less cumbersome audio guide.
When my sister-in-law texted to ask if I was close to the chapel—her tour group left a half-hour before I could go in—I was delighted that I could see her message, look up, take a photo of the frescoed ceiling, and send a text. It took three tries to send, but 15 minutes later, I got a message that read, “Oh, you’re not close at all.”
But the real “fun” was in taking short videos and narrating my experience which I then sent to a friend at home. Was I talking to myself while occasionally glancing sideways? Yes. Also I kept my phone in my bag. I wasn’t looking at all this capital A Art through my phone, like every other tourist standing between me and Michelangelo’s greatest work.
When I finally reached the Sistine Chapel, a guard yelled at me as I attempted to use my phone camera to zoom in on the details. Phones and photos, I learned when she tapped a sign, were banned in the chapel. Fair enough. Still, guard was not I was wearing meta glasses. Craning my neck back, I spent 10 minutes using the glasses to zoom in and count all the expertly painted cherub butts I could find. It may seem strange to travel across an ocean and deal with an entire maze Now! For him. But, Michelangelo was one of my mom’s favorite artists, and when I was a grumpy kid in art museums, we made a game of counting Renaissance butts. (I’d rather die than explain everything to an angry museum guard.)
A part of me scolded myself for indulging in the kind of glass-hole behavior I expressed concern about in my review. The other part of me laughed, because I was jetlagged and, well, angel butts. When it was time to leave, I took off the glasses and felt satisfied.
The Sistine Chapel experiment, however flawed, was like a light bulb going on in my mind. Although the technology has come a long way, smart glasses often don’t make sense to wear all day, every day. Battery life is very short. The glasses are too big, clumsy and heavy. But when you are wearing them for a limited period of time for a specific purpose, the flaws don’t matter that much.
traffic for The Verge Office, I find it scary to record video or take photos. New York City’s grid system is also so logical that you hardly need AR walking directions. In my neighborhood or in my normal routine, I rarely have questions that I ask Meta AI. But traveling in Italy, where I never knew how to get there, and crossing the road is a deadly game of Frogger? Those directions to walk with your head held high were a game-changer. And, whenever I reached a destination, they would go back into the charging case.
Later, on a tour of the Pompeii ruins, the glasses came in handy when listening to me talk. Tapping your fingers to take a photo is inherently less distracting. Of course, sometimes I have to take out my phone to really capture the essence of a stray cat. But it was not beyond my understanding that whenever my call came, I would follow the group. Then, once the tour was over, I took off the glasses and doing so made me feel lighter.
The main thing was the freedom to put the glasses away.
Meta and other companies in this space often market these devices as general-purpose devices that can replace your phone. And maybe one day it will be true. But TodayI’m amazed at how any cultural doubts I had were resolved by tying them to a temporary use case. In Italy, whenever I put on display glasses, I enter tourist mode. When I took them off, I was me again. It didn’t matter that things were imperfect, partly because it was just one of the many travel tools I had in my arsenal.
Now that I’m back home, I feel pressure to use glasses, whether it makes sense or not. Partly for work, partly because why do I have these if I’m not trying to replace my phone?
But what if these gadgets don’t work? to pass The legacy of the smartphone, general in its purpose and mass market in its appeal? What if we allowed them to have specific, niche devices – ‘occasional’ gadgets that you probably rent rather than own? Maybe you rent tourist smart glasses from a travel agency before a trip, or your company provides a pair if it’s relevant to your job. Stadiums and concert venues may allow you to rent a pair for an event. Theaters and opera houses may use them to subtitle foreign works. And when your day is over, you go back to your phone.
Undoubtedly, this is a solution to its problems. Long before the current consumer push for AI glasses, smart glasses makers turned to enterprise in the wake of Google Glass crashing and burning. We live in late-stage capitalism, and it’s an arguably more complicated, nightmarish path to profitability. Some of these use cases have already been explored, and the expense, lack of long-term commitment, price, and heavy hardware have never increased. And, even if smart glasses were limited to these use-specific cases, it only takes a tech-savvy shock to reopen the Glasshole and privacy debate.
Still, it’s not lost on me that the most positive experiences I’ve had with smart glasses came when they didn’t have to be a “do-everything” device.