There will be a day in the not-too-distant future where you will be able, if you so choose, to wear vr glasses that look just like regular glasses, except this wearable tech will be able to see and listen to your environment in real-time. Let’s call them Vergs. The Vergs will interact with this input and provide a transparent but readable overlay of contextually relevant information that only you can see and be able to respond to your verbal and non-verbal prompts — prompts such as speaking to it of course but also, as an example, by touching your ring finger to your thumb to choose.

Let’s create a real-life example — follow me here. You have a few friends over on a Saturday night, and you’re sitting around having cocktails shooting the shit. You’re wearing your Vergs, and the conversation turns to, let’s say, the economy. Someone mentions the stock market performance so far this year, and your Vergs (always listening) present you with a compact google-style list of 4 things: the top 3 topics related to the 2025 stock market, and a 4th item that says “more”.

You touch your left middle finger to your left thumb, telling your Vergs to choose the second item on the list, which is stock market performance by sector. In response the next menu comes up with the next 4 options. The first item on the next list is “2025 stock performance for AI tech companies”. You want the data, not another menu of options, so this time you touch your right pointer-finger to your right thumb to tell your glasses to “show me” the data for that first option. After answering a prompt for “graphical or tabular”, your glasses then present you with four summary options of stock market performance of AI tech companies in 2025. You make your choice and see the data, which supports your contention that AI companies are outperforming the overall economy by a wide margin in 2025. Or, perhaps instead you’re done exploring this branch, so you touch your right pinky and thumb — the signal to the glasses to reset the interraction.

All of this took 8 seconds, and it happened while you were continuing the conversation with you friends.

It’s not that far off, people.

Oh — does it sound too intrusive to how you perceive your life? Why can’t we just be present and interract with each other without the glasses? LAWL!! Some of us were around for the advent of the iPhone. “What do we need THAT for???” And when people started wearing earbuds on the subway to talk on the phone. “How fuc*ing rude!”

Guess what? The integration of humans and technology will continue with speed and force, unabated and propelled by our lust for progress and the inability of each of us to not covet what our neighbors have. As in, “Oh, no, MY kids won’t get a phone until they’re older”. We all thought we could do it. For those of you with older kids, how did that go for you? For those of you with younger kids thinking “that won’t be us”, okay… talk to me when your kids turn 12 and tell me how that’s goin’ for you.

“I don’t want these ‘Vergs’ or anything listening to me all the time, that’s such a violation of my privacy!!”. Well — I guess there is always that cabin up in the hills of Saskatchewan for ya! Hope you don’t need electricity or running water!

Not sure if the glasses will be as ubiquitous as the iPhone. Not sure what the world will look like at all in 5 years, tbh. But I am sure of this: the next iPhone is coming. I’m not talking about iPhone v17; I’m talking about the next thing that we all want, that we all must have, that takes us to places we can barely imagine. In 2005, imagining the iPhone of 2025 would have been like imagining… I don’t even know what. There was, possibly, one person on earth who could truly imagine it, and he probably couldn’t even have dreamed what his invention would become a short 20 years later.

The glasses, if they come to be, would just be the beginning. Soon they, too, would become the “Space Invaders” of technology. In other words, your Vergs would eventually come to rest in a landfill somewhere, possibly a few meters above where my Blackberry sits today, replaced by the next generation. What does that look like?

A friend of mine recently had surgery to correct his vision. This was not your daddy’s “LASIK”; the lenses in each eye were basically melted, removed, and replaced with artificial lenses that correct near- and far- sightedness as well as astigmatism. When I first saw him post-surgery, it was as if he had witnessed the parting of the Red Sea. A miracle — near-perfect vision with no glasses or contacts. And his vision won’t deteriorate with age — he’ll have these new lenses forever.

Until, that is, he upgrades them to Vergs v17. By that time, we’ll already be asking “When is Vergs v18 coming out?”