God forbid we go one single year without Mark Zuckerberg trying to strap some dumb sh*t to our faces…

Meta is back at it, torch in hand, ready to set another $70 billion of Reality Labs money on fire. At its Connect event next month, Zuck is expected to unveil Hypernova… a pair of $800 smart glasses with a tiny display jammed into the right lens, plus a wristband that reads your hand’s electrical signals so you can control the thing without screaming “Hey Meta” like a lunatic in public.

(Source: Giphy) 

On paper, it’s progress… I guess.  In practice, it’s another step in Zuck’s long march to make everyone look like an underpaid NPC in his half-finished metaverse. For more context, the display isn’t AR, not really. It’s a 20-degree field-of-view postage stamp that shows texts, calls, maybe some photos if you squint hard enough. It’s limited, and Meta knows it… but that’s not the point. The point is to keep the tech barely functional so people don’t notice it’s heavier, thicker, and creepier than the Ray-Bans that sold 2 million pairs.

(Source: CNBC) 

And yes, it’s coming straight from the monopoly that is EsslorLuxottica. Because if anyone knows how to convince you to pay luxury prices for plastic frames made in a Chinese factory, it’s the company that controls every pair of glasses you’ve ever tried on in an airport.

With that said, the real circus of Zuck’s new fetish is the wristband. Built on tech from Meta’s 2019 CTRL Labs acquisition, it uses sEMG sensors to read the electrical signals from your muscles. In theory, you can twitch a finger and the glasses obey. In reality, devs are already sweating. Too loose and it doesn’t work. Long sleeves? Forget it. Wrong arm? Guess again. The whole thing sounds less like the future of human-computer interaction and more like the calibration nightmare you’d expect from a device designed by a company that can’t give avatars legs in the metaverse. 

(Source: CNN) 

So why now? Well, Meta has sold 2 million voice-only glasses, but… Hypernova is the first shot at putting a real display in front of consumers, and the wristband is the data collection machine for future AR. Every flick, twitch, and failed attempt at scrolling through texts is training data for the “true” AR glasses Meta swears are coming someday. 

Of course, Zuck diehards are probably hot and bothered over this new “feature” already. But in the grand scheme of things, Hypernova won’t change the world. What it will do though, is buy Zuck some runway and give him another chance to prove Reality Labs isn’t just a bottomless money pit, even though it absolutely still is. The only question is: Will investors buy the narrative? Only time will tell. 

(Source: Giphy) 

For now though, keep your eyes on more details about Zuck’s Connect event next month, and place your bets accordingly. Until next time, friends…

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Meta as mentioned in the article.