"The ones I've read so far, however, sound awful. Getting spammed with advertisements walking down the street? Getting background on that person you are talking to who's name slipped your memory seems like a nice thing."

Do you have a source for these?

Are you just purposely reading bad reviews of Google Glass? I have read a lot of positive reviews of it along with bad ones. However, pretty much everybody who have actually tried it ended up liking it.

I have not seen Glass serve ads and Google is actually banning developers from serving them. Also, there's no face recognition for you to figure out people's names.

As somebody who have tested Glass since last year, I think it's a very useful device.

Google has been careful about Glass, not wanting it to be a device for distraction. It is pretty evident on the Glass API where they are very careful on what they opened to developers.

I'd suggest you read reviews from people who have actually used Glass.

Useful for what? This is what I'm wondering about.

I read this engadget review:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/30/google-glass-review/

and don't see anything where I'd prefer Glass over a phone.

There was a lot of voice stuff, similar to Siri, and Google's implementation may be better, buy it's not clear to me where the heads up display adds a lot of value over voice response, or voice response plus looking at your phone.

The biggest drawback to me is the very limited, 2D controller paradigm. It sounded a lot like the kind of UIs you see for DVD players, where you mainly navigate through Left/Right (and occasionally Up/Down) buttons. Versus the touch screen paradigm of being able to select and manipulate objects directly.

To me, this leaves a very narrow range of use cases where something like Glass provides the optimal user experience. Something where you need a display, but it takes too long to take your phone from your pocket, where a two way navigation UI suffices, and having to reach up to your temple to control it is not too awkward. Or a voice UI, where something more than a voice response is needed (otherwise, phone plus Siri like capability plus audio headset would suffice).

I'm sure these applications exist. I don't think any of the applications described in the Engadget review fit the bill.

So, as a Glass tester, tell me what I am missing. What are you seeing as the big wins of using Glass over just using your phone?

I didn't mention Glass at all in my reply. I was speaking of the general attitude people take whenever something new and foreign comes along. It's an experiment... it could go really swell, or be rather disastrous. I think the risk is worth seeing what comes next.

And speaking of Glass and distractions.. can you not imagine a future where you don't have to "interact" much with Glass at all? But rather, it just kinda knows what you want and presents that information at the right time?

Also by building "better relationships with each other" I didn't mean Glass will somehow make you and your girlfriend or boyfriend connect on a deeper emotional level. I meant that humanity as a while could discover deeper empathy for each other and be able to divert resources and take action more appropriately for the benefit of humans or the whole planet. Well Glass alone isn't going to do all of that, but I think it is a tiny screw in a system that perhaps will.

You know, one of these days we'll mature enough to put a "don't show me notifications for anything less urgent than a phone call" mode in our phones, and we'll all be better off.

I already feel much better that my work email account isn't on my phone.