Google Glass creator: Glass not only answer to life after smartphones
Babak Parviz, a Google X director who led development of the product, talks about the beginnings of Glass, and where he hopes it will go. — SAN FRANCISCO — It seems like everyone's got an opinion on Google Glass …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years after Fast Company's inside look at Project Glass and the prototype's first public camera stunt against Charlie Rose, the Glass story has shifted from revelation to reputation repair: in March 2014 Google ran a public campaign asking everyone to stop hating on the device. This CNET interview goes further up the chain than a PR push — Babak Parviz, the Google X director who led development, himself reframes Glass as one possible answer to life after smartphones rather than the answer.
The source matters. Coming from the product's own creator rather than its press operation, and fanned out across TechCrunch, Business Insider, 9to5Google and WebProNews the same week, the quote reads as a founder-level reset of expectations around a device whose social reception had been contested at least since the 2013 reflections on being stared at in public.
First-order effects
- Google's stated position on the post-smartphone question loosens: the company is no longer staking the claim on a single face-worn device, which lowers the bar for Glass ahead of broader consumer availability.
- Early adopters and developers weighing work on Glass get explicit license from its creator to treat the headset as one experiment in a portfolio rather than a settled platform commitment.
Second-order effects
- With Glass's public image already contested going into the summer, a creator-level hedge puts pressure back on Google X to demonstrate a second act — whether a revised form factor or a different wearable bet entirely.
- Rival hardware makers gain cover: when Google's own lead declares Glass is not the only answer, the race for what follows the smartphone becomes open-ended instead of defined by Google's device.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the post-smartphone question gets answered through a portfolio of parallel hardware experiments rather than a single successor device, with programs like Glass judged as explorations rather than unit-sales businesses.
- Keeping a figure like Parviz inside Google X underscores the hardware-talent dimension of these bets: the people who built a category-defining device carry the credibility, and the option value, for whatever Google tries next.
The trend: Wearable computing is entering a portfolio phase in which even a device's own creators frame it as one experiment among several in the search for what follows the smartphone.