We learned more about "augmented reality" this week in patent applications from Google and Sony.

In the movie Surrogates, a tribe of Luddites emerged in society when technology became so pervasive that people could remotely control good-looking proxies of themselves. These proxies went to work, dated, and did everything humans do, except eat, drink and the like. This week we learned of patent applications by Sony and Google about optical devices that look somewhat like glasses and function like smartphones. We knew about Google Glass. Google keeps us apprised of Project Glass. We found out a bit more about Glass this week. We were not so aware of a potential competitor in the market, Sony.

Google claims that Glass will provide for "augmented reality." It may even allow you to play video games in tandem with your daily tasks. Apparently, Google engineers are wearing prototypes already in the Mountain View, California, area. We may even see consumer availability yet in 2013. Although we are not to the point where they were in the sci-fi movie mentioned above, I cannot help but think how different the daily experiences of the technophiles adopting head-mounted displays (HMD) will be from those who do not. The price of Google Glass is rumored to be about $1,500 a set. With such a reasonable price, the divide between early adopters and Luddites will only continue to grow larger with the introduction of HMDs.