Robert Shiller won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for his financial market studies, which helped him successfully predict the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble when very few people were doing so.
Basically, we should pay attention to anything he says.
This evening, the Yale professor Tweeted his thoughts on Google Glass.
After trying it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he found them so-so (which is basically how BI feels).
But he provided a brilliant suggestion for how they could be improved: facial recognition.
Here's Shiller's Tweet:
I try on Google Glass for first time at WEF. I might like them, especially with face recognition, which would really change events like this
— Robert J Shiller (@RobertJShiller) January 22, 2014Google has banned facial recognition apps for Glass, calling them an invasion of privacy (though you can download such an app on a "jailbroken"Glass device, meaning one hacked free from Google's restrictions).
But if you think about it, facial recognition would help overcome one of the main complaints about Glass right now: that wearing them makes you look obnoxious.
What's even more embarrassing, though, is forgetting the name of someone you know you're supposed to know.
You wouldn't want Glass to allow you to look up personal details about your local barista.
But if you could commodify Glass so that it could be given out conferences like Davos, and then create an app that allows for uploading event-specific information, it seems like the privacy concerns would be negligible.