The first big cultural moment for Meta Smart Glasses is a terrorist attack

On Sunday, the F.B.I Screenshots released From Shams Al-Din Jabbar’s glasses. Jabbar drove a rented Ford F-150 through a crowd of people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans. He brought explosive devices, but they did not explode. He died in a shootout with police. He planned it all using a stylish pair of Ray-Bans equipped with Meta cameras.

The Ray-Ban Wayfarer is an eyewear icon. These are the glasses Bob Dylan used to wear Hide his eyes. Blues Brothers She ran away from the cops in Illinois while wearing a Ray-Ban. Don Henley sang about them Summer boys. When Corey Hart said he got dressed Sunglasses at nightHe was talking about Ray Ban. A pair of giant Ray-Ban sunglasses Represents place Where musician Buddy Holly died in Iowa.

Add to that list another grim cultural moment: the man who killed 14 people and injured 35 others while staring at himself in the mirror of a rented room. He tests his new technology – a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses – which he will use to plan a terrorist attack.

The footage provided by the FBI is approximately 4 minutes long and contains no audio. It’s five different clips from multiple sources, with only the first two coming from Jabbar’s glasses. In the first, he was riding a bike in the French Quarter on Halloween. In the second clip, Jabbar stares into the mirror, his sweaty face captured by Ray-Ban glasses.

“The prescription glasses look like regular glasses but allow the user to record video and photos hands-free,” Lionel Merthel, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in New Orleans, told reporters during a news conference. After release From the footage. “It also allows the user to broadcast live through his video. Jabbar was wearing Meta glasses when he carried out the attack on Bourbon Street. But he did not activate the glasses to broadcast his actions that day live.”

The FBI video also included clips of security footage in the area showing Jabbar preparing to attack. He wears glasses in the videos. Jabbar placed two explosive devices in the streets, but they did not explode, and he died in a shootout with police after exiting the F-150. The weapons he used were purchased legally in Texas.

Meta and Ray-Ban launched their first pair of smart glasses in 2021, but the product didn’t rise in popularity until a few years later. Other companies have tried to market smart glasses before, but they failed. The most famous failure was Google Glass, a 2013 attempt by the tech giant to get people to put cameras on their faces.

the people I hated Google Glass. By 2013, many people already owned a device that could take a photo or video of anything around them, but there was still a lot of widespread resistance to the idea of ​​constant surveillance. Google Glass was bulky and obviously a camera and it put a lot of people off. Some companies even banned people who wore ugly cameras Enter their stores, bars and restaurants.

Meta’s big innovation in smart glasses is invisibility. Ray-Ban is one of the most recognized sunglasses brands in the world. The Wayfarer is so popular that it has inspired countless copycats. A passing glance at a pair of Meta glasses doesn’t register alarms in people. Unless you look closely, they’re just glasses.

Ray-Bans are iconic and cool. They are so ingrained in American culture that we don’t think of them when we see them. When Mark Zuckerberg approached the brand to host his smart glasses platform, he was borrowing the brand’s effortless cool.

You succeeded. Now anyone can be effortlessly quiet while recording everything around them. No one will blink an eye.