| Hey all, it's Kurt. Facebook Inc. made me a little uncomfortable this week when it held a press briefing to show off some new augmented-reality technology. At first glance, it sounds pretty awesome. The company is building a wristband that measures the body's electrical signals so you can use your hand as a controller for a digital screen. Imagine "clicking" on an app by simply touching your thumb and index fingers together, or typing on an invisible keyboard. Facebook imagines that one day you'll wear this wristband along with a pair of AR glasses, and you'll control features of the glasses with the flick of a wrist (literally). Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg believes AR glasses could be the next great computing platform after the smartphone—it's a future Facebook has been building toward.  Facebook is building a wristband to accompany its future augmented reality glasses. The wristband will allow people to interact with the glasses without a controller or keyboard. Source: Facebook Inc. Even though the product is still years away, seeing the demos this week made this futuristic concept suddenly feel eerily close to home. While I was impressed, I was also a little unsettled. What stood out the most to me about this AR future was privacy—or rather, a lack of privacy that seems to come with using AR glasses for everyday tasks. In order for your AR glasses and wristband to work most effectively, the device needs to know a lot of other things about your life. It needs to know what kind of room you are in—are you standing at a stove top? Watching TV? Brushing your teeth? It also needs to know who else is in the room. That's because Facebook says these AR glasses must anticipate your needs to give you personalized options for things to do. In one of the demos, a Facebook executive described a scenario where you're cooking, and the glasses set a timer for you when you reach a certain stage in the recipe. It could detect the need for a timer based on your movements, but also by knowing where you're standing and what you're looking at. "Ultimately this is a vision of a fully adaptive system that directly blends the digital into your real world allowing you to move seamlessly between the two with minimal effort," said Tanya Jonker, a research science manager at Facebook. It's possible that AR glasses will eventually change our lives in much the same way smartphones did. Facebook is not the only company working on technology like this. Apple Inc., Google and Snap Inc. are also building glasses, or have done so already. Digital voice assistants and smart speakers once felt intrusive, but have become a staple in millions of households. Will AR be the same? Google Glass, the internet giant's early foray into computer-powered eyewear in 2012, suffered a serious privacy backlash. But the company is still selling the technology to businesses. Whoever wins out, it's clear we will be entrusting that company with an incredible amount of information. This hasn't been Facebook's strength, which is one reason the company is showing off its work so early. "Part of why we're sharing this," said Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer, "is to sort of work through all of the important concerns people have." I imagine there will be lots. —Kurt Wagner | 
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