Why we need Google Glass

What's the latest big innovation since the iPhone?

The PC becoming a tablet? The iPad becoming "mini"? Of course not. Truth is since the iPhone there was no major new technology breakthrough.

The excitement around Google Glass is huge. When I walk in the streets of San Francisco or NY City with them people stop me to ask me about it. I have never seen that many storiesabout a new product, including some hilarious ones.

You hear everything and the opposite about Glass, that it will be a game changer or failure, that they make you look ridiculous or that it's only a first form factor that will succeed when it's smaller. Privacy issues will be a huge challenge writes the NY Times. I prefer to concentrate on hundreds of exciting Glass applications that will no doubt come soon.

We need Google Glass whether it succeeds or not because we need innovation that pushes our limits and has the potential to change the way we use technology for the better.

I have a huge respect for Google, for Sergey Brin and the entire Glass team for just thinking about creating such a product and then making it a reality. They are pushing the limits of how technology integrates in our lives, how we share and learn.

Who else is trying that hard to launch a really innovative product? The iPhone and the iPad changed our World but there hasn't been a major innovation coming from Apple since then. The leading smartphone on the market is Samsung's Galaxy S which is a copy of the iPhone. Not very exciting.

Google has managed to keep the startup culture as it became a giant. It keeps launching new products and it's okay if they fail, in fact Google shuts down about 35% of all the products it launches.

No one really knows what applications will be successful with Glass but it's hard to argue that the whole thing will be a failure. It's pretty obvious that wearable computing is going to happen in many different form factors.

In order to find what wearable computing applications will grow and change our lives you need to create the products that make them possible and experiment for real with those products. Then you feel awkward wearing Glass in the street but that's okay, you're trying something new and you don't know what will come out of it, that's exciting.

The founders of Skype had no idea it would change the way we communicate when they launched it, it was a wifi sharing software. The founders of AirBNB had no idea they would become the first challenger of the hotel industry when they decided to make a bedroom of their apartment available for strangers as all San Francisco hotels were booked for a conference. I could go on and on.

I don't know where Google Glass is going, but wearable computing will happen and we need to create those products and iterate to understand their applications.

Congrats to Google for having the guts for creating Glass, I'm happy to be one of their first "explorers" and I don't care how I look like, I just put the shades on.

I can't wait to play with more Glass apps. I can't wait either to see my car drive me by itself since I'm checking email too much as I drive.

Hey Google, could you also get me to space soon? Oh wait no Elon Musk and Richard Branson are taking care of that one.