Intertwixt 8: Glasses, Pokémon, Magic

A week of more glasses-wearing. A week playing Pokémon Legends Z-A with my youngest kid. Starting to get back into sleight-of-hand magic again thanks to my older son becoming curious with cards. Intertwixt is deep in October: here’s some quick interim thoughts amid very busy times.

I finally reviewed Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, although I assume my thoughts will keep evolving as Meta adds more features. They’re not made for me, literally - they won’t work with my eye prescription. At their best, they have magic gestures that feel like possible ambient interactions I’d use in everyday life, and little pop-up bits of augmented info. At worst they feel either superfluous or frustrating. Phones in our pockets, watches on our wrists, earbuds in our ears…where do glasses fit into this picture?

I still think glasses will slowly take over interim spaces, add certain assistive functions that we’ll come to rely on. There are glasses and earbuds that already assist with hearing. Glasses will do that more with vision, over time.

The Apple Watch a decade after it first arrived has added a lot of fluidity and often feels invisible now. And yet, battery life still isn’t great. Glasses could take a long long time to get where they’re really going.

The design and finesse of Meta’s glasses is getting really good, but the software and AI smarts aren’t good enough yet. Where does this all go, and will Meta be able to even extend far enough into our phones to make these glasses more useful? With Apple and Google coming in down the road, I just don’t know.

Meanwhile: Pokémon Legends Z-A is out for Nintendo Switch. I reviewed it this week with my son. Lots of people seem both excited by the fast-paced battle system, and frustrated by how samey and small the game’s one city where everything takes place is. Both are true. My Pokémon-obsessed son who played it with me (actually played most of it while I tried to get some time in too) loves it, though. He loves the fast battles, the way the Pokémon look and fight, and how many can be Mega Evolved. It’s more fight-focused, less exploratory. There’s still a lot to run around and do across Lumiose City, with some surprises too. I do wish there were more places to wander, or that Lumiose was less formal and identical-looking everywhere. My son’s obsessed with it, at least for now. 

When is Universal going to make a Pokémon park? And if they do, will we wear AR glasses to find and chase Pokémon, and catch them? AR and Pokémon, together again at last in an immersive space? Also: Pokémon Snap should be a ride there, it would be incredible magic. By the way, I’m just going to share that I won an Eddie Award for my story on Epic Universe earlier this year, and I’m going to share it here again so you can read it if you want.

And actual magic thoughts, now. Like sleight of hand, cards and coins. It’s been a hobby since I was a kid. I come back to it seasonally, every year or so. My upstairs office has a little magic library and a drawer full of old scattered magic tricks. I’ve lost some of the instructions, some of the parts. I visit it and thumb through and try to piece together some old routines again…teach an old dog new tricks. As my older son masters some impressive false shuffles and sleights, I’ve gotten back into thinking about the simple complexities of magic. I’m picking up Jiggernaut again by Mark Jenest. It’s a cups and balls routine with a bar jigger and an olive. I lost the fake olive, I need another. I ordered rubber olives from Etsy. It’s hard to find rubber olives.

I’m also learning the Tamariz Stack again, testing my brain. I’m heading to Vegas in January for CES, so I better brush up on some things. Also: I bought a fantastic trick at Tannen’s in NYC that I already love called Modern Oracle. It’s ingenious and I love mentalism…

More to come. This is an in-between Intertwixt, and October is busy. Apple just announced new M5 iPad Pro and Vision Pro devices, and Samsung teased a reveal for their mixed reality hardware next week.

And I keep scanning myself into new 10-second Sora rot. Fake drug ads? The Queen and I performing magic? Going on adventures with my friend and a puppet? My family doesn’t want to see me do this anymore. The urge is fading. Sort of.

And one last note: Snap’s Lens Fest happened this week, and I spoke with CTO Bobby Murphy about the path to AR glasses coming next year. Story to come. But Snap’s thoughts on a block-like system to mix and match AI tools for lenses and glasses has been sticking in my mind. Are we moving beyond apps?

See you next week with a lot more.