The MIT Roots of Google Glass

This week's Boston Globe column focuses on a group of MIT students who developed some of the first wearable computers — and are now working on Project Glass at Google. Glass is an effort to develop a light-weight, wirelessly-linked, wearable information display. Google took the wraps off late last month, with a demo for software developers in San Francisco.

One of those MIT alums, Thad Starner, is now a technical lead at Google, and alsoprofessor at Georgia Tech.

Starner told me last week that his initial motivation for developing a wearable computer was that he wanted to be a better student: "I was spending $20,000 a year at MIT, and I wasn't remembering it. I decided to make a system that would let me take notes while I was also paying attention in class, and better retain things."