We’ve all seen the parodies. More than we can count, at this point. Still, all the attention Google’s Glass project has gotten can be interpreted as giddy excitement for the cyborg-vision we’ve all wanted since childhood. It’s sad, then, to learn that the current sets of Glass glasses that have been shown off by Sergey Brin and Sebastian Thrun are nowhere near what the announcement video for the project made them seem to be.

Rafe Needleman, a writer for CNET, points out that Google Glass will only display information on the edge of a person’s view. Specifically, information is provided at the top of a person’s line of sight. Needleman cites a Google spokesperson who isn’t Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social, as confirming the news. He reports being told that it is too early to even know what functions the devices will have or what type of UI they will use.

It’s comforting to know that text messages won’t be popping up in front of our faces as we walk down the street. All the same, it’s disappointing that the future-world where an augmented, virtual worldview is provided and layered over every real-life object is still years away. The prototypes, it turns out, are actually prototypes. Sometimes Google can be such a tease.

(via CNET)