AR won't be a thing until you don't have to wear a silly hat

Intel recently showed off their latest AR glasses. These glasses are a necessary step for AR, in that they look normal. For AR to reach mainstream consumer adoption, it has to look normal (or be undetected) when using it.

The normalcy required can be softened by a really compelling use case, but thus far these haven’t really materialized. Smart glasses that let you more discretely check your phone for incoming emails because looking at your smart watch is too obvious and rude doesn’t seem like enough to move the needle.

The promise of ambient and contextual information seems interesting, but compelling scenarios are few and far between. The most interesting (and very real) application to me thus far is for accessibility. Microsoft’s Seeing AI app for the blind and low vision communities applies technology to solve a real problem in an unambiguously good way.

How can we use these and other technologies to actually augment the human experience vs. adding to distraction or gimmicks? What super powers are worth putting on a silly hat for?