17-03-2025
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Bets Meta Can't Copy High-Tech Glasses
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Evan Spiegel sees something others don't: a neon-red flag, digitally projected on the lenses of the augmented-reality glasses he's wearing. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Snap Inc. is at Clover Park, next to the company's headquarters in Santa Monica, California, sporting the new Snap Spectacles. Spiegel was originally supposed to demo a basic chess app, but he decides instead that he wants to challenge me to a more complex game of capture the flag.
He guides me through the process, telling me to tap a button that appears through my own Spectacles lenses on my hand—visible to me, invisible to others—and then, from the menu now floating before my eyes, to select the app by pinching the air. We stake our 3D flags near a tree and a picnic table, set up rival bases and prepare to sprint around, using our palms to fire blasts of light at each other like Iron Man.
