It sounds like a vision from a sci-fi movie of the 1960s; but Google is rumoured to be set to bring to the market a pair of electronic glasses on which users can watch live, streamed film and audio.
The technology, known as Google Glass, is likely to be unveiled and made available to software developers from early next year, according to a report by Reuters news agency.
Co-founder Sergey Brin showed off the glasses at a developers' conference in San Francisco yesterday.
It consists of a screen the size of a postage stamp, mounted on one side of a pair of spectacle frames, which let the wearer access their emails, view web pages, and record video.
A stunt to launch the glasses involved several skydivers jumping out of a plane while wearing the glasses, before landing on the roof of a San Francisco tower block, all the time sharing the video with conference attendees.
An eager crowd of reporters later tried out the glasses, and were shown a video demonstration which revealed that the viewer's perspective of the screen changed as they moved their heads up, down and sideways.
The glasses contain a chip for wireless networking, and are powered by a battery smaller than that of a typical smartphone, the Reuters report said.
Sergey Brin said he expected the timescale for a public release of the glasses to be less than a year after they were made available to developers.
