Google Glass: Once you live with it, will you be able to live without it?

Google Glass makes its debut in Seattle this weekend at SoDo Park, where you can try it for yourself.

It’s a computer mounted on an eyeglass frame with a camera and a prism that beams information directly onto your retina, and so far only about 8,000 so-called “Glass Explorers” have them.

Dr. Heather Evans is one of the beta-testers and she let me wear her pair of Google Glass for about 10 minutes. I found that I could use my brain to superimpose the live face I was looking at with the picture being projected into my eyes so I could, sort of, mentally go back-and-forth between the two.

And as I was there talking, I’m seeing a display of the current temperature, The New York Times, apps, and Evans’ live Twitter feed.

And when I took them off, I kind of missed them.

Evans uses them when she’s on the job as a trauma surgeon at Harborview Medical Center.

She said the possibilities are endless: She uses Glass for real-time video communication with a paramedic or with a hospital in one area of the world or another area of the state.

“We’re the Level 1 trauma center for four states. Imagine a time when we would be able to know everything about a patient that needs to be transported to us. Not just the information, but also see that patient before they get transported, and see that patient during the transport,” said Evans.

But when Evans isn’t in surgery, she uses her Google Glass on her off time, too.

“When I’m not in the operating room, I do really like to use it for texting and directions the most. And to capture pictures when I wouldn’t be fumbling with my phone to take it. You can either wink or tell it to take a picture or squeeze a shutter on the frame.”

While the owner of the Google Glass can calibrate the camera to take a photo when that specific person winks, she said she’s not worried about privacy issues.

“You can tell if somebody goes to squeeze the shutter, it’s a little more subtle if you go to wink and take a picture,” said Evans.

Chelsea Maughan is from the Google Glass team and I asked her about the dive bar in San Francisco that banned any customer from wearing Google Glass for looking too geeky.

“I haven’t been to the bar that you’re referencing. What I can say is that 9 times out of 10, whether I’m in California, or New York, or Seattle, people are really excited about it. They have a lot of questions. And because this is a product that hasn’t been launched for consumers yet, the whole idea of the explorer program is to get the product out in the wild and get feedback about what people like and don’t like,” said Maughan.

She’ll be at SoDo Park Saturday and Sunday 10am-6pm to demonstrate Google Glass.

I think it could be dangerous to get used to these other things going on right in front of you and when you take the Google Glass off – something is lacking. It might feel like if you forget your smart phone at home.

Listen to the full Google Glass interview on this week’s edition of the RossFire podcast:

MyNorthwest.com’s Alyssa Kleven contributed to this report.