The smartphone has virtually brought the entire world into your hands. But having to look into the screen each time can literally be a pain in the neck.

As if that wasn’t bad enough already, there is more pain on the way for those who can’t heed the warning “don’t text and walk”.

Apparently, navigating the real and the virtual world simultaneously can quickly turn into a “bumpy” affair with everything from strangers to electric poles.

Enter Microsoft’s see-through display glasses. This cool device, seemingly pulled out of a Mission-Impossible movie, can let people have sight of what’s in front of them while their eyes gorge on Facebook or Twitter “feed”.

This invention makes use of LED nano-projector to generate images of digital content to be shown to a wearer. The light from the LEDs is then guided through sophisticated optics to be delivered through the see-through glass by total internal reflection.

The most amazing use of these glasses arises when the images displayed are related to what the wearer already sees through the glasses in the real world–known as augmented reality. Imagine being a tourist in a street of Paris and enjoying the view. With these glasses on, you can now also see names of buildings and landmarks digitally superimposed exactly onto the real objects.

Thanks to this invention, users can now simultaneously live in both the real and the digital world.

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