"At Philz Coffee in Palo Alto, Calif., a kid who looks like he should still be in high school is sitting across from me. He's wearing Google Glass. As I stare into the device's cyborg eye, I'm waiting for its tiny screen to light up."

"Then, I wait for a signal that Google Glass has recognized my face."

"It isn't supposed to do that, but Stephen Balaban has hacked it."

"'Essentially what I am building is an alternative operating system that runs on Glass but is not controlled by Google,' he said."

"Balaban wants to make it possible to do all sorts of things with Glass that Google's designers didn't have in mind."

"One of the biggest fears about Google Glass is that the proliferation of these head-mounted computers equipped with intelligent cameras will fundamentally erode our privacy."