A New Museum Exhibition Shows The Evolution of Interactive Wearable Technology

Blog|21 Okt 2026|

Interactive extended reality technology is everywhere in popular culture today, so it would be natural to assume it emerged in the last decade or so. But while AI glasses and virtual and augmented reality headsets have only recently become mass-market commercial products, the DNA of natural, personal, and seamless computing hardware dates back to the 1960s. 

That rich and exciting heritage is now on display at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, Calif. Meta is proud to be a founding sponsor, along with Google and Applied Materials, of CHM’s Extended Reality: Visions of the Future exhibition, running now through March 28, 2027. The exhibit builds on our Project Aria collaboration with CHM to develop an AI-powered museum tour experience that makes museums more accessible to everyone.

When you visit this 800-square-foot immersive experience, you’ll explore XR’s nearly 60 year history that started with the Sutherland Head-Mounted Three-Dimensional Display in 1968 and continues through today’s state-of-the-art AI glasses. All told, the exhibit features dozens of production and prototype devices including famous products like the Oculus Rift CV1, Meta’s Project Aria research glasses, Google Glass, Magic Leap, Microsoft Hololens, and many, many more.

Getting Hands-On With History

The exhibition is about more than celebrating the many essential developments that led to today’s XR devices. It’s also about showing the step-by-step evolution of wearable technology from massive and expensive hardware to today’s slim and light wearables designed for everyday living, learning, and creating. 

We’re excited to help manifest that vision and for visitors to get hands-on with two of our latest wearable devices during the upcoming demo days on October 24, November 7, November 21, December 19, and January 2, 2027. During each of those three-hour sessions (from 1pm to 4pm PT each demo day), Meta product experience specialists will guide visitors 13 years of age and older through a special museum mode experience on Meta Glasses and an origami-folding experience on Meta Ray-Ban Display.

After borrowing a pair of Meta Glasses, visitors can explore CHM in a new way with museum mode*, an audio-first experience that combines expert-curated storytelling with conversational AI. CHM is the first museum partner for museum mode.

Here’s how it works:

• Pick up your Meta Glasses from an on-site specialist when you enter the exhibition.
• Examine any featured object’s placard, and your Meta Glasses will recognize it and automatically play its story, narrated by CHM's expert curators
• Want to learn more? Press the glasses’ temple to ask a follow up question. Meta AI responds through the glasses’ open-ear speakers so you can keep exploring hands-free.

Curator narration and Meta AI use distinct voices, so you always know whether you’re hearing CHM’s curated story or an AI-generated response.

We’re committed to building technology that opens doors for everyone, so museum mode leverages our ongoing accessibility research with blind and low-vision communities to make exploring the CHM collection fully independent and hands-free.

For blind and low-vision visitors, there are no screens to read, information to enter, or signs to locate. They simply face an object, hear its history in rich detail, and ask Meta AI any follow-up questions that might help enrich their personal understanding of each object in the collection.

The history of extended reality demonstrates how today’s wearable technology is laying the foundation for the next era of computing. To understand where it’s going it’s important to know where it came from. We can’t wait to hear what you think of the exhibition.

* Meta Glasses used for the museum mode experience scan placard or QR codes for exhibit recognition only. All camera capture features are disabled, no data is recorded, and the devices will be factory reset after each use.