Google glass released in February 2013 and "I, glasshole" was written in December of 2013 which was a good formulation of ideas that had been floating in the tech sphere for a while. That's less than 1 year into their run that "Making myself look like a cyborg obviously makes people around me uncomfortable" was a plainly accepted fact.

I think wearable tech is awesome and was interested in this (I was much more interested in the earlier pendant projectors though) but the fact that you're constantly reminding people they're being recorded without their consent is just a big issue. The meta glasses themselves might suffer a similar fate if hacks to disable the LED become commonplace. Much like Sony's (I think?) nightvision cameras if stuff like this gets abused by creeps it will isolate you to use it yourself even for perfectly reasonable intentions.