Change Agents: Seeing world through Meta's 3-D glasses

• Meta%27s glasses allow users to interact with the virtual world like in scenes from %27Iron Man%27 and %27Minority Report%27
• First shipment of %24700 Meta 1 glasses head to Kickstarter contributors in September
• For Gribetz%2C this is the start of a %2710-year war%27 with the likes of Apple and Google

LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The sprawling rental house perched atop the Santa Cruz Mountains offers views of Silicon Valley in all its electric glory.

Inside, more than a dozen young men and women buzz around computer monitors and white boards, sidestepping mattresses and cables as they go about the task of inventing the future according to Meta.

Soon, their leader arrives, fresh from a meditative run. Born in Israel and, until recently, a student a Columbia University in New York, Meron Gribetz, 27, wipes his brow with a T-shirt that tellingly reads, "I'd rather be in California."

He'd also rather be known as the man who replaced the desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone with the Meta 1 glasses. To hear him tell it, his 3-D wearable computer will take those sci-fi moments in Iron Man and Minority Report — scenes in which Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise manipulate data in space with their hands — and make them as routine as today's tap of a screen.

"I see myself in a 10-year war with those little companies down there," Gribetz says with a smile, pointing first at the imposing Googleplex, then at Apple's large campus in the distance.

"It may seem crazy, but look at history. IBM was as powerful as Google, and yet they couldn't beat (Apple founders) Steve (Jobs) and Steve (Wozniak). You need hungry, imaginative and foolish people in their 20s to do this, and we have that," he says. "Computing should be more natural and interactive. One day soon, we'll laugh that we were all squinting into a tiny pad in our hands."

Meta may be aiming for the stars, but Gribetz's visionary product is still taxiing on the runway.

A recent Kickstarter campaign, coupled with backing from angel investors and the San Francisco incubator Y Combinator, will allow the first batch of $700 Meta 1 glasses to ship in September. By Gribetz's account, this first iteration is mainly for ultra-early adopters.

"We are planning 10 versions down the road and will let Moore's Law take care of the rest," he says, referencing the tech-world axiom, observed in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, that computing power doubles every two years. "With the Meta 1, we'll regain the ability to have face-to-face conversations while staying connected to the virtual world of information."

After a brief demo, the current product reveals itself to be short on fireworks but long on mind-bending wow.

It remains ungainly, featuring thick, computer-packed temples connected to a flat, wide and rectangular glass, atop which sits a small box that houses two cameras. But once activated, the movie-inspired magic begins (Iron Man comes up often in a talk with Gribetz, as does Avatar).

Raise your hand into the Meta 1's field of view, and it's instantly coated in blue, allowing the glasses' computers to make that hand interact with the data projected into its field of view. Initially, Meta 1 will ship with simple 3-D applications such as chess and Minecraft, but eventually, the idea is to be able access the Internet and manipulate its information using your hands.

Although current glasses technology is "still unwieldy," its evolution from mainly government use to mass audience gear is largely just a matter of time, says Mark White, who leads the technology practice at Deloitte Consulting, which recently released a report detailing how the fieldwork done by many government agencies can benefit from augmented reality. The reality applies to a device that overlays virtual material over real while allowing an interactive, real-time experience with both.

"The government has been using AR since the '90s, but I think the day when we're all living in a Minority Report world is still pending," says White, noting the leaps still needed in battery life and computing size and power. "It's still an unwieldy proposition, but there's certainly real business value here. As for the more widespread adoption, technology and culture are big factors."

Meta's founder sees both as small speed bumps.

"Soon, these glasses will be sexy and small and what everybody wants to wear," says Gribetz, whose dark hair, piercing eyes and immense confidence recall Jobs in his pitch-master prime. Like Jobs, he's not beyond taking a shot at the competition: Google's nascent but much ballyhooed Glass project.

"I'm not building a monocle," he says. "When was the last time people wore those, the 1800s?"

To Gribetz's credit, such chutzpah is backed up with enough cerebral horsepower to have attracted both sober academics and seen-it-all investors.

"For those of us who have been working in this field for a while, we're still wondering why it's taken so long," says Columbia University computer science professor Steven Feiner, who met Gribetz more than a year ago when he was a student in Feiner's class. Today, Feiner, who has been working on interactive glasses technology since 1990, is an adviser to Meta, along with University of Toronto guru Steve Mann. "But Meron seems to have built a strong team."

That group, made up heavily of Israelis and Australians, is hard at work in this house, creating proprietary code that is essential to making Meta 1 attractive to the masses. Feiner says the company's challenges are as much sociological as they are technological.

"The face is a special place, so the appearance of the product is crucial to its acceptance," he says. "Does someone want a flashing light in the middle of their forehead? Look at Glass. Some people react in horror, saying they'd never wear it, and others say, 'Google, please take my $1,500 for a pair.' "

He concedes that Glass and Meta 1 are entirely different propositions, with the former being nestled in the upper right corner and out of one's line of sight, and the latter offering a stereoscopic view onto true augmented reality.

"Imagine repairing a car while watching how that's done in front of you," Feiner says. "Gone will be the days of going back and forth between an instructional video and what you're working on."

Some agree that moment may be closer than we think. "Due to technological innovations, this may be the time for augmented reality," says Garry Tan, a partner at Y Combinator, which has provided Meta with a modest five-figure investment and, more importantly, access to start-up mentors and group lectures given by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

"Before, the price points for these sorts of glasses didn't make sense, but with cost of batteries, memory and CPUs coming down, things are changing fast," Tan says. "Meta is aiming high; they want to change the way we interact with computers most of the time. It's perhaps the most ambitious of those (companies) working in this field."

Gribetz's journey to Meta was neither linear nor predictable. The son of a martial-arts expert father who worked in Israeli government and an architect mother, Gribetz goofed off through much of his required military stint, but his innate smarts eventually led to him joining a special intelligence unit.

"I started as a cook, and eventually, it led to a remote house, where I had to study for 16 hours a day in a basement," he recalls, running a hand across his unshaven face. "I thought we were building spaceships and I'd be flying them. That didn't happen. But that's how I see Meta, so I guess you could say eventually, I got there."

After working for a few Israeli start-ups, Gribetz got the bug. "I wanted to be Superman," he says simply.

His next stop was Columbia, to pursue a degree in neuroscience and computer science, stemming in part from a desire to know more about his own attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That led to thoughts about computers helping the visually impaired, which eventually brought him to his Meta epiphany.

"Computers on glasses? People thought I was nuts," he says. "But when I met Steve (Feiner), I realized others had been already thinking about this for a long time."

Things accelerated quickly from there, as they are wont to do for inventors. He gathered a handful of students to help his dorm room project take wing, but eventually, most quit, and Gribetz realized he needed to both commit fully and leave New York.

"There's too much stimulus in that city for creative energy to flow," he says, then waves at the trees surrounding him. "That's why I love it here. It reflects how we operate."

Gribetz cops to embracing a hippie vibe and doesn't hesitate to quote lyrics from his favorite band, the Bay Area's own Grateful Dead. Meta's CEO is a benevolent autocrat whose eyes never waver from the prize. Just ask co-founder and company "co-pilot" Ben Sand, 30, who Gribetz met in a university math class in Sydney when Gribetz took a break from Columbia.

"He's incredibly charismatic and driven and, in a healthy way, helps focus our work," says the affable Sand. "Meron simply says, 'This is the future. You need to get on board.' "

Gribetz doesn't dispute the charge. He happily announces that much of the team was up all night creating a few color combinations of Meta 1, just in time for a marketing shoot to promote the product online. He also talks proudly about the so-called Mission Impossible Week he puts every employee through, during which time he asks them to solve nearly unsolvable problems.

"Almost everyone (screws) up, but do they do it with anxiety or bravado? That's what I want to see," he says, eyes alight. "I'm looking for people who aren't obsessed with titles or money, but who want to join me to make magic."

USA TODAY's Change Agents series highlights innovators and entrepreneurs looking to change business and culture with their vision. E-mail Marco della Cava at mdellacava@usatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter:@marcodellacava.