Let me tell you about the rumor making the rounds this week: Meta is reportedly working on a new version of its smart glasses with a built-in display, and the change might actually solve one of the device's most awkward problems. Not a technology problem, a people problem. Kit Eaton over at Inc. has a good rundown of what's brewing.

On paper, Meta's glasses endeavor has been a genuine success, and I don't say that lightly. The partnership with Ray-Ban was clever in a way I wish more companies understood. Instead of building geeky hardware and hoping people would wear it, Meta let Ray-Ban make glasses that look like, well, glasses. My granddaughter Jess tried a pair last year and her friends didn't clock them as tech at all. They just thought she'd gotten nice sunglasses.

But that camera on those glasses is also the source of most of the social friction. People see a camera pointed at them and their guard goes up, reasonably so. Nobody wants to wonder whether they're being recorded mid-conversation at brunch. It's the modern version of the unease we all felt when camera phones first appeared, except now the lens is sitting on your face disguised as eyewear.

The rumored fix? A visible display. If the next generation includes a screen that's plainly there, the thinking goes, it shifts what the glasses signal to everyone around you. A display makes the device read as a gadget you're looking at, something with an obvious purpose, rather than a stealthy recording device hiding in plain sight. I find there's real logic in that. When people can see the technology doing its job, they tend to trust it more.

I remember when Bluetooth headsets were everywhere in the mid-2000s. The ones people accepted were the ones you could see. The ones that vanished into the ear, the ones that made folks look like they were talking to invisible companions in the grocery store, those got side-eye. Same principle applies here. Visible function earns more grace than hidden capability.

Now, I do want to pump the brakes slightly. This is a rumor, not an announcement, and I've watched enough leaked specs turn into vapor to keep my enthusiasm on a leash. Meta has been iterating steadily, and a display-equipped version has been the obvious next step for a while, so the rumor has legs. But we don't know the price, the battery situation, or how bulky that display might make the frames. Those three questions will decide everything. Smart glasses live and die by whether you'd actually choose to wear them all day, and a heavier frame has sunk better ideas than this.

And there's my usual soapbox, which longtime readers can probably recite by now: technology should work for you, not make the room uncomfortable. If a visible display makes wearers more transparent to the people around them, that's a rare case where adding a feature actually adds social grace instead of subtracting it. That part is worth something.

My honest guess, for what it's worth, is that Meta gets this right eventually, because the Ray-Ban partnership showed they learned the lesson Google Glass never did: the fashion has to come before the futurism. People will forgive a gadget that looks good and behaves politely. They will not forgive a lens that watches them silently.

I'll be watching this one closely, and you can bet I'll have thoughts when Meta finally shows its hand. Probably while wearing my reading glasses, the dumb kind, no camera. Some of us still like being off the record.