I caught a post over the weekend from Boing Boing that shows the power and potential of augmented reality and wearable computers in a way that I’ve yet to see from the also-impressive offerings found on the iPhone and the Droid devices:

"Rather than waiting for that time to come, I want people to make their own system. Why not?," Mistry says in an article on Rediff Business. "People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software…give them basic key software layers…they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything."

I’ve been pining for something like this for ages – and the only missing component is a retinal display unit.

The talk on the video originally came out of the TED conference this year (not surprising), and the price point for this do it yourself unit was said to be between $300-400 (unbelievably surprising).

As soon as I can convince my wife that our next $400 needs to go into this project, I’ll let you know how it works first hand.

The convergence effect of such a device is obvious, though, if you’ve followed any of our bleeding edge reports at all. We’re very quickly entering an age where not only are we are ambiently aware of our social graph’s status when we’re locked into our computing experience, but will be offered that same ability through the natural course of our lives.

Technology like this merges the best of the concepts of cloud, social media, and Web 2.0 in a way that’s both practical and undeniably cool.