Segways did not fail because they made you look dorky. They failed because they were an extremely expensive toy that didn't solve anyone's problems and were bulky enough that they made new problems when people tried to use them.
Segway needed early adopters to drive the price down, but couldn't get early adopters in part because nobody wanted to be the first person seen riding a Segway to work.
Speeding up intra-city commuting without having to walk or ride a bike obviously would be awesome. When people pointed this out back when the Segway came out even the fattest nerds were saying they were being lazy, but the truth is most technology helps people be lazy, so it seems to me the dork factor played a huge role in preventing early adoption.
a range which meant you were going to need to schlep it into your apartment/office to charge every day
taking up an incompressible 2-3 persons worth of space in an elevator/hallway/sidewalk/cubicle
no parking infrastructure
little/no ability to navigate grass and probably highly recommended not to drive off a curb
no extra carrying capacity
plus extra speed is either useless on a crowded sidewalk or makes you a giant dick on a crowded sidewalk and also useless if you're with some one who doesn't have that speed.
Yeah, if heads-up computing fails in this iteration (and I suspect it will in this iteration) its not going to be aesthetics it will be because no one can build a compelling use case for the price. Privacy/Social-Contract concerns will probably worsen that, but I really doubt they will be sufficient on their own.
Because I'm a bad person, I occasionally ask Google Glass wearers what they do with them. I get answers, but none I'd call a good answer. But because I'm not a terrible person, I don't as the obvious followup question: "That's worth $1500 to you?"
