Today’s must-read comes from Thomas de Zengotita, who suggests in a post for The Atlantic that Google Glass may not be as well-received as some predict in part because it conflicts with what we love about the traditional screen. Opining that opposition to Google Glass appears strong to “an outside observer,” de Zengotita notes that the screen on TVs, smartphones and tablets “is a meta-medium,” one that frames images to display them as well as to set them apart from its real-world surroundings. His argument is difficult to sum up succinctly, but here’s his conclusion:

The mind’s coherence is grounded in the way our bodies are oriented—left and right, up and down, near and far, in and out—and especially in the way we can face or turn away from other things in a surrounding world that contains us all equally. The hovering fusional image Glass provides will disturb those primal orientations. If people choose to stay true to their old-fashioned tablets and smart phones, it will be because the body of the device, especially the portable device that proffers the screen as its face, turned out to be as essential to the magic as the screen itself.

The list of reasons Google Glass might fail is very long, of course, and as de Zengotita notes privacy concerns are sure to be a huge obstacle. And I think he hits the nail on the head with Google Glass — overlaying the virtual world with the real one is a concept most consumers will take a very long time to adjust to, which is a big reason why I’ve never expected connected spectacles to gain rapid traction. But adoption will ramp up gradually, starting in the enterprise and with early-adopting consumers, because the potential value proposition is enormous. Mass-market adoption will likely take several years or more, but it will happen eventually.