April 20, 2014

"I meet my Glass Guide, Danielle. She is young and blonde, and bears some resemblance to the actress Alicia Silverstone."

"I pull out a micro-recorder, asking if she minds if we document the experience. She doesn’t. She is wearing Glass, too, as do all the Glass Guides. With camera lenses embedded in our titanium eyewear, we are all documentarians now, although she asks me not to photograph other Glass base-campers when I pull out a traditional camera. It’d be a shame to violate their privacy while they’re learning how to violate everyone else’s."

Writes Matt Labash, with a photograph to prove not only the resemblance to actress Alicia Silverstone, but also the disquieting dorkiness Google Glass imparts even to those who resemble Alicia Silverstone.



This look, of course, is part of what other people with Glass will catch on you, if you have Glass. We'll all be Glass-y eyed, and yes, you might say, Labash probably chose the stupidest-looking shot of not-Alicia, but the internet is only just beginning to fill up with shots chosen by other people, often on the principle of stupidest-looking.

Later in the article:
Colleagues find the spectacle dorky enough that three of them whip out their smartphones to click pictures of me, causing me to threaten violence if anyone posts them to Twitter. 
So, within Labash's moral scheme, how many lashes at Labash does not-Alicia get?
With or without Glass, we are already a surveillance society.
Much more at the link, including using Google Glass at church, during communion, in a casino, counting cards.

10 comments:

Ron said...

Why,why,why don't we have an internet-related wearable technology based on farting? Commonly done, no smell-o-vision (yet) so not seen in photographs...win-win!

maybe methane powered battery replacement tech?

Strelnikov said...

Read "The Circle" by Dave Eggers.

Illuninati said...

In my opinion, this is the creepiest part of the article.

"...In the middle of reporting this piece, I get an unsolicited email from Chris Dale, who heads Glass’s communications shop. He says he “heard through the grapevine” I was working on a story, and would love to help out...His concern is “that some folks who ran into you while you were wearing Glass out in public remarked that they felt you were being obnoxious and confrontational and a little evasive in terms of who you were and what outlet you were representing.” Strange. I thought nearly all of my interviews were friendly."

sane_voter said...

This is the best article I have read in a while. And I dread the coming gl-assification of the world.

J Lee said...

Blogger Ron said...

Why,why,why don't we have an internet-related wearable technology based on farting? Commonly done, no smell-o-vision (yet) so not seen in photographs...win-win!

maybe methane powered battery replacement tech?


I'm sure Sergey is working on Google Gas at this very moment

Wince said...

"I meet my Glass Guide, Danielle. She is young and blonde, and bears some resemblance to the actress Alicia Silverstone."

Can I Do It 'Til I Need Glasses?

southcentralpa said...

"causing me to threaten violence" Funny, that's exactly how I feel about GG ...

Anonymous said...

The eyes of Texas are upon you. And the other 49 as well. Now the Glassholes will form the unpaid Army for the watchers.

jaed said...

"It’d be a shame to violate their privacy while they’re learning how to violate everyone else’s."

What's interesting to me about Google Glass is the way everyone focuses on the camera.

Glass isn't a wearable camera; it's a wearable computer with a heads-up display. It would be extremely useful even if you couldn't take pictures with it. (Indeed, Google or a competitor might be well advised to take out the ability to save images, and advertise that they've done so, since the camera is the part that everyone reacts negatively to.)

Pretty much everyone carries a camera these days. It's not as though this were an innovation; most people have some sort of picture-capable phone. I had a hard time even five or six years ago finding a cellphone that didn't have a camera in it, and at this point they're universal. Anyone might be taking your picture when they look like they're texting or looking something up on their smartphone.

And yet, there's been little social reaction to that. We accept Instagram and selfies and the rest, we've coined some terminology, we snicker at the People of Walmart site.. we seem to have adapted, without a hitch, to the idea of being photographable whenever we're in public. Very little pushback at all.

But here comes Google Glass, and everyone comes out in hives over it. Solely because of the camera - at least I don't think I've seen anyone justify Glass-hatred on any other grounds. It's always "These people want to violate your privacy! They can take pictures! Pictures of you!!!" No attention paid to the thousands of reasons someone might want it that have nothing to do with taking pictures of you.

It's odd, and I think a lot of it is displaced reaction to social changes that have already happened and that had nothing to do with Google Glass.

Freeman Hunt said...

Having read that I am not so sad to have passed up on the Glass Explorer offer. I was curious, but if it's just displaying texts and news feeds, meh.