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Eric Schmidt: Google Glass Critics 'Afraid of Change,' Society Will Adapt
curtwoodward writes "Eric Schmidt came to Harvard this week to discuss his new book, but many students really wanted to know more about the implications for privacy and social interaction once Google Glass starts hitting the market. Schmidt cautioned against jumping to the worst conclusions, saying that society always tends to adapt to new technologies — and he's hoping for etiquette rather than government regulation. Of course, that's what you would say if you used to run a company that has been fined and paid settlements to regulators for the way it scoops up data and tracks users. But Schmidt also doesn't have much patience for critics: 'Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change, or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society.'"
I love the idea of wearable computing and augmented reality. What I don't like is the tiny monocular display at the periphery of vision, instead of a fully binocular large FOV overlay.
...
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
... coming from a man who only has to be a part of this "society" when it suits him. He's not subject to the surveillance culture since he can hang out in his private office or home.
Oh, by the way, people who are afraid of drones being used by the public are just afraid of change. You should totally try to adapt.
Captcha: Infringe
Radical Change Product= Radical Change Product
Where can it be used legally? = Where can it be used legally?
How comfortable are people going to be when they see you have one and they don't? = How comfortable are people going to be when they see you have one and they don't?
Kinda Spend y - people who can't afford it will be all sour grapes. :-)
Considering the initial mockery of for example the iPad here on Slashdot, I would say that this condition afflicts this group as much as others.
to Google Glass, but it will never adapt to privately owned drones.
For somebody who values his own privacy greatly, I can't believe Schmidt is so eager to take it away from everybody else. He's rich and lives a fairly anonymous life. The rest of us normal people can't afford to do that.
What he wants is a society where privacy doesn't exist, and every last thing anybody does is permanently recorded and made available online for anyone to see. Each time somebody scratches their ass or picks their nose will be recorded forever.
It's almost like Orwell's 1984, except for Schmidt envisions a future where the people observe and record each other instead of the government. What a sick and depraved fuck to want that, and worse yet, to invest in technology to enable it.
Yes, we don't have any expectation of privacy in public. What we don't have to do is dive headfirst into the end of privacy for all of mankind forever.
It's not the problem of change, it's that they're ugly and only fill niche needs.
They are cool, but in the same way wearable computers are cool.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I am not afraid of change, in truth all I really want to be is a Borg drone, but this is much less efficient then touch screen interfaces, and those suck, until direct brain to machine interface I think I will stick with a keyboard and a monitor.
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
If this is your definition of change, you can shove it up your ass.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Welcome to your new position as a lowly serf in the new digital order. Shut up and do as you are told.
Why is Snark Required?
Trying to ban drones
Well done on ignoring their arguments. Saying that someone is "afraid of change" is just a dodge and ignores the fact that changes can be good or bad.
Why are people opposed to being recorded doing something that they do not seem concerned about other people they do not know being in-person witnesses to unless they feel they might want to deny that they ever did it in the first place, as if they simply want to keep the option to lie about it in the future and not get caught if they should ever feel the need?
glass is a very worrying invention. no expectation of privacy in public is very different then lots of people being able to record everything they see. wait 'til a bunch of peeping tom videos start appearing, or people taking videos of kids on the beach, or until someone with glass gets shot because a dealer thinks they might have recorded that drug deal. the surveillance we have now, we can at least vaguely hope no one is using it for fap material, or won't put it out to embarrass us. does your nose itch? better not scratch it, there's three people with google glass over there and you'd hate for them to record it and put it up on youtube looking like you're picking your nose. is there even a light showing people that its recording? laptops sometimes have those, that'd be something at least
nobody's perfect
Is this the same guy that wants to ban drones? Egads. Perhaps he should take his own advice.
I don't know whether it qualifies as a fallacy, or has a name if it does; but arguments of this particular style always annoy me:
It's a selective application of an assertion that(while probably true where you are applying it) is true of so many other situations where you do not and would not apply it as to be completely meaningless.
Are opponents of Glass 'afraid of change'? In some sense, arguably, there is often a tinge of fear motivating a visceral dislike of some novelty. However, is there any new something for which this could not be said? Opponents of virtually anything except the status quo are 'afraid of change' in that weak sense, despite changes being available in every conceivable flavor.
It may not be 'false' in a strict sense; but it isn't usefully true in any meaningful way.
I don't know about you, but I'm despising Google more and more with every passing day. I think they are going to be right there with Microsoft if they continue down this path.
If you see someone wearing google glass, walk up to them and yell "Glass, look up goatse.cx" and walk away. Problem solved.
Are these the same students who post every fart on twitter?
There are three kinds of people, a gigantic group wish to share everything they do with as many people as possible. A tiny group that are afraid that aliens are scanning their minds and a miniscule group of people who realize that anything you do in public is public.
Take Googles scanning of Wifi access points. People who have them probably didn't think about someone taking the effort to scan them all BUT you are broadcasting a signal into public space for all to see, why shouldn't someone else be allowed to record it then? It is funny to see people argue that media content broadcasted into the ether should be allowed to be picked by anyone since it is broadcasted into public space yet peoples wifi signals broadcasted into the same ether and public space should be private. Granted, sometimes it is not the same people arguing both but there is an overlap.
Personally I have little need or desire for the camera part of these glasses BUT I am ALSO aware that any public performance, the glow from phone screens as people try to record the show is almost blinding. And from pubs to attraction parks the sight of people recording themselves and others with their phones has become near universal. It used to be that at a company outing, one designated person had a camera, now everybody is snapping away. And not just a group foto or two but everything.
Reality TV has never been more popular and is basically about "ordinary" people showing everything we used to keep private and the entire nation gobbling it up.
So where is this concern for privacy? The general public doesn't seem to care in the least. Maybe they should but as long as the people advocating it remain either the clearly insane or people who scream about privacy while posting their turds to the world begging for everyone to watch... well... I am just not going to worry that much because to be honest, I am on slashdot. The only things people could find out about me that I waste to much time posting on slashdot (which is information publicacly available by checking my history), and my real secret that I am way to unmanly when it comes to cute little cuddly wuffly kitten wittens... ooops.
If you want to get people rightfully worried about the implacations of privacy, you need to come up with a better story then black helicopters AND/OR "I behaved like an ass in public and I don't want to be hold accountable for it".
Take the old "A drunk picture stopped me from being hired" crap... yeah, it happens. So? Don't work for those kind of companies then. I know plenty of employers that when confronted with such evidence would go "you call that being drunk? that is nothing, when I was a student we REALLY got drunk". There have ALWAYS been companies were you weren't hired if they didn't see you in church on Sunday. Anyone who has grown up in a small community knows that the modern age of facebook and twitter is in a way far more private. There is now so much information about, nobody has time to shift through it all but in a small town, you are the only thing to watch for the curtain twitchers.
Give me a million google glass over 1 pair of eyes across the street behind the curtains any day. Nobody is going to bother trying to find me in a million feeds but those eyes are recording and reporting everything and they never forget or forgive.
The problem is that it's not running Free Software (as in speech). Such glasses deal with the private data of not only it's wearer, but also other people. Therefore it's of utmost importance that society, in form of at least the people having bought it, can decide what it does.
This clashes with the idea of it running Android which is just Open Source, but not Free Software. You cannot quickly modify your Android, every change is a fairly lengthy process involving the creation of an image and often even finding binary blobs for non-standard hardware and the circumvention of a "secure" boot loader.
So where does that lead us to? A device which watches us all, which sends much of that data to central services provided by Google, where that data will most likely be stored and can most likely be accessed by law enforcement agencies.
Google Glass is the best example why we need Free Software on those device, otherwise it will become a privacy nightmare. If we don't draw the line here, just think how future prostetics will be. Do you really want some company to decide what your brain implant will be able to do?
but that adaptation won't necessarily involve buying Glasses.
Society will more likely rise up and kill the shit out of the monster Eric Schmidt fucker.
I watch developments with the bionic eye technology. The day when we can have hires video broadcast directly into our optic nerves will be in my life time. And I might well opt for such surgery electively.
I am not afraid of change.
My issue with the google glass is that I don't see the point of it. Am I do wear this thing over my face all the time so I can have a smartphone screen broadcast over my glasses? No thanks.
Now if you wanted to pitch something like this at me, then you might be able to do it with augmented reality. That is like virtual reality but it is instead the seamless blending of virtual and actual reality. You wear a head set and virtual images are super imposed on actual images. So for example you could walk through an empty lot and see a building that is planned to be built there in full scale. You could walk by a restaurant and see reviews for it scrawled on the wall in digital ink. You could have artists re-imagine your neighborhood by changing the architecture etc of the whole area without actually changing the layout.
THAT would be interesting. And I could see the point of that.
But google glass has no augmented reality capability. You need very precise accelerometers location awareness to properly superimpose the correct image over the correct object. who has had their GPS think they're walking a few blocks to the left or right? I've had that with some frequency especially in dense cities with tall buildings. It screws the GPS up. But augmented reality requires accuracy to the inch or LESS. And direction awareness to the degree. Couple inches one way or the other or a couple degrees off and the effect is spoiled.
That is my problem with google glass. Not that I am afraid of technology but that the product itself is lame. It does nothing interesting that my smartphone doesn't already do right now.
Come up with a "killer app" for it or its a stillborn blue baby. You can cry over it if you want but crying won't breath live into the dead.
And kindly don't tell me I'm afraid of change. When you treat my presumption to have an opinion with contempt I can feel nothing but contempt for your presumption to change or influence my opinion.
Try again.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Really, Dieter. Must you spam your stupid blog on every /. post?
But Schmidt also doesn't have much patience for critics: 'Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change, or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society.'"
Fucking idiot. Criticisms don't only come from people who are afraid of change. Personally, I don't even consider my body to be what makes me "me", and would love to replace it all with sturdier mechanical parts. I love the rate at which humans keep making technology smaller and merging with it: Clothes are Wearable Shelters. Glasses are magnifying lenses you wear, and Contacts are glasses IN your eyes. We have titanium hips and even exoskeletons helping the disabled to walk again. Tech is great! Adding a digital camera and HUD to my optical systems sounds awesome!
However, I WANT TO CONTROL MY BODY. I don't value my flesh the same way others do, but I realize that it IS important to be able to control my body in whatever form it takes. I don't want to wear a prison. I don't want to wear a tracking device (unless I can control who can track it). I consider my clothes to be just a part of my body as I consider my bones. My skin is a mobile temperature regulating wetsuit perfect for being born on Earth and exploring a great deal of this Planet; I've grown quite attached to my body and its more temporary parts (shirts, hair, etc), and respect and care for my self-grown or artificial coverings; I would treat any replacement or modification thereof as equally valuable and deserving of care. Most of all, I want to be able to fix things if they break, and a replacement is a ways off -- That's a prime concern for anything I integrate with in a substantial life affecting way.
Fortunately my skin is self healing, it contains the data and systems needed to provide this function and I carry the repair mechanisms with me everywhere -- It's important to my continued exploration of this world. I know how contacts work exactly, their design is fully transparent to me. I know how to fix glasses and the mathematics for shaping their lenses are readily available to me. Where are the damn design documents, technical specs, and and source code for these new optical sensors you're selling me? If they're to become part of my body in a significant degree to change ME then I NEED this basic info, or we're at an impasse. I need to be able to know EVERYTHING about how they operate. If they're not just toys, if they will potentially help me change the life I live, then there are some CONCERNS and Criticisms that need to be addressed -- Firstly, your attitude towards my concerns, and secondly the degree of ownership I have over these new body parts we both want me to adopt.
I want to control my clothes. I don't want what I wear spying on me or sending signals that I don't want them to send. I don't want YOU to own MY BODY or everything that I do; Especially I don't want you owning copyright over all the things I see. There are a host of other concerns I have, but I don't care to voice them all here because I have better things to do than put forth questions into culture that will be ignored by the likes of Schmidt. If you shy away from the concerns of critics then I guess you don't care to reassure the people who are your prime adopters, most ready for change that you actually give a fuck about what's really important. The privacy implications become GREATLY increased the closer I integrate any technology with my brain, you fool!
Seriously, someone ought to filter this fucker's output because he's making himself out to be a fucking idiot. Let me get this straight, I shouldn't be able to give my eyeballs wings and let them soar over the land and see what they can see, but I shouldn't criticize people who want to co-opt my visions for marketing purposes? For someone who advocates adapting to social changes wrought by technological advances, Schmidt seems to be pretty fucking hypocritical when it comes to actually adjusting to the changes himself. That f
This is but the precursor to the concepts in the book 'The Light of Other Days'. Yes, the past is 100 or 1000 years ago. It is also 0.5 seconds ago.
Do we really want to be under that microscope? Oh well...we won't have a choice. Someone will build it, and we will gladly pay through the nose to have it.
I don't leave anywhere near him. But people who do should start following him around in public. Filming everything he does, with a telephoto lens from afar if necessary. And posting it on the internet.
Because if he doesn't like that, he must just be one of those people afraid of change. If he's afraid of people recording what he's doing, maybe he shouldn't be doing it. Etc.
If someone threated, for example, to CHANGE the relative locations of his facial features (to rearrange his face, so to speak,) I'd wager he'd be "afraid" of such a change too, the smug, hypocritical bastard.
We don't much like the idea of people walking around having the ability to snap photos without having to do anything making it at least a little obvious that they're taking them, the same way we don't like, 364 days out of the year, people walking around wearing masks and costumes that obscure their faces so you can't tell who they are or what expression they're wearing.
Schmidt's supercilious attitude that anyone who doesn't like people walking around with cameras perched on their heads recording continuously is a Luddite, is an insult, quite frankly. How do you suppose he'd feel about people recording HIM everywhere he goes? For the sake of argument, let's pretend that he, like most of the rest of us, can't go off somewhere to hide from prying eyes and ears, given most of the rest of us aren't rich. He probably would feel different.
I have a bad feeling that people using Google Glass are going to get assaulted, battered, and have their "Glasses" ripped off their heads and shoved up their asses. The Schmidthead apparently thinks etiquette will keep people from misbehaving... he's really living in lala-land if he believes that schmidt.
As for society adapting, I think people will start to take more steps to avoid being photographed, such as with disguises, large sunglasses, etc., which I may have to go out and buy now.
When did Google cross over to the Dark Side (TM)? Does anyone know? They're clearly evil now, but when did it actually happen? When did they start down the Dark Path?
People (drunk, ignorant, criminal, other, or any combination of the aforementioned) will attempt to shove it up your ass...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/steve-mann-attacked-paris-mcdonalds-digital-eye-glass-photos_n_1680263.html
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I'm not afraid of Google Glass, I'm afraid of what could happen with all the footage.
If the Germans had this kind of technology, there wouldn't be a Jew left in all of Europe !
It's absolutely a fallacy, which falls under many names, starting with the Straw Man fallacy.
It's so ridiculous I had to look it up again.
Here's another version:
People who make this kind of argument are blowhard shills (or, apparently, blowhard shill detractors).
I almost count myself as a card-carrying member of personal biometric Total Recall, and yet I'm far from immune from criticizing Google Glass.
Sounds like Beethoven telling his critics that his music wasn't written for them, but for future generations.
The difference being that Beethoven was one of the biggest creative geniuses of all time, and thus entitled to a bit of arrogance.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Compare his comments about the hobby of building and flying model airplanes http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/private-drones-pose-privacy-threat-says-googles-eric-schmidt-1C9340969 with Schmidt cautioned against jumping to the worst conclusions, saying that society always tends to adapt to new technologies — and he's hoping for etiquette rather than government regulation.
That's the way to counter this type of elitist marketing ploys.
Perhaps a concerted campaign to call them "peeping erics", or "leering larries" or maybe "sergie specs"...
Or maybe that owners of such things must be "compensating" for some shortcomings...
Or a targetted spam campaign directed at women and lawmakers asserting they can be hacked by nerds to be used as x-ray specs (with some plausible thing like removing IR filters and uploading custom software and a bunch of fake ebay listings offering to sell glasses with this mod)...
This is the best way to nip this trend in the bud...
But I just prefer MY change over YOUR change, since MY change doesn't involve exploiting other people's privacy just to earn advertising revenue. My change would ban most advertising ... and it's time for YOU to stop fearing that.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I dislike what Google is doing and I don't think a single corporation has the right to tell society how it should adapt, especially one with 'form' on abrogating privacy conventions.
With a bit of luck this will be yet another one of those Google ideas that are stillborn, their recent history is littered with them.
The main problem I can see with Glass initially is that it requires voice input. So far I've found Google's speech recognition to be laughably poor. It will get better of course, but the main problem will remain that glass users have to speak loudly to the device to have the speech recognized. Such people will be ostracised even worse than people using cellphones in the wrong place.
Thinking of some 'adaptations'
1. Etiquette : I don't think this will be adequate, society doesn't work this way any more. People wearing glass will be perceived as breaking social norms and we may see quite a few street beatings as a result.
2. Banning : it might work in places but won't be universal.
3. Jamming : this is a good one, while it might not be legal, I think a lot of people might take the risk of carrying jamming equipment to create privacy, but then content could be cached locally then uploaded later so it can't be 100% effective. This would damage universality of network access for other people as well.
4. Masks : We may have to start wearing masks and veils in public. Perhaps more people will switch to Islam as it provides a credible reason for going around in a veil.
The question is not whether society will adapt. It will adapt, just it adapts to everything else. The question is if the society will be better or worse afterwards.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Gonna launch my works site shorly and removed my business youtube account, google+ and still have google local to remove. Singed up for Vimeo Pro to replace youtube, since I'm not a socail retard I don't do google+ and for now have to take it in the ass with search for a little longer. Be.sidees trying to havigate through the google account maze was quite frustrating.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
and anywhere else so we can see him 24/7 Oh yah he wasn't his privacy. Fuck off and your google (the love didn't last long)
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I've been waiting, dreaming, hoping for and a few more verbs that essentially mean the same for wearable computing. I wanted one the first time I heard about it, to some degree it was my initial drive to pick up microcontroller work so I could eventually build it, given enough knowledge.
What I'm not comfortable with is sending the whole data to Google. That's all I'm afraid of. That it may be the case that I don't really own them, in the sense that they will do MY bidding and not their maker's.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
to about anything. If we go to extremes people live in North Korea and Japan has survived nuclear bombs. It does not mean dictatorship and nuking all around are the way to go.
"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." - Eric of Borg.
The first borg who records me with his google glass will get a punch in the face.
The second one will be evaporated with my faser.
I guess it wasn't your English teacher.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't like my picture taken or have my wife's picture taken by strangers. She doesn't like it when my firm ass is showing off, so I wear clothes that reserve my ass for her. She reserves her breasts for me. She wears shorts under her skirts as she always has. This is what I'd call being protective over each other and being obsessively selfish to be happy, and it makes us happy. Anything else just gives us anxiety and that's where Google Glass comes in. I don't want to randomly be recorded by people, and she doesn't want that either. It'll cause stress and the idea of "just getting over it" is an attitude of not understanding psychology.
I'm perfectly fine getting my digital data monitored by google's server farm because it's not viewed by any person, it's software and it helps deliver a better service. I think the law of "ask before you can record" and "there needs to be shutter sound for pictures" and "there needs to be a blinking red light to show that you're recording" is a good step forward towards accepting this technology. I believe if Google wants to see this adopted by the public, then pass laws that will make people feel more comfortable in public. Until then, people that wear these devices will just look like perverted douchebags.
As it is of assholes continuously pointing cameras at people during conversations, or while they're following someone up the street, or at the gym, or near a high school. Plus the 1000 and 1 abuses that are possible through apps that can record, transcribe, analyse or augment while they're doing it.
Yeah, where was "society will adapt, etiquette is plenty to solve this" when Schmidt was whining about private parties using drones?
Why was he whining about drones after his famous "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" idiocy?
So far as I can tell, this guy is absolutely free of any sort of comprehension that it's possible for other people to have different experiences or resources than he does. He is not a credible source on any topic to do with social policy or the impacts of anything on society, because he's judging everything by how it affects ludicriously wealthy guys.
This is a company that has come up with [b]and implemented[/b] ideas like automatically sending status updates on their customers to stalkers who were threatening those customers' lives. I do not think it makes sense to take their positions on these topics seriously.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
What a slimy hypocrite.
Eric Schmidt on a disruptive new technology Google has figured out how to profit from: "Schmidt cautioned against jumping to the worst conclusions, saying that society always tends to adapt to new technologies --- and he's hoping for etiquette rather than government regulation."
Eric Schmidt on one they haven't: "Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is urging lawmakers to regulate the use of unmanned aircraft by civilians --- and quickly."
Liberty in your lifetime
Schmidt is a simpleton. Not all change is good. Of course societies adapt. They adapted to the Black Plague and Yahoo Serious. What choice had they?
And worse than that, he is WRONG about this. People have yet to "adapt"
to using cell phones responsibly, and Google Glass will be no exception.
The only reason people listen to douche bags like Schmidt is because they
are rich. If Schmidt didn't have money, he would be treated as he deserves,
which is to be ignored.
I'm afraid of Google's Terms of Service. Why must such an intimate device include terms that prevent the resale or redistribution of the device to other people? Can't help but think that the great Google in the Sky knows all and sees all...
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Falsely Identified "Boston Bombing" Suspect Found Dead
The amateur detective sleuths on 4Chan, Reddit and other social sites were so eager to demonstrate their investigative prowess in the information vacuum days following the Boston Bombing, they managed to identify virtually everyone who appeared even slightly tanned and/or had a backpack as a potential suspect. Sadly, the game, as well-meaning as it may have been, just turned lethal for one of the people who were falsely identified, as NBC just confirmed that Sunil Tripathi, 22, a former student at Brown University has been found dead in the Providence River.
Giving up control and privacy for others' profits doesn't sound like a good bargain to me.
Ironically, Eric Schmidt as someone who espouses the "no secrets in your lives" creed it's pretty hypocritical that he uses DuckDuckGo.com instead of Google.com for his personal searches. I guess he doesn't want anyone tracking and bubbling him.
He also says that anyone who criticizes new technology is just afraid of it and that it shouldn't be regulated. Then when it affects him personally, he goes and criticizes the potential for drones placed by public citizens to track him and asks the government to regulate. And, even more ironic after Google spies on everyone's homes by driving a car with cameras around their neighborhood and slurps down their wifi activity!
"Oho!" said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."
"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot;
"'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
That your blackness is mirrored in me."
-"Maxwell's Elementary Grammar", copyright 1904 - William Henry Maxwell
By wearing masks. Mine will have a QR code on it which says "DON'T DO EVIL"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This device is a perfect example of 'just because we can do a thing, doesn't mean we should.'
It's great that the technology has reached the price point that it's actually possible to do this, but is it really necessary?
I say this as someone who works in automotive traffic , and we're already having issues with texting-while-driving-causing-fatalities, and mobile phone use strongly being correlated with reduced motorist awareness thus causing accidents.
tl;dr--a distracted driver is a dangerous driver.
The last thing I want to see is another stupid device competing for driver attention while attempting to move their personal weapon-of-mass-destruction on their way to work.
Fun fact-on average there's 2-3 accidents per day in the small part of the world where I work, multiply that by the entire United States and you get the point.
Hey, if we had self-driving cars then knock yourself out, and google glass your porn all day.
Socially--this device bothers me, the same way that mobile phone cameras bother me. I don't have much of an expectation of privacy when I leave the house so I go to great pains to go through my life quickly, and quietly with the least amount of interaction with people so that they won't take photos of me.
Why, you ask? Because I'm a transgender woman, and because of my gender I have been attacked and beaten, and called a "freak." I've seen the photos on the internet where the very "nice" people on the internet attack those who are "different" from them, and to be honest--this device is just going to encourage more of the same.
No Eric, society will not change. Technology can't change inherent douchebaginess of people.
Isn't he the same character who said people shouldn't expect privacy on the internet anyway?
Piece of shit.
"Jay Freeman told Forbes that once he realized his Glass was running Android 4.0.4 -- also known as Ice Cream Sandwich and common to many 2012 era Android phones -- he began testing known Ice Cream Sandwich exploits and found one from a hacker known as B1nary that gave him root access and full control of the Glass."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57581724-1/as-schmidt-speaks-of-caution-google-glass-gets-hacked/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
We will add your biological and technological disctinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
There's nothing wrong with being recorded as long as the viewers cannot affect your well being. We need better rules guarding what's admissible under the law. Private recording and email/posting should fall under 5th amendment.
How would he feel if it was Microsoft that came out with this?
If cameras on all the laptops stayed on all the time and sent pictures back to Redmond?
Is it only ok because Google "Dont be evil"?
You may be smug about your google glass recording getting me jailed for assault. But I'll get out eventually and you will be blind forever.
The .. geeks laughed at the PC like we do the IPAD when it came out because it was not as cool as the mainframe when doing word processing. Look whom won? .... The geeks are afraid of change which is Windows.
So you really are Bill gates !
First off, I apologize for the subject line; I'm using Schmidt's technique to get you to read my post. Just hear me out.
Much like a headline is a troll to get you to read the article, Eric's technique is to piss you off to get your attention, so you listen to what he has to say and discuss it, thereby spreading his tripe. You are being emotionally manipulated by this little troll into discussing his companies goods and services.
Proof that this technique works and works well? John Dvorak. That's right. After all of these years I can still see his photograph in my mind, I still remember his name but, for the life of me, could not tell you the name of one other writer that worked for PC Magazine. Why? Because he was (and presumably still is) a Grand Master Troll. And it served him well in terms of readership.
So how do you deal with this type of person? The first step is to realize that Schmidt is not a "tech-y" person, but merely a mouthpiece for whatever he happens to be selling. He is an ad. He manipulates you on an emotional level. He is an entertainer, if you will. But once you realize these facts, he becomes almost comical.
I'll compare Schmidt to another entertainer who I consider a comedian: Bill O'Reilly. Man, Bill used to get under my skin; I would allow him to just piss me off, and I would get *so* angry and upset. I actually *hated* this person, and I don't even know him. Then one day it dawned on me: that was his whole point! O'Reilly intentionally performs this act to get attention. He doesn't believe a word he is saying, because he is an actor working from a script and perhaps improvising a bit as well. And he is very good. Bill performs his act to get attention drawn to himself, to make his name popular, so he can sell books. Full stop. Period. End of story.
These days, I see Bill as the troll satirist and comedian that he is: when I need a pick-me-up when I'm feeling down, I'll sometimes watch his show just to laugh my ass off. Honestly, I think the man is really, really funny. It's all a matter of taste and perspective, and no, I don't agree with just about anything he says, but you have to admit that he's really, REALLY good as his craft, which is advertising via trolling.
So know this: Eric Schmidt most likely doesn't believe a lot of the things he says, he's just a-trolling. And look: he's selling books! Just like O'Reilly and Dvorak.
We are all "society" and I, for one, will not tolerate people wearing that Glass crap around me, if I have any say in it whatsoever. I can't think of anything more rude, egotistical, and invasive than continuously pointing an audio/video camera at someone else without asking or permission and proceeding to possibly record anything seen or said and possibly share that with other people and companies and government.
Legal status is one thing, but common courtesy is far more important. Many people will talk about how great Glass is, but that is coming from the perspective of a person choosing to wear it, and not really caring about their own privacy. I suspect once such a person is around groups of other people being subjected to the Glass-toting's choice, the result might be quite different.
Do we really want to have to carefully analyze and control everything we do and say every second of every day when we are not alone? How will that information be twisted or possibly misused? What is "private" in this new coming world? Is it acceptable for someone to wear that thing in a pubic bathroom? At a table having dinner with family? In the car with your friend? In the waiting room in a hospital or doctor's office? At school as a teacher or perhaps a classmate?
And to those who dismiss these concerns without even considering them, I propose an experiment. Take out your cell phone and carry it around all day, holding/pointing it like you are recording audio/video at everyone around you on the street, at work, at home, eating out, in the store. See what kind of reactions you get. Then realize it is far worse when it is not quite that obvious/overt and some company much be just as much in control as you are.
Two somewhat obvious topics: Know Your History and always Follow the Money.
I won't regurgitate my previous post which basically boils down to Eric trolling for greenbacks. He was saying somewhat controversial things to garner attention via trolling in order to prop up his company and to sell his book(s). That's the follow the money aspect.
Know Your History a.k.a. History Repeats Itself
This is my opinion going by their history: Google Glass will flop and flop hard. Not on it's own merits, but by these simple facts that have been proven time and time again. 1. Google cannot sell hardware to save it's life. For whatever reason, they are completely incompetent in this regard. 2. They bore easily or have no long term vision other that being the ad agency that they are. Their path is strewn with cancelled products and services. The vast majority of their offerings just taper off and die with a whimper. 3. Glass will never be palatable to the masses because Google is utterly incapable of finishing what they started. They know how to go the distance until they hit, say, 90% completion, and then lose interest and drive. The new shiny wears off and they move on.
Just be thankful that Glass is not an Apple product. You may hate Apple, but you have to admire them for their ability to sell ice-water to Eskimos. As opposed to Google, who seemingly couldn't sell ice-water in Hell. If this were an Apple product, Slashdot would pan it and within 5-10 years, every hipster, teeny-bopper and soccer-mom would be wearing them.
I'd like to see Schmidt wear Google Glass 24x7 and for everything he sees and does uploaded to the cloud.
Oh he doesn't want to do that?
Why not?
Does he have something to hide?
I'm not afraid of what will happen; I know what will happen when surveillance is universal. A quiet settling, as we modify our behavior to be "normal" and inoffensive to whomever and whatever may take an interest in us. And that's just the current generation. The next generation that is born into our worldwide prison will tend to never even think of doing anything remotely offensive to powers seen and unseen. The human race will change into an obedient horde, for good and ill (normal behavior doesn't have to be *moral* behavior). A irrevocable experiment.
And of course the people on the other end of the surveillance will not be under quite the same restrictions. Anyone trying to find out what they are up to with all this knowledge will be Manninged. The Kochs and Cheneys of the world will not allow their activities to be known to us proles. Two worlds; the powerless, under glass, and those on the other end, who only answer to each other, fighting little secret wars unknown to us.
Google is the Borg.
These guys have long since crossed over to the Dark Side.
I'll agree that's likely the cause of some of the criticism directed at GG, but dismissing all of it that way is foolish. Personally, once it releases, I'd love to see how he reacts to it being used to capture every single moment of his public life being and having it posted on the web. While I'm sure he'd say that wouldn't be a problem right now, I'll bet his reaction would be different should it actually happen.
will be me ripping the headset off of someones face, throwing it on the ground, and smashing it into a million pieces, not giving a fuck if its already broadcast to some idiot somewhere
These glasses appeal to my inner sci-fi fan but I am not sure what problem they solve. It's great to have a display in front of but without a correspondingly good input interface I am not sure what good they will be. Think back to when touch screens finally started working and how that changed the whole smart phone thing. Blackberry would be one of the first useful smartphones with their awesome keyboard. People bought them in droves but as blackberry learned their market was limited to businesspeople who want to type at each other. A big market but a limited one.
So from what I can tell Google has opted for a largely voiced interface. Well every voice interface I have ever tried really sucked. Plus let's face it unless they are sunglasses wearing glasses sucks. The laser vision market shows how much glasses suck. People get their eyeballs scraped and gouged to avoid glasses. So when people say, "I'd rather a root canal" keep in mind "I'd rather a root canal than getting laser vision surgery"
What I wouldn't mind wearing is a watch. A watch that did what it could to keep my phone in my pocket, or backpack. Check the time, play pause music, check to see who's phoning, check to see messages, check the weather, check stocks, check to see if I am heading to my destination, plus basically every other popup that come up on my phone. I don't want to surf on my watch, and I don't want to play games. The key here is that a watch is comfortable, durable, fairly cheap, and can be beautiful so I am willing to wear it. A well programmed watch should greatly extend the use of my smartphone while not trying to replace it.
So I can't wait to try Google glasses but I can't wait to buy a smart watch to go with my smart phone.
Didn't see a business comment yet, why isn't this being pointed out?
Warehouse workers look at pallets of material, glass scans the barcode and overlays exactly what product type, quantity, and the status(pulled, sold, received, other) is. I know a lot of people think of this as something to record video for fun and other non-commercial tasks...but - this will be fantastic for commercial applications.
Current vendors charge an arm and a leg for any type of HUD tech, and usually insist they do the application development for you for their closed systems. With Glass we get to use a web API to develop our own applications - this is very appealing to myself and people in my industry(inventory management, warehousing).
The downside...I predict many forklift races with POV videos =P
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
'Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change, or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society.'
Like people who fear monger over drones saying "How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"
-Eric Schmidt, can't decide if surveillance technology is for everyone or not.
'Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change, or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society.'
Like people who fear monger over drones saying "How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"
-Eric Schmidt, can't decide if surveillance technology is for everyone or not.
Unless you mean like Poland was afraid of change, in 1939.
We are, however, afraid of looking like some smug, douche-bag - wearing these things.
We also don't trust Google to have a 24-hour tap on what we see and say.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Am I the only one who doesn't see the revolutionary aspect to Google glass? Other than the potentially awkward feature of showing me things I didn't ask for, what does Google glass do that I couldn't do if I duck taped my iPhone to my head? Any software aspect will eventually be copied in other devices, so all I'm left with is a strange looking pair of "glasses" (which I pay money every year to get rid of by buying contact lenses). I get that it's a new device with a well funded hype machine, but I don't see a great deal of value added.
Im curious what percentage of google glass critics complaining about being tracked by facial recognition have location services set to "on" in their android phone. GPS is much less processor intense than facial recognition so more likely to be used for mass surveillance. I would bet money that google glass recognition is based on a Haar cascade xml collection for your friends list on google and maybe your extended circles. If you dont know the person, google glass isnt going to go terminator vision and start IDing random passerbys.
A human brain is best utilized for critical thinking, not data storage. Google Glass opens the door for obtaining data when you need it without committing it to longterm memory.
We should however keep Google on a tight leash. If they start to go a little evil over this technology, we should fight to jailbreak it so that it can be used for good.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You raise a valid concern, but the risk to privacy from current technology trends is a lot more than just that. If people start routinely uploading more photos and videos taken in public places -- using this technology or for any other reason -- then sooner or later it's going to create a vast database where the incidental bystanders in the backgrounds of pictures aren't incidental any more, they're easily trackable to anyone with software for facial recognition, gait analysis, or other similar biometric trickery and a bit of time and processing power to scan publicly available pictures (or their own database, if they're a photo sharing/uploading service like Facebook).
Social and legal understanding of what "privacy" means and why it's important haven't yet caught up with the era of Big Data, when old arguments about public places and casual, transient observations simply don't make sense any more. No observation is transient if it's being recorded, and no observation is casual if the subject is going into a searchable database.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm reminded of Scott McNealy, formerly top dog at Sun, who (in)famously expressed a similar "privacy is dead" kind of attitude and believed everything belonged on the network rather than distributed/client-based. How's that working out for them?
I'm not sure getting rid of Google or Facebook will be quite so easy, but I am increasingly convinced that the tech world would be a better place if they disappeared tomorrow and we were forced to take a fresh look at how to do the kinds of things they do instead of many people just using them by default. There is way too much power over real people's lives being concentrated in a couple of US corporations with a track record of abuse, some morally questionable people running the show, and very limited (by the standards in most of the first world) safeguards to keep them in check. It is far from clear that if we started over on questions like "How do we find information?" or "How do we keep in touch with friends and family" then we'd decide the current ways of doing various things are the best ones, or even good ones.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I will immediately stop talking with this guy and walk away. This is an insult, not something I should adapt to. I am curious how Google could get away by developing such creepy products. While it used to be great company, Google has moved more and more towards being a terrorist in the crowd by ruthlessly recording more and more about people's privacy. Not a good trend.
I imagine being at a Mit Romney fund raiser, and it just doesn't get old.
you will come to regard Google not only with respect and awe, but with love.
“Our goal is to make the world better. We’ll take the criticism along the way, but criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it,”
I'm sure that's a typo or taken out of context. I'm sure he doesn't mean to say that people who were critical of the Nazi invasion of Poland were being difficult, that they couldn't see the big picture.
Also, Google's goal is to make money (like any company). I believe that they'd like to do well by doing good, but it's incredibly difficult to believe the Google+ was created to improve the world, of all things.
Last, social media's making society dumber - I hope no one believes that that Facebook or Google+ is improving mankind. I liked how Google's search engine made it so that I don't have to physically go to the library in the winter and use the Dewey Decimal system to find a book on a shelf - 70% of research time used to be wasted on tedious transit and clerical nonsense. Google should be awarded a Nobel for how it changed the world. But now, nothing on-line takes any effort or thought. Having an FB account means getting spammed with useless nonsense by every "friend" on your list. No more, "how's it going, what are you up to". Now you know EXACTLY when your friend has a hankering for PF Chang's at 2am (like I needed to know). People are forgetting how to spell. I don't know know what people mean half the time any more wen dey spel like dis, u no lol omg lmfao? If we ever had any social mechanisms to compel people to watch their grammar and spelling properly or really think about what they're saying before they say it, they're long gone.
So, if Google glass is going to be used to allow idiots to make video and chat with their friends all day, I hope someone has plans to make an open source version for those of us with some brain cells left so that we can connect them to our own servers and do something useful.
I would really love to have a pair of these... but mates, the price is excessive.
The applications are the same as anything else: Futurologist get onanistic about them and orgasm thinking on how cyberpunky all the society will become, rant against all the old fashioned "feudalists" that criticise their points and make a new announcement of the transcendence of humanity to a higher state of cyber-consciousness... while at the end if widely adopted this new tech will be used for teenage chit-chat, porn and silly cat memes.
But the price... mates, the price...
Wake me up in a decade when prices get down.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Congress needs to pass a law subjecting anyone who facilitates automated face recognition to joint and several liability for any torts that might arise from its use.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, will stop corporations like Google and Facebook in their tracks faster than making them jointly & severally liable for any torts ("tort" == "something you can be sued for under Anglo-American Common Law") that might arise from the use of their face-recognition data.
All the EULAs and disclaimers in the world won't save them from a lawsuit where a jury awards the plaintiff (say, a 19 year old college student who got tagged as a 'slut' by a fellow student's crowdsourced webapp built atop a hypothetical service like "Google Face Search") a million dollars, determines that the student is 99.999% at fault, and that Google is 0.001% at fault, because unless the student is a multi-millionaire, Google would end up on the hook for more or less the entire amount (that's what Joint & Several liability means).
Remember, under J&S Liability, it DOESN'T MATTER if the tortfeasor is violating Google's own TOS. Well, it matters to the extent that the overwhelming allocation of guilt would go to the guy who violated Google's TOS, but when he ends up being too poor to pay, the entire remainder would get dropped in Google's lap. If Google tried to spin off a subsidiary to run the service to protect themselves from such a lawsuit, that subsidiary would be bankrupted, put out of business, and shut down by the first lawsuit within weeks or months... and if Google kept re-spawning new entities that tried to inherit data from the previous one, eventually some state would allow a court to pierce the corporate veil and go straight for Google itself.
The net result is that any company that engages in face recognition would be forced, by threat of financial extermination, to guard the data with its corporate life and treat it like PII of the most sensitive kind. Small companies that went overboard would get sued into oblivion by victims before they had a chance to do much damage, and large companies' would be prohibited by their own shareholders from even *thinking* about making use of face recognition data, simply because they'd be put out of business if the data ever leaked out.
The best part about J&S liability is that it makes additional government regulation largely unnecessary. With the sword of J&S liability hanging over its head, Wall Street would swiftly stop face recognition in its tracks by any organization large enough to be a real threat to people's privacy.
"there will be an adaptation of society."
Sure just like the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy," right?
Maybe Glass will be more important than the internet and bigger than the Beatles, too.
"Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change."
This is nonsense. Technological innovation isn't the same thing as progress. If it was, then there would be an ever-increasing incidence of happiness and contentment in the world... but there's not.
I get very nervous when somebody comes along with something in which they have a great personal stake and starts dismissing all critics in broad strokes and sweeping generalizations. It doesn't bode well for their own confidence in the technology. Real progress doesn't require a salesman; the value added is self-evident. To me, Google's new product does not fit that prototype, and I'll continue to be very critical despite Schmidt's pleas that we all stop making such a ruckus.
Moreover, Schmidt's claims that an etiquette will develop around the technology are laughable. Been in a coffee shop or on a public bus since the cell phone revolution, Mr Schmidt?