Google Glass: What's With All the Hate?

An anonymous reader writes "Techcrunch takes a look at why so many people seem to make fun of Google Glass. From the article: 'Google Glass isn't even on sale yet and there is already a noticeable backlash against Google's first experiment in wearable computing. It's odd to see a product that was greeted with so much hype a year ago endure the love-hate cycle so quickly – even though there are only a few thousand units in the wild. Sure, we've done our share to popularize "glasshole" as a way to describe its users, but the backlash seems to go beyond the usual insidery tech circles.'"

Comments

Something It Isn't

[Jane Q. Public]

Maybe because it isn't so much "wearable computing" as it is "wearable Google-centric media player"???

Re:Something It Isn't

[peragrin]

More along the lines of wearable google centric real time yelp.

I don't like google glass of one reason. I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store?

Oh that isn't a feature of glass yet? just wait it will come right along with the face recognition.

Glass doesn't solve much. Most people don't need a heads up display. It will be heavily dependent on your limited mobile bandwidth. At least when people hold up their cell phone you can tell when they are recording you. With Google glass you won't be able to tell at a glance.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Architect_sasyr]

I've spent the last 8 months wearing a pair of sunglasses that contain a camera in the bridge, mostly because I see lots of stupid drivers on the road, but also because google glass has been coming along. I'm careful to remove the SD card fairly regularly, but in that 8 months only 3 people have questioned my very chunky glasses with half cm buttons on the left side.

People don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AmiMoJo]

Media playback seems to be one of the least demonstrated functions. The mains ones are the camera and notifications. I think it's the camera that has people most upset because when someone wearing Glass looks at you they are pointing it right in your face and you have no way of knowing if it is turned on and streaming live over the internet to other people or being recorded.

I can see Glass being massive for porn and voyeurism. We had better get the etiquette of removing it before entering the locker room sorted out pretty quickly. Are people going to take it off when entering the men's lavatory too?

Re:Something It Isn't

[peragrin]

I would be willing to bet that if you started telling people you were recording them that you would quickly find your self in the creepy category. Depending on the crowd and location it wouldn't surprise me to find out if you get the crap beaten out of you too.

Re:Something It Isn't

[asmkm22]

I'm sure people would care more about your creepy glasses if they new what they were. Most people aren't really going to equate chunky glasses with hidden cameras, so of course no one seemed to have minded yours.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem.

It's not that Glass looks weird.

It's the idea that everyone and everything may soon be recorded, tagged with facial recognition data, stamped with GPS data, and floated off to the internet forever.

Wearable computing may have some exciting uses, but it ultimately portends the end of most of what privacy remains from government and others.

That is what people are reacting against.

Re:Something It Isn't

[tripleevenfall]

Exactly.

When you live under a government that will hack reporters' computers and secretly seize their phone records simply for doing their jobs, when they willingly and admittedly use government arms to persecute people who have qualms about their agenda - why wouldn't we believe that Glass could turn anyone into their watchful, ground based drones?

You don't think the DOJ, the executive branch, or anyone else in government would not have the capability or would stop short of hacking these internet-connected devices?

Why would we place more faith in those who prove themselves to be less trustworthy the more power we give them?

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

So recording someone is bad, but beating the crap out of someone is socially acceptable? Do you see tourists with cameras getting punched in the face often?

Seems to me a case of assault like you describe should be videoed.

Re: Something It Isn't

[arth1]

In other words, taking pictures of people in public without their knowledge.

Re:Something It Isn't

[DJRumpy]

The difference here is that it isn't readily obvious if a person is being recorded. it adds a whole new range of 'creepy' to this gear. If you see someone holding a phone, they typically hold it in an almost horizontal fashion as they look down to navigate or browse. If you find someone holding a phone in front of them in a vertical fashion, it would be immediately obvious that they are recording or taking a photo. Glasses turns on the display, which could easily just be someone browsing, or doing any number of other activities. It's the fact that these could become mainstream, and could easily cloak that people are taking photos or videos with their target being unaware of what's going on. Only a fool states that only those doing something illegal have nothing to hide. EVERYONE has something to hide, be that a nasty habit of picking your nose, buying RID at the pharmacy, throwing Chicks with Dicks out in your trash, staring at your brothers wife's ass at the family reunion and having it uploaded afterwards, picking up HIV drugs at the pharmacy, etc. All of these things are potentially in the public view, but they are typically not readily available to be recorded an uploaded to youtube at the whim of a total stranger looking for 'likes' or a few laughs.

People have a certain expectation of privacy even in public, where a potentially live camera removes all doubt, and it can be uploaded to the net, which NEVER forgets.

Is it really that hard to understand why there is so much hate? Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever.

Re:Something It Isn't

[deanklear]

When a private corporation gives in to all government demands, that's not a non-sequitor. At this point it's an accepted reality that the USG has positioned itself to access any private corporation's data on any private citizen without even applying for a warrant.

As internet accessible recording devices become more and more prevalent, there will be a literal panopticon of information available, and do you think government's won't attempt to exploit that?

Getting into the scale of things, right now I could conceivably still live without the internet at home, or know that if I turn my phone off and leave all GPS devices at home, I can take a walk without the government tracking me. As soon as there is a critical mass of Glass type devices out in public, there is practically no chance that I could walk to a location without the government being able to track me down.

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. They weren't tracked by anything other than photos taken by the public and a handful of CCTV feeds. Imagine if one quarter of people in that crowd had a Glass type device on their face, and the government continued to have the right to access our devices without our permission. What do you think will happen?

Expecting the government to abuse their power is a rational position, especially involving a company that the government routinely forces information from.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

That Wikipedia entry looks like it was original research by a non-lawyer based on a bunch of Google searches and books written for non-lawyers.

For one thing, legal expectations of privacy vary from state to state.

There are public places with no right to privacy, and so many exceptions that you can't make general statements. The right to privacy is like swiss cheese.

Photographers know this very well. They can take photos in a public place and publish them under some circumstances, but not under other circumstances.

One photographer took a photo of a black man dressed in a business suit with a briefcase walking through Grand Central Station. The New York Times magazine published it on the cover to illustrate a story on "The Black Middle Class." He sued and won, complaining that it subjected him to ridicule and invaded his right to privacy and right to control his own image.

Another photographer set up an automatic camera on 42nd St., took photos of people walking by, blew them up as large-format portraits, exhibited them in an art gallery and included them in a published gallery catalog. A subject sued him, charging that his right to privacy was violated. The judge ruled that he was in a public place, and should have been prepared to be photographed. If they used his photo on an advertisement or a peanut butter jar, the courts might have come to a different conclusion.

Another example of the right to privacy is the right to have an abortion. Now, I feel pretty strongly that a woman should have an absolute right to decide whether or not she has an abortion. But I read Roe v. Wade several times and, while I'm glad of the outcome, I don't see where the right to privacy comes from or how they applied it to that case. They seemed to have pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Yes, people have sex in private, and use contraceptives in private. But people also use heroin in private. People buy and sell heroin in private. Why doesn't the same right to privacy extend to selling heroin?

Re:Something It Isn't

[cas2000]

it's not happening to them (you know, fat chicks complain about lecherous young men... because they're not looking at them).

you were doing so well up until this point. not particularly informative or interesting, but not completely pointless and stupid either.

but this is just idiot baying-pack misogyny.

"fat chicks" don't complain about lecherous young men "not looking at them" - they complain about them treating them like shit, insulting them for no reason, expecting them to suck their cocks "just because they're fat so shouldn't be fussy", groping and assaulting them, and occasionally raping them for being fat and unsympathetic characters unlikely to prevail in a court-case.

most "fat chicks" would like nothing better than to be left alone to get on with their lives in peace without being spat on or worse by creepy arseholes like you.

Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember people walking around talking to themselves? Remember the "I'm not talking to you, I'm on the phone" hand gesture?

It combined being rude with wearing a dorky looking apparatus.

And that's what Google Glass is.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

Remember people walking around talking to themselves? Remember the "I'm not talking to you, I'm on the phone" hand gesture? It combined being rude with wearing a dorky looking apparatus. And that's what Google Glass is.

Yes, we all remember that, and it took exactly One exposure for people to realize that Bluetooth made a lot of sense in some situations, and didn't impact the privacy of others around the user.

When you whip out your camera and photograph my desk or back I am forewarned, and have time to rare back with the haymaker that will surely be your next experience. But there is no defense against people walking into your store, your office, your meeting wearing Google Glass.

Bluetooth affected only the wearer. The camera in google glass attempts to make everyone near it fair game.

Its odd that Eric Schmidt just a few days ago worried about Privacy in a world of Drones, yet his company is pushing a product to make everyone Google's Drone.

We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.
Either that or remove the camera. 95% of everything Glass was designed to do can be done without the camera.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

I want the camera to facial-recognize people and put their names over their heads, because I am bad with names. But people like you are too busy whining to even think of the positive applications. (Same thing for translating foreign languages would be nice too, then I could actually order at my local establishments.)

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[barc0001]

What's stopping someone who wants to "case" the place from wearing these:

http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/stylish+glasses+hidden+camera.do?sortby=bestSellers&from=fn

They're only 1/6 the price of Glass at current and undetectable at a glance. What's your plan for stopping these? A sign on the door?

"justify everybody recording everybody else whenever they want just because its legal"

Again, exactly the same thing can be said about the cameras in your shop, the ATM camera that also overlooks the street, the cameras you have under your awning pointing at the sidewalk, cameras in the condo lobby, the underground parking lot, the restaurant you ate at last night, the cameras on light poles, the cameras in cop cars, dash cams, etc.

If you don't want to be videoed, I suggest never leaving the house. At least Glass gives the common courtesy of being clearly visible as opposed to all the concealed cameras we're exposed to daily.

"everybody recording everybody else whenever they want just because its legal"

And this is the other interesting part of the whole debate. Seeing as battery life and storage space are still concerns, Glass won't be recording 99% of the time. And frankly, *you're not that interesting, so why the fuck would I spend precious resources to record your boring ass?* The camera's there in case something interesting happens.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

Douchey response. I'm not talking about a "handful" of "friends" and "associates". I'm talking about everyone I've ever been introduced to. For most people, that is over 1,000 people. When you start a new job and go to a big meeting full of people from other companies, do you memorize all their first and last names in one introduction? Great job. Not all of us have that ability. Some of us have disabilities that make it hard to recognize people.

Names and addresses and habits? Douchebag. That was never said. Go fuck your strawman somewhere else.

Re:Well now

[Joce640k]

Take the hate for bluetooth earpieces, multiply it by 1000 because now nobody even wants you to look in their direction.

That's Glass. May it die.

Smartphones do everything useful that glass does but you can put them away in your pocket. Winner.

I paid thousands of GBPs...

[Richard_at_work]

And underwent surgery in order to get rid of glasses as they were the worst annoyance in my life - so there's no chance of me using this product.

People don't realise just how much these things are going to negatively affect you - you are going to be cleaning them all the time, they are going to cause irritation and issue with our hair and the side of your head, they are going to range from being unnoticeable to unignorable literally in minutes all throuout the day.

That's my take on it all. The wearable aspect is just a poor substitute for what we have been "promised" in fiction, so until it brings the positives without the negatives that I already went to great lengths to avoid, I'm not buying into it.

Re:Well now

[lesincompetent]

[...]which destroys the privacy of anyone around you [...]

Spot on. That's the main issue with me. And don't tell me "oh but we've got smartphones already".
Glass is a whole new level of invasivity.

It doesn't even make any sense

[Meditato]

"Google Glass is scary because it's easier to record others!"

You have a cellphone in your pocket capable of doing just that, and pinhole surveillance cameras have existed forever anyway.

"Google Glass is scary because GPS!"

Your cellphone doesn't even need an active GPS setting in order to be tracked. As an Android App developer, I can just use a Network Location Provider and triangulate your position to within 100-1000 meters. If you have a cellphone, you're being tracked just as easily as with Glass.

"Google Glass is scary because it might serve me ads!"

That's from an early video parody of Glass. Ads are against Google's guidelines.

"Google Glass is scary because they're trying to get us to depend on it, then sneakily put in ads and spyware!"

Even if they do that, we've already got the dumped firmware for Glass. Just run a custom ROM on it.

"Google Glass is scary because some pseudo-libertarian tech journalist told me to be scared!"

Oh ok, I guess that explains the inconsistency in your position. Funny how all these former pro-corporate tech gossip douchebags are suddenly worried about your rights. Where were they 10 years ago? And for that matter, where were you?

Re:Dork appeal

[ArcherB]

Because they make the wearer look like a dork (not a geek or even a nerd).

I rank it right up there with Beats headphones.

So? Why would YOU hate a device that makes ME look like a dork? Why do you care what I look like?

Re:'Simple really...

[spire3661]

What do you do in the future when people have robotic eyes? Wearable cameras aren't going away anytime soon. Google Glass is the very tiny tip of a huge iceberg. Assume you are being recorded at all times outside of your home. You may not like it, but it is a reality we live in.

Re:Well now

[White Flame]

He chooses what to post on to the internet. If somebody wearing Glass walks up to you, your property, or your workplace, you have no choice in the matter as to which of your activities gets uploaded to Google.

Re:Well now

[Maudib]

On the ad front, people said the same thing about android. I haven't ever obtrusive ads. Same thing with gmail and search, they are there, but entirely to the side.

Frankly this sort of advertising is far less intrusive then most offline advertising. Consider the omni-present ads on busses and taxis and billboards, the flood of intrusive ads on TV and radio. I would far prefer to substitute those for google's approach: show me something I might actually want in a very unobtrusive fashion.

On the privacy front, your argument is straw-man. Privacy is already destroyed, constant surveillance is the norm now that literally everyone is carrying at least one camera. Glass may well improve the situation by reminding people of that.

Re:Well now

[ClioCJS]

I like how you make a strawman out of declaring the device's sole purpose. It's about as convincing as the people who say twitter is solely for telling people what you ate or that you pooped.

Re:'Simple really...

[Gregg Alan]

Where do you get the idea that it's always on and streaming to google? Glass is aggressive about power savings.

I had a chance to try Glass last week in Chicago and I believe that the owner stated around 3ish hours of battery life for non-stop video recording. You COULD attach a USB cable while wearing them and keep a battery in your pocket.

Look at it this way: If Google had developed a new battery technology that fit in the current Glass profile AND was 'always on, always front recording' then Google would have much bigger news than just Glass itself.

Re:Well now

[ToastedRhino]

I think this touches on what is, in fact, the much bigger issue facing society today. While it's true that what you do in a public place is, by definition, a public act, the consequences of such an act have changed dramatically over the last few years. There is a tremendous difference between someone doing something stupid in public that is seen by maybe 10-100 people and then shared via word of mouth and someone doing something in public that is video taped and posted on the internet for countless millions to see. If I'm walking down the street and trip and fall and a few people see me that's going to be embarrassing, but it will be nowhere near as embarrassing as if my tripping and falling is recorded and ends up on YouTube.

The barriers to spontaneous recording like this have continued to fall, but barriers do still remain. If I see something happening on the streets right now I have to take out my phone (or camera), launch the camera app (which has become much easier), and begin recording. With glass, all I have to do is say something like, "OK Glass, record video" (or whatever the actual command is). This significantly lowers the barrier to capturing almost anything. There are certainly advantages to this when you're recording someone you're close to or who has consented to your recording (think capturing your kids first steps), but there are also tremendous disadvantages when it comes to privacy and strangers.

People on either side who are pretending that this is a simple issue are mistaken. Painting the issue as black and white, either everything is allowed or nothing is, ignores the intricacies of what's being discussed. Glass introduces an entirely new layer of complexity to the privacy debate that is separate from (but certainly related to) the debate about public webcams and government surveillance. I personally think that it's a good thing that people are at least thinking about these issues, as in the past they have largely been ignored. Maybe we can now start to return to an era where we appreciate the importance of privacy once again. The rules have to catch up to technology at some point.

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

Aircraft pilots aren't using the aircraft's heads up display to check their friends' latest facebook updates, or waste hours watching cat videos on youtube.

The "why"

[whodunit]

People keep on comparing Glass to bluetooth headsets without actually reflecting on why we hate them. It bears repeating: we hate them because of those several awkward seconds where you try to reply, thinking you're being addressed. The "asshole" part comes when the headset user says something like "hold on, this guy thinks I'm talking to him" or something else that implies you're an idiot for not immediately recognizing the headset. It's embarrassing, and insulting, and dismissive. In short, it takes basic social conventions and protocol and rudely slugs it in the face. Said social conventions, even the customary "good morning" a fuel station clerk greets you with, is lubricant for the social gears of society, and those headset users are sand in the works. It's not the headsets at all - its the people using them that never apologize for the misconceptions they cause, or politely put their conversation on hold when they walk up to a pay window.

Everyone screams and wails about being "recorded in public," which I find hilarious, considering how much we're already recorded, tracked and observed. If you're in public, people can record you freely, and no court of law is going to give a rats ass that somebody was able to SEE you when you went walking around on a public sidewalk. No, the real discomfort comes from having a computer screen between you and the person you're talking to. Google Glass is the first step towards things like augmented reality and other such technologies; but the precedent we've all learned from is the Arrogant Headset Asshole; and so naturally that's the first association we make.