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LeVar Burton On Google Glass
An anonymous reader writes "While he acknowledged that technology needs to keep going forward, LeVar Burton didn't seem comfortable with the idea of using Google Glass. '"It disturbed me. I was skeptical... [and] I'm a person that's very open to technology." That's the reaction LeVar Burton, the man best known from Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation, first had when encountering Google Glass backstage at Engadget Expand. Burton, a self-described edutainment pioneer, acknowledges the disruptive power new technologies can have on media and culture — after all, he did help transform television into a worthy educational tool/babysitter with his PBS program. But even with that storied success, and his company's current inroads into digital with an iPad Reading Rainbow application, Burton still had a "knee-jerk" response when confronted with Glass. Although his celebrity status and the resulting paranoia could have something to do with it.'"
... Burton still had a "knee-jerk" response when confronted with Glass. Although his celebrity status and the resulting paranoia could have something to do with it.'"
When you have employers looking at Facebook and college admissions people looking at Tweets, um yeah, the average guy needs to be paranoid. You better be paranoid!
And it's not just self published stuff. How many of you have had friends and family post pictures of YOU without asking?
*raises hand*
It happened to a friend of mine. She wasn't drinking. The waitress was asking us to pass drinks down the table. her friend just happened to snap a photo when she had a drink in each hand - and then she posted the photo on FB.
And with editiing?
Good grief, I can video anyone and with some creative editing, make them look horrible.
And when you are say, trying to get a job, the person who's looking you up isn't going to contact you and ask what the story is! Fuck no! They are going to draw their own conclusions.
People will take any little bit of information about someone and turn it into a complete profile about someone.
It happens here all the time - people draw conclusions about others just from a single post.
Because everyone who opposes some technology is having a "knee-jerk" reaction. Perhaps some people think that having a computer screen in front of one eye all day is a bit pathetic?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
listens? Why not ask Roger Moore? How about the closet guy, the ex-Mr Nocole Kidman? The dude is an actor. And from the last Sci-Fi, Syfi?, movie of the day, not a very good one.
Because he spent 10 seasons of TNG wearing a more advanced (and less stylish) Google Glass.
The rumored device that lets men and women find available, eager sexual partners for one-night stands.
There is nothing less stylish than Google Glass.
And now you almost cannot function without one. Give it a decade, with kids who are middle schoolers now growing up knowing about things like glass and the same thing will happen.
I told Pierce a thousand times, I never wanted to meet Levar in person. I JUST WANTED A PICTURE. YOU CANâ(TM)T DISAPPOINT A PICTURE.
They portray Burton as somebody who just "doesn't get it". Clearly the author is putting in a pro-Glass/Google spin.
Google Glass is marketed in the wrong way. Just like Segway they're trying to hype it for use by everybody all the time and justifiably it's backfiring on them. They should market it quietly to niche applications, e.g. HUD-like instructions and videos for DIY jobs, easy-to-use trail maps / plant identification for hikers, or self-service tours for tourists. These are useful applications that don't impact society on a grand scale, and later on the public can decide if they want to adapt it to more widespread use, at their own pace.
Because he spent 10 seasons of TNG wearing a more advanced (and less stylish) Google Glass.
Dude, this is Slashdot. You're going to get crucified for that imprecision.
7 seasons of TNG + 4 movies.
Generally accepted episode count: 178
Brown Zune?
Your part of a group corralled in the "free speech zone" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone) associated with some politician's public appearance. The nice police officers encircling the corral wear Google Glass ... or the militarized equivalent ... and record nice, close-up mugshots of the occupants of said corral.
If your actions or mere presence at such a civil disobedience event have offended someone important, and maybe then you would like to hide, here's what happens:
The mug shots are sifted against a facial recognition software utility, using as a corpus all the posts of Facebook, various state motor vehicle departments, and all the "electronic records" your medical providers have been gathering, including ... mugshots validated to be actually you.
Then they have a collection of possible identity matches. They then get DNA fingerprints for those potential matches from the healthcare provider data base, and with that scan against all other law-enforcement- and health-care-collected DNA data to find all your relatives. A team then canvasses those people likely to be closest to you to find out where you are. Then at around 4:02 a.m your door is kicked in.
Damn... I missed 3 seasons
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Once they projected an image of a rainbow onto the glasses, he seemed calm.
Never heard of this guy.
There are bad, overhyped ideas that are well executed and actually work. The Segway, for example.
A few historical examples:
Google's head-mounted things may be in this category.
Damn... I missed 3 seasons
They were the best 3, too.
LeVar Burton played Geordie LaForge on Star Treak -- a character who could not see except by virtue of a digital visor he wore. Now the actor in real life tries something that's also sorta similar -- if you wave your hands, squint your eyes and gesture knowingly. What are the odds! The parallels must have been mindblowing! Life imitating art! The jokes must now write themselves! Queue the Benny Hill music...
He was asked what he thought of Glass, and he gave his opinion. Sorry, how is that a "knee-jerk" reaction? Would it have been so if he had responded positively?
Here's my reasoned, non knee-jerk response: Google can fuck off, and -- within the bounds imposed by professionalism and etiquitte -- so can eveyrone else wearing these infringements to my privacy. (In what I consider the moral sense, as opposed to the legal sense)
Nice fear-mongering....
FTFY:
[quote] ... or the militarized equivalent ... and record nice, close-up mugshots of the occupants of said corral.
"You're part of a group corralled in the "free speech zone" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone) associated with some politician's public appearance. The nice police officers encircling the corral have camera-phones
If your actions or mere presence at such a civil disobedience event have offended someone important, and maybe then you would like to hide, here's what happens:
The mug shots are sifted against a facial recognition software utility, using as a corpus all the posts of Facebook, various state motor vehicle departments, and all the "electronic records" your medical providers have been gathering, including ... mugshots validated to be actually you.
Then they have a collection of possible identity matches. They then get DNA fingerprints for those potential matches from the healthcare provider data base, and with that scan against all other law-enforcement- and health-care-collected DNA data to find all your relatives. A team then canvasses those people likely to be closest to you to find out where you are. Then at around 4:02 a.m your door is kicked in."[/quote]
Wow, it's almost like:
-Google Glass is totally irrelevant to the doomsday scenerio you describ
-that anything with a ccd matches your scenerio
-the databases you list are the real problem
&
-That if Google Glass makes this a reality we're fucked anyway because the only difference between it & a smartphone is Google Glass is hands-free.
This kind of article belongs in People Magazine, or maybe on
Burton's own web page, but not here.
Slashdot used to be informative and worth visiting. It appears the /. firmly
"editors" are determined to keep that stage of
in the past.
Because he spent 10 seasons of TNG wearing a more advanced (and less stylish) Google Glass.
Sorry to be pedantic, but the Visor worn by Burton's Next Gen character was not even remotely similar to Google Glass. Google Glass doesn't assist a sight disability, it doesn't help you see. The Visor didn't record anything, and except for an episode where it was compromised by Ferengi or Romulans or something, it didn't transmit anything and had no heads up display. The Visor was basically exactly like a pair of corrective lenses but with overkill, allowing the user to see a bit further in both directions of the visible spectrum, and gave the user wider field of view. Google Glass is effectively a damn good reason for paranoia, in that it has forward facing cameras and is "web aware," along with a heads up display interface.
Back in the late 90s and early 00s, Slashdot was a good collector of information around the internet that you might not see otherwise. But this mode is getting very tired, as evidenced by the extremely lameness of the Engadget article. This is not really new information about Google or Glass, and I really don't care what a celebrity thinks about anything. When you look at sites like arstechnica with their original material, it makes you realize that just deep linking to other sources of information is not enough.
Slashdot, you need to change. Rapidly.
Google glass has pretty terrible style. Infact i would prefer to wear the star trek ones than google's wire frame piece of shit. The design team should be sacked or put on youtube comment censorship duty. The ergonomics, the look, and the screen all crap.
Rocket Surgeon.
I predict that there will be a lot of businesses, restaurants, theaters and people who "Just Say No" to Google Glass. They will block people using Google Glass from being in their establishments and on their property. They will refuse to interact with people who may be putting them under constant surveillance and distraction.
I think it will become accepted - there may need to be some etiquette established with it's use - not that that has happened with smart-phones.
Just imagine - if you do something stupid - someone might tape it and keep it in your face for ever - the Internet never forgets. ,.,.
What would you say to someone taping you with their Google-glass and you found it uncomfortable?
What do we say to our kids when we try to talk to them, but the TXTing keeps interrupting?
In the end we are still social creatures, wired to react to irrepressible facial and voice expressions. Even over the phone, I can sometimes tell if someone is lying to me by bits of stress in their voice (but harder with CODEX distortion and latency).
I suppose taping peoples conversations will either make people more honest or more angry.. but definitely less forthcoming - thus an anti-social effect.
The problem with Google Glass is not the hardware itself, it is the privacy implications of using the device, which sends everything to an untrusted third party. It would be different if they offered the option of never communicating with their network, but they don't offer that as an option. So, essentially anyone who has an agreement with google (NSA, FBI, other governments, other companies, etc) will get copies of your location, pictures coming off the camera, video, microphone data, etc. Those issues alone are the reasons why I would never actually use one. Until Google is serious about separating the umbilical cord from devices like this from talking to their servers, it remains a serious problem about ever using it for anything long term. It's bad enough you might be already using an Android or iPhone device which does almost the same thing, minus the video and audio stream.
Naw, you can usually pass that off as just carrying around a turd in your hand, which is a few steps up in stylishness.
LeVar Burton isn't comfortable with the idea of using Google Glass? Maybe Google should make it look more like that engine air filter he used to wear on Star Trek.
because he spent many years being paid very well to wear a spray painted banana clip on his face and pretend that it was some sort of device similar to what google glass actually is
FTFY
I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but... if she has more than two legs, that's not a she.
And no amount of scrubbing will remove the memories of 'her' touch.
Because he spent 10 seasons of TNG wearing a more advanced (and less stylish) Google Glass.
Dude, this is Slashdot. You're going to get crucified for that imprecision.
7 seasons of TNG + 4 movies.
Generally accepted episode count: 178
Real fans get the precision down to the number of lines of dialogue, percentage of total screentime, or number of minutes (out to two decimal places), you insensitive clod!
It's not Google Glass that he doesn't like. After all, the guy wore what was basically (a prop version of) Google Glass on camera when he worked on TNG. If he had concerns about the technology it then something tells me they would have addressed it in one of the episodes.
His problem is with the ability to communicate across long distances quickly. He doesn't like the idea that anyone could take a picture *and then send it everywhere* in the blink of an eye. An interesting concern, but let's make sure that we're addressing the proper problem first.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The best solution if you someone came up to you with Google Glass on, is to beat the #^%#$ out of them, Problem Solved.
STOL aircraft are the hottest selling GA aircraft there is right now, the "CUB" variants from super cubs to pipper cubs to the dozen other builders / models are selling like hotcakes and doing great in both certified and sport aircraft models and the Zenith STOL's are being built by the thousands.
They were never designed to take off on the street like out of ones neighborhood, but people with a few hundred feet of grass can certainly do it. They're used for hunting trips, bush pilots, search and rescue, leisure flying and much much more.
Also, STOL aircraft are some of the most economical to operate - often designed around automotive (mogas) and now with diesel (jet-a).
> Sorry to be pedantic, but the Visor worn by Burton's Next Gen character was not even remotely similar to Google Glass.
Though this doesn't take away from the fact that "hey that celeb's character wore an eye visor thing on a tv show, let's get his opinion on people wearing eye visor things in real life."
As if his experience would translate or something.
Are you just saying that because you don't have one or perhaps Microsoft shill?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Because Lavar Burton is the world's leading expert on Google Glass technology?
Nope.
He's just a nice guy and an actor, so no expert opinion is available form him on the technology. Most Slashdot denizens would be better qualified to opine than Burton.
Apparently "knee-jerk response" now means "opinion I disagree with". Good to know!
sic transit gloria mundi
LOL we should trust google. Coincidentally the google ad at the top of the page tried some cross site scripting that noscript blocked. I'm sure they were just trying to "improve the browsing experience" though.
Probably because he is not a sheep that obeys all googles tells you to buy, and he can look at it objectively, to see its possibly the worst heads up display unit possible. And what the fuck has microsoft got to do with this? Perhaps your a google shill, no wait google dosn't have shills, they just have sluts. The ergonomics, the look, and the function are all terrible. Go back to the drawing board google unless you want to just cash in on all the mindless fans. And before you claim i'm a shill, it would matter who made google glass i would still think it's a piece of unflodable wireframe, single screen in the wrong place, shit.
Rocket Surgeon.
That's the problem. Google Glass is not just a funny shaped webcam, but one connected directly to Google. What you record is not yours, because you cannot prevent Google from having it.
Almost all old people are scared and confused by the technology of a generation one or two iterations down the line. It doesn't matter if they played pretend with the idea at some point. It's just an age related inability to adapt to new situations. This is like a shocking story that Stallone can't take a punch as well anymore, or has heart issues despite playing Rocky. Age fucks with people, that's life. Doesn't matter if we're talking body or mind.
Everything will be taken away from you.
His problem is with the ability to communicate across long distances quickly. He doesn't like the idea that anyone could take a picture *and then send it everywhere* in the blink of an eye. An interesting concern, but let's make sure that we're addressing the proper problem first.
This is clearly a privacy concern, and it's a biggie. If Glass existed without the video/audio recording features, for me at least, it'd be a very compelling product - I would love a heads up display with GPS. Google aimed too far with Glass - society isnt' ready for it yet - with the backing of Android, and their search product, they could have made it useful and cool without making it a massive privacy concern - and then added those features in a subsequent release.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
emphasis mine:
-- Noam Chomsky, source: http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals-killing-polio-workers-fighting-for-the-commons-in-turkey-the-heroism-of-bradley-manning
Explained joke is explained.
Has anyone gotten Brent Spiner's view on the topic?
I'm not a fan of Glass, but not every camera person covering an event is always with the press.
Advanced? It was fictional. It didn't do a damn thing but reduce vision and cause headaches. "It’s pretty much a living hell... 85 to 90 per cent of my vision is taken away when the VISOR goes on... I bumped into everything the first season – Light stands, overhead microphones, cables at my feet – I tripped over it all... So it’s a sort of conundrum – the blind man, who puts on the VISOR and sees much more than everyone else around him, when the actor actually does that he’s turned into a blind person. Then there was the pain. In the second season, we re-designed the VISOR and made it heavier and the way we actually affixed it was that we screwed it, we literally screwed it into my head and so there were screws that we would turn and there were flanges on the inside that would press into my temples and so after fifteen or twenty minutes of that I got headaches. So I had a daily headache for about six years. Which was also no fun."
Boy, what a misinfo about supersonic airliners. These airliners were not introduced to save on flying time (that was just a nice extra and a nice marketing slogan), they were introduced to save on fuel.
Jet engines are more effective when you fly faster. On the other hand, the drag gets more as well, and at Mach=1, the drag rises considerably. (the airflow cannot go over the wing nose anymore, which causes a helping suction to disappear). But someone had calculated that there were supersonic speeds at which the fuel consumption was minimal.
Too bad, a short time after that somebody else invented the double-stream jet engine, which divides the energy over the existing hot and a new cold flow of air. This makes the double stream jet engine quite effective at subsonic speeds. So in short, the then ultra-modern supersonic airliners were overtaken by even more modern engines.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Unlike the Google Glasses, His visor could also be used to clip back long hair.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have to wonder what would happen if the NSA/LEO tells Google that it wants the feed from all Glass devices within a 5 mile radius of (x) to be sent to them so they can find someone. Of course, Google will have to comply, but a lot of private stuff would be exposed. Google may even be required to turn Glass devices on if they are off (maybe even without telling the user that it is on).
Dude, this is slashdot, where real nerds hang out. Trekkies are beneath our contempt.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Now the NSA can watch you while you're reading a book!
What the hell does this mean. Is this because we hated Serenity?
hilarious
Must...avoid... spending mod points... to ensure... Trek... wins... flame war!
Ahh... ahhhhh... aaaaaahhhhh... plusoneyou! Hehe
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
God no... bloody sci-fi. Why waste time on actors in silly costumes when you could be overclocking your graphics card to get the latest version of CryEngine operating at full frame-rate?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Of course it was clear even in the 1980's that Starfleet had more privacy rules and personal ethics taught about use and storage of personal information than we do now. In fact his character was the focal point of several episodes about "invading privacy" of other people or securing his visor from snooping.
Google Glass doesn't have privacy protections people thought were needed in the 1980's... Let alone today.
The VISOR was inspired by, according to STNG producer Rick Berman, I believe, on his daughter's plastic hair band. You know, the flat-accordion-fold-toothed semi-circles that keep bangs out of women's faces?
She was goofing around, looking through it, like it was 80's New Wave glasses, and he went, "That's it!"
So the prop department worked from that. The little spaces between the teeth meant that you could see through it.
Thank you, Extras At The End Of Television Series DVDs.
-AC
To be fair, they spent 7 years using it as a plot point. Remember the visor could see many times more spectrum than humans.. That means it could see thru walls, clothes, machines, etc depending on how it was used.
It was always clear from the show's theme, his character was expected never to misuse those abilities.. And even the captain was hesitant to request those abilities outside of "technical" tasks.... The writers thought a lot about what kind of "power" they were writing into the story and really backed off. They probably thought about privacy on a campy 80's TV show more hours than Google Execs have thought about it. Which is more than a little spooky.