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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.'"
Never heard of this guy.
He actually is a celebrity, known amongst geeks for his character on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Asking his opinion on Google Glass is completely intentional, as his character on the series was a blind man who viewed the word through a device that sat at eye-level on his head [link to pics] and interfaced directly with the visual cortex. The device allowed him to see the world in an unnatural but heightened way far outside the normal visible light-spectrum, closer to electromagnetic spectrum (someone will reply to this and give exact spectrum/wavelengths I'm sure).
So some marketoid is trying to draw a parallel between the character's visor and Google Glass.