Slashdot Mirror
A Year With Google Glass
Mat Honan, a writer for Wired, has posted an article detailing his takeaways from long-term use of Google Glass. He makes particular note of how the device's form factor is much more offensive to others than the actual technology contained within. For example, his wife wanted him to take pictures and shoot videos of their child's birth, but not with Glass: "It was the way Glass looked. It might let me remain in the moment, but my wife worried it would take her out of it, that its mere presence would be distracting because it’s so goddamn weird-looking." It can get unpleasant when strangers are involved: "People get angry at Glass. They get angry at you for wearing Glass. They talk about you openly. It inspires the most aggressive of passive aggression. ... Wearing Glass separates you. It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion (not everyone who wanted Glass got it; you had to be selected). Glass is a class divide on your face." Honan found most of the default software to be handy, but the third-party software to be lacking. Glass also facilitated his unintentional switch from an iPhone to an Android phone. He ends the piece by warning of the inevitability of devices like Glass: "The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face. We need to think about it and be ready for it in a way we weren’t with smartphones."
No dumbass, we just don't like you aiming a camera and microphone at everywhere you look.
"I'm going to wear these obnoxiously ugly glasses that happen to record everything I see. People object to my presence, but that's fine, because I totally spent one and a half thousand dollars on this accessory that marks me as a smug upper-class, privacy-invading nerd. Google Glass is here to stay (and don't forget I was into it before it was cool)."
When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an asshole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.
You've got a standing treadmill desk, and it's GLASS people make fun of?
This guy's already living the douche life.
The ads are more relevant to his interests than ever before!
Trolling is a art,
Go f*ck yourself Matt Honan. I should invent a "Glasshole Killer" hat which projects a bright IR light onto the user's face effectively blinding the device's recording capabilities.
It will take hell or hight water to get "Glass" onto the people that spend god awful amounts of money on fashion and tech toys. The glasses are ugly looking AND imply that you're being recorded. There is resistance for a reason. The glasses need to be completely innocuous for this entire fashion/tech concept to take off. "
>> Glass separates you. It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion
Um...OK. Self esteem problem much?
>> his wife wanted him to take pictures and shoot videos of their child's birth, but not with Glass
Maybe she's one of those "passive aggressive" weirdos who doesn't want video of their private parts uploaded to the Internet. Good luck in divorce court, man.
It will work out fine for all the people that really love technology but don't actually have any real life friends. You know who I'm talking about. No friends = no one to object.
Personally, I'm offended if one of my friends spends more than a few seconds staring at a smartphone in a social situation. Its OK if they excuse themselves from the group, but it isn't if they are sitting with other people and mentally somewhere else. Google glass is the same, but maybe worse because you think they are there but aren't.
Maybe in 30 years, and even then it won't work the way google wants it to. Come on, this is this decade's "Segway" , a solution in search of a problem.
And it's not "inevitable". Just hip fanboi hype.
Problem with Goggle Glass is that it's in your face. It's conspicuous. It may not be recording at the moment, but you don't know that for sure.
It's like, if I'm walking around holding a cellphone in hand with arm stretched out and pointed in such a way that it looks like I'm recording a video, and then started engaging in conversation with people while still in that pose, but now the camera is pointed directly at them, people will get uncomfortable. (unless of course the person I"m talking to wants to be recorded). It's in their face. It's annoying.
Google Glass is kind of like that, all the time.
Another example: you might be walking around in a city where it's perfectly legal to carry firearms in public if you have a permit. And say it's a shall-issue state where anyone can get a permit if they don't have criminal records, so a large percentage of the population does. Now you're in a crowded city area, and you *know* many of the people are packing concealed heat. But it rarely crosses your mind because it's not in your face. Out of sight, out of mind.
But suppose instead of concealed carry, people are walking around openly wearing their Glocks on their hips, AK-47s slung across their shoulder and so on. This is in your face. Your reaction is going to be much different.
..just hold your own smartphone up by your face, as if you're recording them while you talk to them. Whether you are recording or not, I can't imagine the Glasshole won't be slightly annoyed by what you are doing.
Imagine you're using your laptop in the subway, some guy wearing Glass sits next to you, peeks at your screen for 1 second, and starts analyzing what you're working on, using his Glass.
PS: I wonder what Glass would have looked like if a human's ears were not located at approximately the same height as their eyes.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
That's planned for next year when availability is increased. It's the only thing that's kept me from getting them. For those places that don't allow it, I'll keep an extra, normal pair of glasses in my car, similar to what I already do with sunglasses.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Jumping the gun a bit, aren't you? Or did you call everyone who didn't believe that 3D TV would catch on a Luddite too?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
However, ignoring technological (and social, for that matter) advance doesn't make it go away.
Not every predicted advance catches on. Sometimes a new technology doesn't catch the public fancy the way pundits think it will (such as 3D anything), or it just turns out to be a passing fad (VRML anyone?), or it's just impractical (remember those flying cars we were all supposed to be driving by now?). And Google Glass has yet to prove itself catchy, long-lasting, OR practical.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I've had Glass for a couple of weeks and the experience has been interesting. I live in a area w/ about 250,000 people and there are probably fewer than five (including myself) who have Glass. I've been wearing them around town to see how people react to them and so far it seems pretty positive. Some people just kind of look at me oddly, but many people recognize what it is and ask me what the experience is like. This is what I tell them: Sure, it's great to have access to (most) of the Google Now functionality without needing to look down at my phone. Text messages delivered to the HUD is handy, as is responding to them via voice. For the most part though, there isn't a whole lot these do yet, certainly not enough for average consumers to care. That said, the potential for business/industrial use is HUGE. Most people's first experience with Glass won't be as a consumer item, but rather as something they use for work. Think construction workers, or people who work in hospitals or laboratories. Many people will be exposed to these via applications in the work environment. You, as a consumer, may not be very interested in Glass, but there are many businesses who want/need something like this for their workforce.
A 3D TV has pretty much one use. I can envision dozens of niche apps for Google Glass without even trying that could make real differences in some areas.
How about Glass for an auto mechanic. Look under the hood of a car and it overlays the wiring diagram, exhaust diagram, part you're looking at with price and local availability, etc. Switch layers on and off with a glance or voice command.
Add a bluetooth ODB2 synced to Glass and you can see real-time engine stats as you are working under the hood. No more having to have a stack of manuals or tweak something and look up at the portable computer to see what change it made. You see the changes as it happens.
Add auto recognition of the make and model, so you don't have to look up which manuals.
Ditto airplane mechanics.
I can also easily imagine augmented reality applications for surgeons, dentists, dermatologists and just about every category of health professional.
How about an app for foreign tourists. Auto translate whatever written material you look at. Read street signs, menus, directions, brochures, etc. Probably an audio version of that as well -- automatically translating what you hear. Maybe subtitles.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
All my TVs were 3D until quite recently. Now I can afford a 2D one so that there's more room in my room!
Ezekiel 23:20
It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion (not everyone who wanted Glass got it; you had to be selected). Glass is a class divide on your face.
Really? You point a video recording device at people and you think they are getting annoyed because you are so elite? That comment says way more about the author of the article than it does about the people he interacted with.
Once it gets into the hands of the pubescents out there, any social norms may be thrown out the window.
This reminds me of what happens in Baxter and Clarke's The Light of Other Days.
--- SPOILER ALERT ---
Long story short, access to cheap wormhole camera technology becomes ubiquitous. Everyone can see (and thanks to lip-reading software and the like, hear) anything happening anywhere. Among all the other societal upheavals, there's a passing mention of a couple of teenagers playing hide the sausage on a sidewalk bench in the middle of the day and no-one (by that point) caring.
Anyone who still cares for their privacy in this society wears a light-blocking cloak and communicates by touch in light-tight rooms.
By the end, they manage to send wormcams back in time, discovering (among other things) that the "first" single-celled organisms where in fact left behind by a race of intelligent crustaceans that evolved billions of years ago and were later wiped out by some kind of environmental disaster, IIRC. And yes, they did get a look at the crucifixion, but there were so many wormcams swallowing light in the sky that day that the sky grew dark and at the moment of Jesus's death, interference was too great to get a clear view.
Good book.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Security Cameras have implied consent by you being in an area. Google Glass comes into YOUR area without your consent. Security cameras aren't also directly being uploaded to youtube and are rarely even viewed by human eyes unless someone is looking at an incident.