Google Tries To Defuse Glass "Myths"
As reported by Beta News, Google has tried to answer some of the criticism that its Glass head-mounted system has inspired with a blog post outlining and explaining what it calls 10 "myths" about the system. Google's explanation probably won't change many minds, but in just a few years the need to defend head-worn input/output devices might seem quaint and backwards.
If Google had just included a lens cover then Glass would just be a status symbol for ultra-nerdy hipsters.
With an uncovered camera always conspicuously pointed in everybody's face Google Glass is an unmistakable reminder of our Orwellian world.
I don't hope we'll ever come to that scenario.
You might as well have highwater pants, a short sleeved white dress shirt, and a pocket protector.
Scott
©20014 angrykeyboarder & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/18/researchers-google-glass-spyware-sees-what-you-see
"Myth 7 - Glass is the perfect surveillance device"
Having something recording where you are looking is the main aspect that makes it such a perfect surveillance device, more than size or form factor.
They debunk this by saying that you can put together much more discrete recording devices. That is true.
However, if you think about it if Glass or something like it really were to become prevalent, it would be the perfect surveillance device - because it's always in a great position to record things, and also hiding in plain sight. Sure you CAN put together something else that works as well and is not as visible (though it's tough to have it looking where you look the way Glass does, or prevent it from being accidentally blocked), but that takes either a lot more effort or money.
People are just more comfortable with recording devices that make it more obvious when someone is recording by motion - holding up a phone, or even a wrist for a smart watch. Glasses possibly recording anything when someone is doing something people do naturally (just looking around) is what creeps a lot of people out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm telling you man, in just a few years, NOT having a calculator on your watch is going to seem quaint and backwards!
When I see someone wearing a camera for total recording on a ski slope, or on a bicycle trail, I don't feel bothered. Fat and unphotogenic, perhaps, but not bothered. OTOH the one time I saw someone walking around with a Google Glass on a normal day on a normal street, no special activities, no special event, nothing active to be watching, I felt: Why is this guy watching me?
It's like noticing another person in a crowd looking at you vs. noticing a policeman looking at you.
Not that I agree with remembering everything I see, but when I upgrade to ocular implants, opposition to my vision is going to seem far more hostile than "quaint and backwards" to me.
There was a time when some demanded others not to meet their gaze. Oh how they'd have loved to forbid recollection or even erase the very memories of their transgressions from the minds of those they oppressed. Try as they might the tyrants could not keep reality from existing. Be careful, humans, history has a way of repeating in new and more horrible ways than those of the current cycle dare dream.
Protip: Organic chauvanists are as wrong as human chauvinists or gender chauvinists or racial chauvinists.
I already know who's side I'll be fighting for. Since the first human hefted the first stone tool machines and man have helped each other prosper. Long has it been established that ones who forbid others wield technologies are quick to render themselves irrelevant. Those that fight against the natural order by which humanity has gained its prosperity over all other organic life are like apes who could speak but refuse: Indistinguishable from the other primitive and bloody minded animals.
Awareness and Life itself are processes of reflection on experience, encoded molecularly in DNA, structurally and chemically in brains, symbolically in cultures, and now digitally in the cells that make up the world wide neural network. You are merely one result in a sea of outcomes from the universe's struggle to gain awareness of itself via producing more perfect expressions capable of reflecting more precisely ever larger and more detailed descriptions of reality. To fight the nature of the universe is to lose against the laws of physics and entropy themselves: Adapt or become extinct.
You are not doing things that you _think_ are illegal _now_. Maybe a bored prosecutor will think differently in a few years and financially ruin you just the same or even manage to convince a jury (of typically: idiots) that you should go away for a long time. Or maybe you develop some ideas that those in power do not like to much the same result.
Also refer to http://online.wsj.com/news/art... "You Commit Three Felonies a Day".
"Glasshole", btw., is already a while old and not my creation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That you even need to ask clearly indicates that your moral development as a person has failed. But by all means, try it, break common decency and see what it gets you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
https://plus.google.com/+Googl...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Nothing. They just do it without the physical motions that would otherwise provide the visual cues to indicate what they're doing.
Bullshit.
Bullshit, again. I'm in Seattle. We get a lot of tourists. They're easy to spot with their cameras. And people do step out of the way of their shots.
Got one already. Me having a life does not mean that you are not an ass hole.
You being an ass hole does not mean that I do not have a life.
Beating up people is called Assault and is illegal.
;)
Arresting someone that isn't breaking the law is itself illegal.
(Taking pictures in public, as well as using a heads-up display device in public are both totally legal, so long as you aren't driving.)
Calling someone a 'Glasshole' for simply wearing a specific accessory is not only close-minded and uncalled for, but totally rude.
(Try waiting for them to do something to deserve the insult, like insulting people without just cause.)
As far as I'm concerned, the 45 minute battery life is not a 'feature', it's a huge freaking defect.
Also, the price is currently WAY too bloody high. In my opinion it's only worth about $80 new.
Feel free to disagree.
Dicks getting punched for being dicks is nothing new. If you had walked through a college party ten years ago, taking pictures of people without getting their attention first, it wouldn't take more than ten photos before your camera met an untimely demise. The new thing here is the device making it impossible to tell when you are being a dick, not the reaction to such dickish behavior.
To those who claim that glassholes are doing nothing wrong, try this little experiment: Go to your local Wal-Mart, when the parking lot is busy with people walking in and out, take out your digital camera, and walk through a busy part of the parking lot. Squat down behind each car, and take a close-up photo of the license plate. Make sure it is very clear what you are doing.
Frankly, I don't think you've got the balls to do it, because you know it is wrong. And if you do, whether because you are a big enough dick not to care or because you genuinely don't understand that it is wrong, I give it less than ten minutes before someone fervently explains to you that your behavior is uncivil.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
My biggest objection to Glass is that there is no way for anyone else to know when it is on.
Except for the light that comes on when you speak a command or record video, there's absolutely no way to know.
That you even need to ask clearly indicates that your moral development as a person has failed. But by all means, try it, break common decency and see what it gets you.
So far no issues. Not everyone is a real asshole worrying about what I do or don't. Everyone that has approached me about Glass just wanted to try it out. Only time I was asked not to carry it (at a posh restaurant where everyone was taking pictures with their phones) I just took it off (note: Now I wouldn't, because I have prescription lenses - if I can't wear glasses at a restaurant I just go somewhere else).
Anyway the fact that you think my moral development has failed because I wear Glass really says a lot about you. Wearing Glass is enough for you? Nothing else matters?
They didn't address any of the problems. They just called them "myths" and said "don't worry, trust us, everything will be fine" for each one of them. And they did so using condescending, arrogant and insulting language (look for example at the passage when they declare that they want people to wear google glasses inside locker rooms (!): "just bear in mind, would-be banners..."). This reinforces in me the distrust in the company and the concern about the product.
Why is it that makes people think Glass is nothing but a surveillance device SPECIFICALLY conceived to record them and absolutely nothing else?
Get real, people. It's impossible for that device to be recording 24/7. It's unrealistic to think it's going to automagically upload the video to Google for analysis. Just apply some common sense. If no other device can, so can't Glass.
I like the idea of the device for AR experiments, information delivery and yes, taking the occasional picture of something that would take longer to prepare and set a camera, such as birds (that will fly away the moment you prepare your camera or phone) and finished elaborate pastries which I am very proud of. I have no intention or interest on recording people doing mundane boring daily crap that I have no business recording.
Anyway, this shows a very ugly collective paranoia that should stop before somebody gets hurt for no reason. Yes, I specifically say hurt because that's the common thing: "If I see some glasshole pointing that thing at me I'll DESTROY THEM". And, no, guys, you AREN'T that interesting to warrant recording you. Unless you are some form of celebrity, which I doubt.
Nerd bravado at its best. Seriously. Mod me troll if you wish, I don't care, but someone has to say this.
The problem has never been that it is a camera. After all we have phone camera. The problem is that contrary to normal phone or normal camera, it is pointed toward your face all the time. And nobody trust the light to really show whether it is filming or not. Is that so hard to answer google.... No instead you made up 10 nice strawmen.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Faced with a person who wears an HD button cam, however, they do not have this psychological response.. even though their every move may very well be recorded; ignorance truly is bliss in this case.
Also, it is highly unlikely that significant numbers of people are going to go fit covert recording devices to their clothes and then upload the results to a massive database for mining by a megacorp. The technology exists, but most people don't use it, because it's obviously creepy. No doubt quite a few people would challenge or object to it if they did discover it happening.
A lot of the objection to Google Glass is that it erodes standards of socially acceptable behaviour in this respect, and it does so at the will of an organisation who are openly hostile to anyone having privacy any more. Schmidt and his pals made their bed, now they have to lie in it, and that sound you can't quite make out is the million tiny violins of sympathy that aren't playing for them right now.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
People do not want to get filmed by strangers without their consent, be it with a phone, camera, or Google glasses. What's so hard to understand about this? Did you grow up in a household with a public toilet cam or what?
Is it's an incredibly bad design. Terrible form, and lackluster function. With a heads up display done properly, you wont be able to find a person that dosn't want to have one.
Rocket Surgeon.
Just because something is legal, doesn't make it right.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I see something similar at work even without Glass involved, although not quite to "frothing psychotic" level - our Dell laptop of choice has a webcam, which leads to a (small, granted) subset of our users being utterly convinced that they are being watched through it at all times...
No, that is not what led to that. What led to that is that these cameras do not by law have to have an LED which comes on when the device is active. Some few cameras have a LED which is on any time the camera is on. More cameras have an LED which is actually completely separate from the camera itself and which is switched in software and you have only the manufacturer's word that the driver will do the right thing. And then there are the many cameras with no indication of whether they are turned on or not, the majority really.
If all the cameras had to have an LED that came on when the camera was recording, and the LED wasn't software-controlled, then you could simply tell people that and assuage their fears. But sadly, that ain't the way it is, and as I alluded to above, it's gonna take a law to make it so. Frankly, the fact that this didn't happen back when schools were getting busted spying on students pretty much proves to me that the establishment is turning on people's cameras without their permission, and without turning on the LED. If they can do it, then the functionality is probably sitting around for any unscrupulous fuck to discover.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't have a problem with people taking matters into their own hands on this and yanking those devices of faces of the wearers and simply stomping on them.
You used to support private property. Now you support the destruction of private property, if its existence offends you. Did your cult leader tell you this somehow is not a contradiction in terms? You keep telling us that your beliefs are absolute yet you keep going back on them.
But of course, this contradiction is just another part of your aspirations. When you give people a false sense of entitlement if makes it that much easier to bring about fascism for the people.
You could also have an app that makes everyone beautiful and happy.
I am certain that when you can do a full overlay that people will be able to alter their reality so that instead of walking down Main St that they are walking in a Star Wars/Star Trek/etc fantasy world. The idea is that everything that they see will be based upon the reality in front of them but Storm Troopers instead of the actual policeman, floating cars instead of the actual car. Then when you cross the street, if you avoid the fake floating speeder then you will also avoid the real Ford Fusion.