Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.