Speculations on time starting back up/google glass

[82_28]

I can see the 5 Point doing that and I hope more follow suit. I just wish the 5 Point hadn't changed their menu to bullshit more contemporary fare. Bring back the old Ranchos Hueveros. What a disappointment it was like a month ago when I was last there.

[8bitagent]

I thought wearable eye tech interfaces were suppose to be around in the 90's? Remember the mockup used in the 1995 film Hackers?

We all knew life would turn into a giant augmented ARG game topped off with drones and crazy 'biometric' crap Uncle Alex was ranting about years ago.
It didnt take CES showroom reveals to inform me of where we're headed. If you want creepy you now can pull up an app that shows you single girls or guys within yards or feet of you
that dovetails with their profile and algorhythms.

But if ya want cray-cray as the kids say(crazy squared), check it
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/tech ... 6564740128

1.8 billion megapixel cameras on drones patrolling America. In contrast my 'smart phone' is 3 megapixels. as in 1, 2, 3.
1.8 billion, with multiple drones fixed in flyover positions means a control room operator can swipe his fingers anytime on a giant map and see closeup imagery of anything that happens in a city within sight, any time. Like an endless DVR/Tivo.

[Nordic]

I realized that we would at some point go to the constantly-streaming, accessible to anyone "reality cam" a whole back while perusing instagram. It just follows that soon, instead of posting individual photos, users will be able to post a live-stream of their pov-cam, 24/7, and those with much more boring and ugly lives can then live vicariously through their idols. Celebrities on instagram would be able to use these for their millions of fans. Teeny bopper girls would be anle to be glued to Selena Gomez's pov-cam any time they chose. The celebs could make millions more bucks by endorsing products in their real lives, ie you would actually watch in a mirror as Selena Gomez puts on her brand of makeup in the morning.

Big brands are already starting to track down regular folks who happen to have thousands of followers on instagram and sending them on expensive trips where they take and post photos in the name of the product.

It's weird and quickly getting weirder.

[elfismiles]

Hey RI-Seattleites!

EDIT: D'Oh! JD's on it.

Seattle dive bar becomes first to ban Google Glass

Owner says "it's because it's kind of a private place that people go." Will other businesses follow?

by Casey Newton / March 8, 2013 3:51 PM PST

The 5 Point's Glass ban logo.
(Credit: StopTheCyborgs)

Google Glass won't be available to consumers for months, but there's at least one Seattle bar where the eyewear will not be welcome.

The 5 Point, a self-described dive bar in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, posted a notice to its Facebook page this week telling Glass Explorers looking to grab a pint that they will need to remove their $1,500 spectacles. The story was noted today on GeekWire.

"For the record, The 5 Point is the first Seattle business to ban in advance Google Glasses," the post reads. "And ass kickings will be encouraged for violators."

"I'm a thought leader," deadpanned Dave Meinert, the bar's owner, in an interview on Seattle's KIRO-FM. "First you have to understand the culture of the 5 Point, which is a sometimes seedy, maybe notorious place. People want to go there and be not known...and definitely don't want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the Internet."

Meinert admitted he was having a bit of fun: "Part of this is a joke, to be funny on Facebook, and get reaction."

MORE HERE:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-575733 ... gle-glass/

[82_28]

What's funny about the 5 Point is that it turns arguably the most dangerous place into now the safest place to go.

[justdrew]

well, back in the 90s, some bars would get cell phone scramblers, so no ones cell phone would work in the place. The Feds made it illegal to do that.

[Project Willow]

When I first moved to Seattle, you couldn't go see a movie later than 9pm, and we still have a relative dearth of 24 hour eateries. The two or three we have are rather poor, even as greasy spoons go. I guess if you're drunk and hungry at 3am, you don't care so much about taste.

Hope the Saloon bans this thing too, or we'll all be in trouble.

[a11235813]

The Big Brother / Corporate Overlord thing has a (positive) flip side too, as a deterrent against police brutality (always-on recording uploaded in real-time to the cloud). All the more effective if the cops are not able to visually discern who's wearing the things and who's not.
On a side note, I can imagine the porn industry already salivating at exploiting the technology

[FourthBase]

The Big Brother / Corporate Overlord thing has a (positive) flip side too, as a deterrent against police brutality (always-on recording uploaded in real-time to the cloud). All the more effective if the cops are not able to visually discern who's wearing the things and who's not.
On a side note, I can imagine the porn industry already salivating at exploiting the technology

Yes, a flip side, an upside! I like you.

The flip side of the surveillance state's driving logic, but applied to the state itself:
If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't mind being watched.

[Nordic]

Yeah except they're trying to arrest you as a terrorist if you so much as videotape how chickens are raised.

[FourthBase]

Yeah except they're trying to arrest you as a terrorist if you so much as videotape how chickens are raised.

True, which is beyond abhorrent. If I lived in one of those states, I could probably be found guilty of conspiracy merely for brainstorming to no one in particular about how to use pre-existing slaughterhouse footage to involuntarily spoil the appetites of diners at sidewalk cafes. Shit, if there's a file on me somewhere in a government or private security firm database, it'd most likely be for that. In which case, fine, whatever, my rights as defined by them would be in a precarious position, and they could conceivably get a secret warrant (or not!) to monitor every single thing I do or say or type. But remember: Logic is logic is logic. If it's good enough for us according to them, then it is necessarily good enough for them. So, this is not so much something to celebrate now, in terms of what can be accomplished now, by mirroring their logic back to them, as things stand now. It would be more something that could maybe be used as a legal or legislative logic in the future. Logic does have force. Not a force that can't ever be subverted or ignored, but a real force nonetheless.

[Belligerent Savant]

.
http://gawker.com/5990395/if-you-wear-g ... an-asshole

Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has developed a brilliantly concise definition of an asshole: "A person who demands that all social interaction happen on their terms." He was inspired by the assholes who talk in Amtrak's quiet car, but this reasoning also perfectly explains why those who use Google's new wearable computer are assholes, by definition.



Google Glass is the gadget all techies at South By Southwest are talking about this week. Glass is a wearable computer eye piece, which allows you to snap photos, read the news and do Google searches all while looking like an extra from the dance club scene in the Matrix. Glass is not yet publicly available, but Google is graciously allowing select geeks to purchase it early for $1,500, if they write them an essay about why they deserve one.

Glass has sparked much excitement and controversy. Having a computer strapped to your face is the second-greatest geek dream after robot sex. Critics have pointed out the privacy implications of Glass, for which one of the first apps is a program that lets you identify your friends in a crowd based only on what clothes they are wearing. A Seattle bar has already banned Glass, half in jest. Is Glass The Future of Computers or a Privacy Nightmare? I am not concerned with these questions. Instead I'm concerned with a much finer point: People who wear Google Glass in public are assholes.

Wearing Google Glass is functionally the same as living with a smart phone held constantly at eye-level. I've never seen it done, but I think most of us would be comfortable labeling anyone who walked around holding their smart phone at eye-level an asshole, and not just because it looks even stupider than Glass. The smartphone eye-level guy is an asshole because most of us 1) value the undistracted attention of those we're speaking to and 2) don't like to be filmed or photographed without our knowledge. If you come up to me with a smartphone held at eye level and demand that I interact with you like you're not being an asshole, you are an asshole. You are demanding social interaction on your wholly weird and unsettling terms. This does not change if the smartphone is tiny and strapped to your eye and made by Google. In fact, you thinking that this excuses your asshole behavior just makes you that much more of an asshole.

Google's defenders will suggest that this is the ranting of a backwards luddite. They will point to cell phones, another relatively new technology. Would you call all cell phone users assholes? No, just the ones who talk in public restrooms when there's a long line. But in the early days of cell phones, the loudmouth on his brick of a Motorola cell phone was very much shorthand for asshole. This stigma did not arise because society was not "ready" for cell phones, it came from the fact that the early cell phone adopters blabbing in public were disproportionately assholes. They were willing to trade other people's discomfort for their own technological convenience. They demanded social interaction on their terms. Now that everyone uses cell phones, we retroactively imagine that they were the trailblazers and everyone else a dumb luddite. But it doesn't change the fact that, at the time, these people were assholes. What if cell phones had flopped, like, say, the Segway? We would all be laughing about those dumb assholes who used to talk on cell phones in the 80s.

The utter asshole-ishness and disregard for others of the Google Glass wearer can be seen clearly in the arguments of its defenders. Take future expert Jeff Jarvis, who has made a great career out of telling people they are stupid for caring about internet privacy. His rationale for why we should not be afraid of Google Glass' head-based, internet-enabled cameras is that nobody ever uses their cell phone cameras to take creepy pictures of people. This is not my glib simplification of his argument, it's literally what he believes:


This is the fear we hear most: That someone wearing Glass will record you—because they can now—and you won't know it. But isn't that what we heard when cell phones added cameras? See The New York Times from a decade ago about Chicago Alderman Edward Burke:


But what Mr. Burke saw was the peril.

"If I'm in a locker room changing clothes," he said, "there shouldn't be some pervert taking photos of me that could wind up on the Internet."

Accordingly, as early as Dec. 17, the Chicago City Council is to vote on a proposal by Mr. Burke to ban the use of camera phones in public bathrooms, locker rooms and showers.

His fear didn't materialize. Why? Because we're civilized. We're not as rude and stupid—as perverted—as our representative, Mr. Burke, presumed us to be.
(Emphasis mine.)

For someone who seems like he would be happy to have his brainwaves patched directly into Google's servers via skull socket, Jarvis is curiously unaware about what actually goes on online. There are of course many, many people who have had photos of themselves taken and/or posted to the internet by creeps.

If anything, the cell phone camera example shows why we should be extra vigilant about new forms of surveillance, even if it's from private citizens. Because of the rush to embrace that new technology we now have outdated privacy laws that are unable to deal with the problems posed by the explosion of tiny cameras. So we have revenge porn that flourishes because its victims have little legal recourse to get naked pictures of themselves posted to the internet without their consent taken down. I believe that someday something like Google Glass will become accepted and normal, but that doesn't mean we should just blissfully boogie-board down the wave of Progress and hope it's not going to deposit us into a shark's mouth. It also doesn't change the fact that people have good reason to be creeped out by Glass, and by brushing them off as clueless technophobes you are being an asshole.

It's no surprise that Google would create a product so imbued with assholishness. Glass is just the latest in a long line of asshole moves from Google. Google's aborted project to scan and upload all books in existence to the internet without the publishers' permission? Asshole behavior. Sending cars with cameras around to take pictures of everyone's houses for Google Streetview? Asshole behavior. Much of Google's assholishness ended up producing very useful products (I love Streetview), but this doesn't change the fact that they rest on an act of colossal assholery, an arrogance that says your privacy/copyright doesn't matter because Google wants to make a new thing that happens to demolish it.

By donning Google Glass, you, the Google Glass user, are volunteering to be a foot soldier in Google's asshole army. (In fact you're paying for the privilege.) You are saying that anyone who comes into your line of sight must agree to be possibly filmed, photographed, or otherwise data-mined, not just for your own convenience but to further Google's quest for total world domination. Wearing Google Glass automatically means that all social interaction you have must be not just on yours, but Google's terms.

The only way around the Google Glass asshole trap is if Glass users take a pledge to only interact with other Glass users. Maybe they could move to an island.

Comments:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if anybody wants to know what the future of computing will be like, read Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End. It's set in the not-too-distant future, and everybody interacts with the world via augmented-reality contact lenses. The social constructs (both positive and negative) that he imagines around this situation are very believable, but what it convinced me of the most was that this reality is inevitable. Whether it's accomplished by glasses (likely, perhaps, in the short term, but this form factor won't last), contact lenses, or some sort of brain implants, it's only a matter of time before we integrate our "computers" completely with our bodies. The allure of being able to experience a reality that is "the Internet" is too great; the applications too powerful. This is the future, like it or not.

I think technology is great - it's allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of our wold and create things that (mostly) improve life.

But why, WHY, would anyone want to use Google Glass? I stare at my phone or computer almost 8 hours a day because of work, and I cannot wait to get away from those stupid glowing screens.

I hope this does bomb like the Segway because I would hate for it to become a workplace norm, much like lack of an instantaneous reply via email means you're lazy or stupid has become the norm.

Obviously I'm at the end of my work day and ready to make a break for it, so don't take anything too serious, nerds.

"But why, WHY, would anyone want to use Google Glass?"

1. It's the first step towards having a true photographic memory.
2. You'll never have to worry about not having a camera instantly available if you see something awesome happen.
3. Ever play video games? You know the HUD, all that stuff on the screen that makes your life so much easier? Now you'll have that in real life.
4. If someone talks to you in a language you don't know, you will see subtitles.
5. When you're driving, you won't have to look away from the road to fiddle with your phone or GPS.
6. As soon as we can control it using our brains rather than our voices, it will be a lot less assholish and a lot more awesome.
7. Within a couple of decades at most, this design will be replaced by ones that look like actual glasses, then contact lenses.
8. Via glasses or contact lenses for visuals, earbuds for sound, thought control mechanics, and cloud computing, you will truly have an awesome take-with you gaming experience. Never be bored on the subway (or in your driverless car) again.
9. AUGMENTED REALITY GAMING. You won't have to sit on your couch getting fat to enjoy playing Call of Duty with your friends ever again. Why download maps? The WORLD is your map.
10. You will know almost everything about everything around you, due to augmented reality.
11. The seconds you take to pull out and put away your phone, not to mention having to pause whatever you're doing to do it really add up in the long run.
12. You can turn it off or choose how much augmented reality information it displays to you.
13. Glasses of all looks and styles will become amazingly popular. The tech and eyewear industries will intersect in a big way. Tech and fashion, even more, become one.
14. You will never have to pause and look away while cooking or assembling something ever again.
15. This is the next evolution of information at your fingertips. Yeah, it looks a little clunky now, but it will only become more sexy and stylish with time.

Thank god I'll be dead by the time this happens. Sounds like a picnic!

ETA: you may have missed the part where I said I was sick of staring at screens - contact lenses or not. I don't want to look at the world in an "augmented" form constantly. That's a great way to lose touch with reality.

Also, for gaming?? That's something I do for entertainment, and probably only spend 5 hours on a week at the most. I don't need to be constantly gaming while I'm living my life. I'd rather have a conversation, and if the person I'm conversing with is speaking Spanish and I have a rudimentary knowledge of it, then instead of having subtitles, I'd rather LEARN from the interaction.

Jesus. Glass will be great for introverts, and the asshole in some other comment who said he doesn't understand why he can't be on the phone and has to acknowledge another human being when checking out at a store.

I agree with a lot of what people are saying about the inevitability of this type of technology. The fusion of man and machine. That may sound crazy to some people, but we're not nearly as far from that as we probably think. Google glass in 2013...Google contact lenses by 2025? Is it that hard to imagine? Nope.

Just the same, I think there will be social shifts from these emerging tech but that a lot of those shifts don't really matter all that much. I mean, people talk about "privacy" today in a way that suggests privacy has always existed as we understood it in 1990 or 2000. Of course, privacy is a broad conversation, but the idea that the world is "worse" for certain technologies is a fallacy of golden age thinking.

What very few people comment on, but I do wonder, is if we're going to learn in 10 years that cell phones have caused a rise in brain cancer and that these Glass products would do much more damage as they are permanently fixed around your skull.

I'm not some weirdo who worries about these things and thinks bad things will happen. But I do think early research suggests we may all wake up one day and think wtf were we thinking putting these things on our heads, in our pants, etc.

[DrEvil]

All police officers should be required by law to wear a camera and a microphone. Everything they do on the job should be recorded and uploaded to a secure server where it will be stored for at least 6 months. Any equipment glitches will require a thorough review. It should be enough of a pain in the ass to discourage tampering, and any intentional tampering should be a firing offense.

[82_28]

Yeah, but who's going to oversee all this? I trust exactly zero to do the right thing. And honestly, I mind but I don't mind living the dystopia as it were. What we're experiencing is insane. Yet it is historic. The shit we're noticing and experiencing, I do believe, is essentially one of a kind insofar as what we know of the history of civilization. The culminating factors are through the roof. Annnnd. About to get worse, if you are of like soul.

[FourthBase]

All police officers should be required by law to wear a camera and a microphone. Everything they do on the job should be recorded and uploaded to a secure server where it will be stored for at least 6 months. Any equipment glitches will require a thorough review. It should be enough of a pain in the ass to discourage tampering, and any intentional tampering should be a firing offense.

AMEN.