
Google's Project Glass - it's not for the young - MaysonL
http://notes.kateva.org/2012/07/google-project-glass-it-not-for-young.html
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ok_craig
Imagine an advanced alien civilization many light years from Earth, where
awesome and exciting technologies are everywhere. Many of them take the form
of personal devices. Maybe there's one that teleports you to another physical
location. Maybe there's another for projecting interactive 3D images right in
front of your eyes. Maybe there's one for opening a personal wormhole to
another dimension.

Some of these personal devices take the form of little square boxes you carry
around. Maybe others you can wear, like a pair of gloves, or sneakers, or
glasses.

If you were taken on a quick visit to this awesome place, can you _imagine_
looking at any of these devices and thinking, "Omg, that alien looks
ridiculous. Its telebox is 7 inches instead of 4 or 10." Or, "Omg, that
alien's glasses have a box thingy on the side. It looks aweful." No, you would
not do this. Not in a million years. The thought would not even cross your
mind. You would be so impressed and awed by the simple fact that the
technology exists that it really wouldn't matter what form it took. And you
would be dumbfounded by anyone letting those details get in the way of shaping
their opinions about these amazing technologies.

If you were on this vacation, and you overheard one alien make fun of another
because of the way one of his devices looks, you probably wouldn't even
understand what was going on. Why do they care about those specifics? The
technology is just so obviously cool that picking on the details seems...
below their intelligence.

But we, here, on Earth, do this. We have the future in our fingertips, and now
on our heads, and people _actually take the time_ to criticize it for the way
it looks. "Glasses look stupid." "Phablets are disgusting." Etc. As if not
looking ridiculous is of higher value than anything new technologies can
provide.

I think that way of thinking is a little sad. If you don't want to embrace new
technology because you think it'll make you look silly, then don't. Why on
Earth would you take the time to criticize those who don't give a fuck, who
are willing to embrace new technologies because of what they do, and not how
they look?

As a 26 year old, I can't wait to get my hands on a pair.

~~~
spindritf
> Imagine an advanced alien civilization many light years from Earth, where
> awesome and exciting technologies are everywhere. Many of them take the form
> of personal devices.

Maybe your aliens evolved in a different environment, maybe their species was
not shaped by millennia of sexual selection. But ours was, so until we change
our very natures, "looking cool" and all other kinds of signalling will trump
quite a lot of real benefits.

------
tluyben2
Are people really vain enough to not wear these kind of things because it
makes them look geeky/bad? Maybe you remember how you all looked to 'normal'
people sitting with laptops or even mobile phones (I remember the time when it
was very geeky to have one). Wall street guys with this brick-with-antenna
looking busy and such?

How does it look better for a group of teenage girls with parents sitting
around the dinner table in a high class, $200/person meal restaurant all
staring in their SIII's, glow of Facebook on their faces than them wearing
these classes and having at least the _appearance_ of them caring about the
food/ambiance?

How does it look worse for the suave business guy with the chiseled
cheekbones, reeking of male oils, lotions and other useless crap crashing with
his iPad HARD into a lamppost (it moved!)? (saw this a number of times; I bet
if you live in a big city you see this daily)

Let's not talk about the, normally vain people, who want to 'experience their
music' and thus wear HUGE headphones on the street for high-end sound on their
Dark Side of the Moon.

I don't see how these glasses make you look worse than that? Newsflash; you
already look like a moron anyway with the electronics you use NOW! What does
this do to make it worse? If anything it improves (a few) of the above use
cases if executes well (which does not seem to be the idea Google has with it,
but luckily we have hackers and I guess they trust them to make it work).

~~~
taligent
I couldn't care less what you look like or what other people think of you or
me.

What I care about is you not recording me without my permission. And that's
what these glasses represent to a lot of people. One selfish person invading
the privacy of a lot of other people.

~~~
Tichy
I think if you walk down a street you will already be filmed by countless
cameras (surveillance, for starters), and they will only be getting more. No
turning back now.

~~~
dagw
But nobody is going to tag that video with my name and uploaded for the world
to see forever on the web.

~~~
Tichy
Well you could end up on any number of tourist photographs, automatically
tagged by face.com and Facebook. And why would people who wear glasses upload
every second of their life and tag it (and how - tagging takes time)?

~~~
adam-a
This is the thing a lot of people don't realise. If you record a 12 hour day,
when do you have time to watch it back or publish it? It kind of reminds me of
the guy who wrote down every thought he had for 3 months
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3857621.stm> . In the end he couldn't do
anything else but write, it's not something anybody could sustain.

The reality will probably be that people actually watch back only a small
amount and share less than that. The interesting application is a kind of
augmented memory, or TiVo for your eyes. In which case it's going to be
personal encounters or extremely novel public situations that will get
reviewed. The average man on the street doesn't need to worry unless he's
riding a unicycle.

Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror explored a pretty dark outcome for personal
recording devices
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3._.22The_Entire_History_of_You.22)
This seems a more likely danger than privacy invasion, people tend to be
egocentric on the whole, they care more about themselves than a random person
on the street.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Who knows how it will work anyway. I also envision something like a TiVo (or
other DVR). They would be constantly capturing video but only keep so much in
the buffer. If something happens, you have the chance to actually record it
(including the buffer in case it took you a few minutes to recognize it was
worth keeping). I seriously doubt very many people are going to end up with
12hrs of raw video to review. More likely a hand full of clips. Depending on
how big the buffer is, the clips would probably not be any harder to review
than say 300+ digital photos from a day of sight-seeing.

------
angryasian
i totally disagree. Kids these days are all about being hipsters, trend
setters that share everything. Seamlessly live stream their lives with a
retro/futuristic monocle, I think they'll be all over it.

~~~
intended
Generalizing over kids is rife with traps anyway. For example - different age
groups (and sub cultures) have different role models to follow/copy/emulate If
the 20 somethings find it useful for example - it could trigger the cool
factor for adolescents and hence other kids down the chain.

Peer pressure, conformity, being cool and fitting in are huge factors for
teens, and if their role models use them then they will be open to them too.

Heck people can wrap their heads around wearing their underwear visibly, I
think cyborg glasses could be an easy sell.

(Alternatively If younger kids start using it (perhaps unlikely) then the
older kids may even say "that's for kids" and stay clear.)

If the peer group approves, then the product will be fine.

edited for clarity.

------
Tichy
The poor models who I suppose would rather strip naked in some beer ad or roll
around in beds half naked holding fancy smartphones. It really must be awful
to do ads for some glasses. Lucky that most other advertising tends to be
dignified.

~~~
tluyben2
Well I know that models are afraid of glasses in general; I don't know why. A
well known model in my country was a good friend (long time ago) and she wore
glasses in school; outside she would never wear them (this was long before
digital cameras/phones, I think in this day/age she would just not at all wear
them) because she thought they sucked. I thought she looked way better in
them. But maybe that's just my fetish :)

~~~
Tichy
Makes sense that if you are forced to wear glasses and don't like it, modeling
with them is nor your favorite thing in the world. I just thought about it:
maybe because glasses aren't really optional like other clothes (because you
can't see without them), they feel more annoying, even though objectively they
look fine.

