Since the PC, every iteration toward new form factors has come with progressively less freedom and openness: PDAs, smart phones, tablets, and now this.
IMHO Microsoft's dominance was the big threat to open computing in the 90s, but feudal devices and feudal security models are the big threat today. The open source movement successfully countered the threat of the Internet as a Microsoft fiefdom, but what can be done to counter this? Especially since these big players have locked down these form factors with massive patent thickets around their UIs and interaction metaphors.
Technologically Glass is awesome, but politically and socially it is horrible, nightmarish, and insane. Imagine if Microsoft proposed that in its new version of Windows they could:
* Remotely deactivate your computer.
* Videotape everything through your computer's camera and upload it to their servers and do whatever they like with it.
* Constantly track your location and do whatever they like with this information, as well.
* Forbid you from selling or even lending your device. (Granted, this restriction is probably temporary... but still... the fact that they can and would do this...)
* Control what software you may run, and under what terms.
* Demand that all software developers follow their precise and very nit-picky guidelines.
The outcry would have been deafening.
There has been some outcry around Glass, but little around smart phones which are only marginally better. And much of the outcry about Glass has been framed as ludditeism. If anything, the idea of going back to feudal models of society is ludditeism. This issue is more complex than "new technology baaaddd!" vs. "new technology gooood!" It's about what we are doing with our technology and how it shapes our society.
Edit: interesting thought: if Microsoft wants to become relevant again, the single biggest move they could make would be to array themselves in opposition to this trend. Never going to happen... probably too big of a culture shift for them... but it would instantly make them relevant in mobile if they offered a platform where you, the user, have total control and which built in privacy awareness as a central feature. Basically build things like "little snitch" and friends into the OS, open all the APIs, create tools allowing users to monitor what their devices are doing, etc. It wouldn't even have to be open source... just... maybe I can coin a new term here... "open agenda?" As in "your device has no agenda but yours?"
IMHO Microsoft's dominance was the big threat to open computing in the 90s, but feudal devices and feudal security models are the big threat today. The open source movement successfully countered the threat of the Internet as a Microsoft fiefdom, but what can be done to counter this? Especially since these big players have locked down these form factors with massive patent thickets around their UIs and interaction metaphors.
Technologically Glass is awesome, but politically and socially it is horrible, nightmarish, and insane. Imagine if Microsoft proposed that in its new version of Windows they could:
* Remotely deactivate your computer.
* Videotape everything through your computer's camera and upload it to their servers and do whatever they like with it.
* Constantly track your location and do whatever they like with this information, as well.
* Forbid you from selling or even lending your device. (Granted, this restriction is probably temporary... but still... the fact that they can and would do this...)
* Control what software you may run, and under what terms.
* Demand that all software developers follow their precise and very nit-picky guidelines.
The outcry would have been deafening.
There has been some outcry around Glass, but little around smart phones which are only marginally better. And much of the outcry about Glass has been framed as ludditeism. If anything, the idea of going back to feudal models of society is ludditeism. This issue is more complex than "new technology baaaddd!" vs. "new technology gooood!" It's about what we are doing with our technology and how it shapes our society.
Edit: interesting thought: if Microsoft wants to become relevant again, the single biggest move they could make would be to array themselves in opposition to this trend. Never going to happen... probably too big of a culture shift for them... but it would instantly make them relevant in mobile if they offered a platform where you, the user, have total control and which built in privacy awareness as a central feature. Basically build things like "little snitch" and friends into the OS, open all the APIs, create tools allowing users to monitor what their devices are doing, etc. It wouldn't even have to be open source... just... maybe I can coin a new term here... "open agenda?" As in "your device has no agenda but yours?"