A Year With Google Glass 292
Mat Honan, a writer for Wired, has posted an article detailing his takeaways from long-term use of Google Glass. He makes particular note of how the device's form factor is much more offensive to others than the actual technology contained within. For example, his wife wanted him to take pictures and shoot videos of their child's birth, but not with Glass: "It was the way Glass looked. It might let me remain in the moment, but my wife worried it would take her out of it, that its mere presence would be distracting because it’s so goddamn weird-looking." It can get unpleasant when strangers are involved: "People get angry at Glass. They get angry at you for wearing Glass. They talk about you openly. It inspires the most aggressive of passive aggression. ... Wearing Glass separates you. It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion (not everyone who wanted Glass got it; you had to be selected). Glass is a class divide on your face." Honan found most of the default software to be handy, but the third-party software to be lacking. Glass also facilitated his unintentional switch from an iPhone to an Android phone. He ends the piece by warning of the inevitability of devices like Glass: "The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face. We need to think about it and be ready for it in a way we weren’t with smartphones."
"Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
No dumbass, we just don't like you aiming a camera and microphone at everywhere you look.
Bully! (Score:5, Insightful)
When I wear it at work, co-workers sometimes call me an asshole. My co-workers at WIRED, where we’re bravely facing the future, find it weird. People stop by and cyber-bully me at my standing treadmill desk.
You've got a standing treadmill desk, and it's GLASS people make fun of?
This guy's already living the douche life.
The future is on its way (Score:5, Insightful)
Go f*ck yourself Matt Honan. I should invent a "Glasshole Killer" hat which projects a bright IR light onto the user's face effectively blinding the device's recording capabilities.
It will take hell or hight water to get "Glass" onto the people that spend god awful amounts of money on fashion and tech toys. The glasses are ugly looking AND imply that you're being recorded. There is resistance for a reason. The glasses need to be completely innocuous for this entire fashion/tech concept to take off. "
Re:Bully! (Score:2, Insightful)
The article writer is oblivious.
I think they WANT to believe that people think they are an asshole for being "of a higher class" or "richer" or whatever.
The article writer doesn't seem to grasp that it has to do with the camera & microphone. Perhaps they don't WANT to grasp it.
Self esteem problem much? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Glass separates you. It sets you apart from everyone else. It says you not only had $1,500 to plunk down to be part of the “explorer” program, but that Google deemed you special enough to warrant inclusion
Um...OK. Self esteem problem much?
>> his wife wanted him to take pictures and shoot videos of their child's birth, but not with Glass
Maybe she's one of those "passive aggressive" weirdos who doesn't want video of their private parts uploaded to the Internet. Good luck in divorce court, man.
It will work out fine (Score:5, Insightful)
It will work out fine for all the people that really love technology but don't actually have any real life friends. You know who I'm talking about. No friends = no one to object.
Personally, I'm offended if one of my friends spends more than a few seconds staring at a smartphone in a social situation. Its OK if they excuse themselves from the group, but it isn't if they are sitting with other people and mentally somewhere else. Google glass is the same, but maybe worse because you think they are there but aren't.
Re: "Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe in 30 years, and even then it won't work the way google wants it to. Come on, this is this decade's "Segway" , a solution in search of a problem.
"Future is on its way"... Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not "inevitable". Just hip fanboi hype.
Problem with Goggle Glass is that it's in your face. It's conspicuous. It may not be recording at the moment, but you don't know that for sure.
It's like, if I'm walking around holding a cellphone in hand with arm stretched out and pointed in such a way that it looks like I'm recording a video, and then started engaging in conversation with people while still in that pose, but now the camera is pointed directly at them, people will get uncomfortable. (unless of course the person I"m talking to wants to be recorded). It's in their face. It's annoying.
Google Glass is kind of like that, all the time.
Another example: you might be walking around in a city where it's perfectly legal to carry firearms in public if you have a permit. And say it's a shall-issue state where anyone can get a permit if they don't have criminal records, so a large percentage of the population does. Now you're in a crowded city area, and you *know* many of the people are packing concealed heat. But it rarely crosses your mind because it's not in your face. Out of sight, out of mind.
But suppose instead of concealed carry, people are walking around openly wearing their Glocks on their hips, AK-47s slung across their shoulder and so on. This is in your face. Your reaction is going to be much different.
Re:"Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Class Divide"?
You're thinking of socio-economic class. This is a little different. It separates the class of people stupid and rude enough to walk around wearing Google Glass from the class of people who aren't.
Re:"Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I am not representative. (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I don't give a fig what they look like. They don't look particularly odd to me at all, and I would no sooner welcome someone pointing a cam-corder or smartphone at me for no apparent reason (or especially if the apparent reason was that I was giving birth at the time -- sheesh!)
"Class divide"? Please. $1500 is not a lot of money for plenty of hobbies that are popular among most classes that can scrape together any amount of money at all. How far will $1500 go if you are into working on cars? Riding bicycles? Doing anything that requires a reasonably capable personal computer?
Maybe Google Glass isn't what is turning people off of Google Glass wearers. Maybe it is the wearers that are turning people off Google Glass.
Re:"Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True quote (Score:1, Insightful)
The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face.
No, it's not going to be on *MY* face.
OK, grandpa, don't worry. You can keep your fax machine until they pry it from your cold dead hands.
Re:The future is on its way (Score:5, Insightful)
All these people so worried about being recorded in public are already being recorded in public!!! Look around you. Do you see that camera in the corner that is always on and always recording? Other than mobility and the fact that user has to audibly say, "record" on Glass, what's the difference?
Re:Hipster logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because everyday we see people with smartphones glued to their faces with an outward facing camera that's always on.
So typed the guy from a notebook while a camera is pointing at his face.
You can relax. Those Glass people are probably not recording you. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not that interesting. Even if it were on, you would more than likely be the part that is fast-fowarded over or simply edited out.
Re:"Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Jumping the gun a bit, aren't you? Or did you call everyone who didn't believe that 3D TV would catch on a Luddite too?
Re:True quote (Score:5, Insightful)
However, ignoring technological (and social, for that matter) advance doesn't make it go away.
Not every predicted advance catches on. Sometimes a new technology doesn't catch the public fancy the way pundits think it will (such as 3D anything), or it just turns out to be a passing fad (VRML anyone?), or it's just impractical (remember those flying cars we were all supposed to be driving by now?). And Google Glass has yet to prove itself catchy, long-lasting, OR practical.
Re:True quote (Score:5, Insightful)
A 3D TV has pretty much one use. I can envision dozens of niche apps for Google Glass without even trying that could make real differences in some areas.
How about Glass for an auto mechanic. Look under the hood of a car and it overlays the wiring diagram, exhaust diagram, part you're looking at with price and local availability, etc. Switch layers on and off with a glance or voice command.
Add a bluetooth ODB2 synced to Glass and you can see real-time engine stats as you are working under the hood. No more having to have a stack of manuals or tweak something and look up at the portable computer to see what change it made. You see the changes as it happens.
Add auto recognition of the make and model, so you don't have to look up which manuals.
Ditto airplane mechanics.
I can also easily imagine augmented reality applications for surgeons, dentists, dermatologists and just about every category of health professional.
How about an app for foreign tourists. Auto translate whatever written material you look at. Read street signs, menus, directions, brochures, etc. Probably an audio version of that as well -- automatically translating what you hear. Maybe subtitles.
Re:Swing and a miss... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True quote (Score:2, Insightful)
I use a dumb phone. It's tiny, it fits in my pocket, it's indestructible, it always gets signal, it doesn't have to be "held right". Remind me why I'm "going away"?
Re: "Class Divide"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's aimed at people who want to feel superior because the read Wired magazine, and being different strokes their ego.
Re:"Class Divide"? (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't my issue with it either. My (irrational) hatred for Glass-wearers is along the same vein as my disdain for people who have their cell phones out at nice restaurants while their dining companions are with them (often with their own cell phones out). Glass is a statement that you can't bear to be disconnected from the internet for fifteen fucking minutes while you enjoy a nice meal, a walk outside, or a social event. But yeah, it's not jealously.
You're right. Remember when checking your watch while in a social setting was rude? Well, checking your smartphone is too. Google Glass is the worst of that rudeness because the person you're snubbing can't even vaguely see what you see. In fact, they can't be sure when you're snubbing them and when you're not. Any glances in the general direction of the display convey "you don't matter right now", right or wrong.
Until this stuff injects data directly onto the retina without a visible chunk of hardware stuck to the face, it's going to be rude to wear.