Hi there, Google Glasses Pioneer!
This is an open letter warning you to put down your Google Glasses if you care about the health of your eyes and the prosperity of your soul. Those glasses are going to cost you a lot more than $1,500.00USD because your face is going to pay the price for prying into the public, everyday, lives of those all around you. Nobody will trust you. Everyone will suspect you are recording their every move — even if you are not — but because you can! Be thankful for universal Obamacare — because you are going to need it with the rising year. This is not a call for violence against you; this is a call out that violence will be waged against you.
Sure, the idea of having the weather and other information appear before your eye is neat, but the Panopticonic effort of Google Glass to record and share precisely what you’re seeing with the rest of the world is going to get you into massive trouble on the street.
The assumption will be that anyone wearing Google Glasses is recording everything. We will have to behave as if you are recording us — because you might be recording us. You may think that will be a good thing — a way to cudgel good behavior — but I’m telling you right now, you are making yourself weaker and more vulnerable because you are becoming a social networking rat with that glass on your eye watching us.
Police officers, teachers, PATH train conductors, lawyers and deadbeats on the street are but a few who will religiously attack your glasses first and ask questions later, because there are behaviors in public spaces that cannot, and must not, be recorded without the permission of the person you are recording. Copyright is at issue. So is piracy. I can imagine these screaming headlines:
“Google Glasses Banned on Broadway!”
“Google Glass Refused Admittance to Movie Theatres!”
“Google Glasses Busted in the Classroom!”
“The TSA Says, ‘No Fly Zone’ for Google Glass!”
“Google Glasses Outlawed on Public Transit!”
Google Glasses set the permission to record solely in your eye, and that is going to cause you a lot of trouble — even if you have some sort of “red light” indicator that you are or are not recording, because people will always believe you are recording them no matter what — and a fist will soon be flying your way, because that’s what any sensible person would do to protect their privacy and perceived safety from your spying eye. They will think you’re always recording because that’s what they would do to fully utilize every cent of the $1,500.00 they shelled out for the glass.
You, dear Google Glasses Pioneer, will not likely be allowed to wear your glass where people gather — I can imagine local laws forbidding their presence for “security reasons” — and so your precious glasses will be used mainly for private, masturbatory, moments of non-human interaction with other people.
The real problem for the rest of us will arise in a few years when this “Google Glass” technology becomes part of everyday prescription glasses and prescriptive sunglasses. We won’t know who has the technology to record us and who does not — and so our only defense is to start recording, you, too — and keep punching everyone who wears glasses in the face. Technology breeds violence!
Soon, “Google Glass” forensic scientists will appear in court to verify if the recordings are real, or invented, and manipulated. Our first murder captured by Google Glass will be as infamous a meme as Edison’s first alleged “come here” response cry to Watson. Good thing Google owns YouTube, too, eh?
Today, if you hold up a cellphone or a camera — you are giving people semi-fair warning that you are in “recording mode” and they will either respect your revulsive impulse or turn around and run the other way; but that sort of wild recording is not yet quite ubiquitous enough not to be noticed and confronted, and I can’t think of a single person I know who would prefer you to record your common interactions with them against their will by default and none without prior permission.
I hope there’s some sort of “AppleCare” for Google Glasses — because you early adopters are going to need to cash in on that insurance policy quite a bit as the rest of the world catches on, and catches up to, precisely what you’re not only seeing, but saving to your Google Cloud Drive forever.