“For much of 2013, I wore the future across my brow, a true Glasshole peering uncertainly into the post-screen world,” Mat Honan reports for Wired. “Here’s what I learned.”
“Glass is socially awkward. Again and again, I made people very uncomfortable. That made me very uncomfortable,” Honan reports. “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. Bill Wasik refers apologetically to the Bluedouche principle. But nobody apologizes in real life. They just call you an asshole.”
“The few times I’ve seen multiple people wearing Glass in public, they’ve kept to self-segregated groups,” Honan reports. “At the party, but not of it. Worse is the evangelism, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm that comes across as the arrogance of youth and groupthink,” Honan reports. “It has its own lingo, its own social norms, and of course you must pay top dollar to enter.”
“My Glass experiences have left me a little wary of wearables because I’m never sure where they’re welcome. I’m not wearing my $1,500 face computer on public transit where there’s a good chance it might be yanked from my face. I won’t wear it out to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school because sometimes it scares children,” Honan reports. “It is pretty great… as long as you are not around other people, or do not care when they think you’re a knob. 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. Do you know what it takes to get a professional nerd to call you a nerd? I do. (Hint: It’s Glass.)”
“You can make fun of Glass, and the assholes (like me) who wear it. But here’s what I know: The future is on its way, and it is going to be on your face,” Honan reports. “We need to think about it and be ready for it in a way we weren’t with smartphones. Because while you (and I) may make fun of glassholes today, come tomorrow we’re all going to be right there with them, or at least very close by. Wearables are where we’re going. Let’s be ready.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
I wear glasses because I have to; I don’t know a lot of people that wear them that don’t have to. They want them to be light and unobtrusive and reflect their fashion… I think from a mainstream point of view [glasses as wearable computing devices] are difficult to see. I think the wrist is interesting. The wrist is natural. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, May 28, 2013
Related articles:
Why an Apple iWatch has better chances than Google Glass – November 6, 2013
Apple’s Siri lambastes Google Glass – August 26, 2013
Google Glass ban list grows; top 10 places banning Google Glass – August 7, 2013
