Google’s wearable computer eyewear, “which allows users to access the Internet, take photos and film short snippets, has been pre-emptively banned by a Seattle bar. Large parts of Las Vegas will not welcome wearers. West Virginia legislators tried to make it illegal to use the gadget, known as Google Glass, while driving,” David Streitfeld reports for The New York Times. “But the resistance is already under way.”
“‘This is just the beginning,’ said Timothy Toohey, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in privacy issues. ‘Google Glass is going to cause quite a brawl,'” Streitfeld reports. “As personal technology becomes increasingly nimble and invisible, Glass is prompting questions of whether it will distract drivers, upend relationships and strip people of what little privacy they still have in public.”
Streitfeld reports, “‘We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new technology always raises new issues,’ said Courtney Hohne, a Google spokeswoman. Developers, however, are already cracking the limits of Glass. One created a small sensation in tech circles last week with a program that eliminated the need for gestures or voice commands. To snap a picture, all the user needs to do is wink… Google takes the attitude that people should have nothing to hide from intrusive technology. ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,’ said Eric Schmidt, then Google’s chief executive, in 2009.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why blow $1,500 on Google Glass when you can get “CREEPER” tattooed on your forehead for under $100?
Why Brin insists on being the poster child for Glass when they have King Creeper himself, Eric T. Mole, right there and ready to go is beyond us.
Just think how useful these would have been in Apple’s Board meetings during iPhone development! Android might have actually been good, instead of an insecure, fragmented mess that only really moves units when handset makers give away one or more units with every purchase.
Related articles:
Eric Schmidt: Regulate civilian drones but not Google Glass – April 15, 2013
Google Glass: Orwellian surveillance with fluffier branding? – March 20, 2013
If Apple had unveiled Google Glasses… – February 25, 2013
Why Apple is working on ‘iWatch,’ not ‘iGlasses’ – February 11, 2013
Glenn Beck: Be wary of Google, they way they think is creepy (with video) – February 17, 2011
Google CEO Schmidt: If you don’t like being in Google Street View then ‘just move’ – October 28, 2010
Consumer Watchdog ads mock Google CEO Eric Schmidt (with video) – September 2, 2010
Google CEO Schmidt: Change your name to escape ‘cyber past’ – August 18, 2010
Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘future’ of Web monitoring – July 29, 2010
37 states join probe into Google’s questionable Wi-Fi data collection – July 22, 2010
Google Street View Wi-Fi data included passwords and email – June 18, 2010
Google Glass is the biggest privacy issue of our generation, and the physical manifestation of the threat Google as a whole represents. I would hope there would be a strong resistance to this thing. It’s nothing but trouble.
When the day comes that it is available to the masses, I will refuse to share a room with ANYONE who has Google Glass.
I’m willing to bet that the glasses, if they work well, will trigger legislation. Someone will say glasses with cameras built in must clearly be marked or something. It is a privacy issue, that’s for sure, but I don’t think they make things that much worse. We’re captured on so many cameras now. Wait until dashboard cams get popular here like they are in Eastern Europe.
Version 2.0 will have a chip to scan your thoughts and upload them to the cloud for the world to peruse forever.
If Eric T. Mole isn’t the most careless, cocky, apathetic, a-hole security butthead running a tech company out there I don’t know who is. Nice for him to open the door to pedophiles and all manner of blatant privacy abuse and not one whit of conscience about the repercussions at all. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Responsibility in tech is just as important as any other area of human endeavor and social interaction.
In a land where virtually everyone has, in their pocket or purse, a cell phone with a still camera and a movie camera built in, how can a low grade eye glass camera be a problem?
You can take better photos and movies by faking a phone call.
The no cell phones in the locker room rules aren’t even posted any more. It’s Google glass we have to worry about now.
It will be something else in two or three years.
If you pick your nose in public, expect consequences.
It’s a lot more conspicuous to take a picture with your cell phone than it is to blink and have your magic glasses take a picture, regardless of the picture quality. “Faking a phone call” to take a picture sounds incredibly awkward. But taking pictures or videos of whatever you’re actively looking at, with no effort, no hand movement, no lifting of a device … you don’t see the danger in that?
Ass Goggle Lo……………….anagrams don’t lie.
Goofiest dumbest idea so far. Yet the stocks keep going up. Wall Street just love Goole for some crazy reason.
“Goole” — Maybe it was unintended, but it sounds like “Ghoul”. Very apt, in a way. The organisation that consumes our flesh, were identity and soul corporeal qualities.
“Ghoul” rhymes with “Fool” (consumers), “Stool” (stool pigeons), “Cool” (Sergey Brin), “Skool” (talking down to tech primitives), “Boole” (inexorable machine logic), “Joule” (stolen energy), and “Drool” (what remains to us after a lifetime of exploitation and servitude to the advertising triumvirate of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, with assistance from outlying thrall states). This has been your Minority Report update, courtesy of The Delphic Oracle.
Brilliant! Love this post by Hannah! You are the (wo)man!
MDN: “Why Brin insists on being the poster child for Glass when they have King Creeper himself, Eric T. Mole, right there and ready to go is beyond us.”
A: Because as creepy as Eric Schmidt is, even **HE** won’t wear Google Glass.
This could be a real mistake for Google. They can only exist as long as people trust them with their data and increasingly people are becoming concerned about the amount of information being collected about them. As news of Google Glass spreads into the mainstream and people start thinking more deeply about the issues Google Glass raises, I think Google’s image will start to degrade.
Wasn’t Bill Gates the inspiration for Google Glass?
Bill Gates of Borg
As I have mentioned in other columns…Just look at the word Google in a slightly different manner….Go – Ogle!
Go: (verb) Move from one place to another.
Ogle: (verb) Stare in a lecherous manner.
Really fits !
It is amazing how many people are getting their panties in a twist over Google Glass. People seem to have target fixation on Glass because it is an easy convenient target. Glass is not even available to consumers yet.
People who complain about privacy/security concerns should note that in most places CCTV is nearly everywhere. Also what about all of the other wearable camera and microphones that have been out for years? (spy cameras and what) No one is saying a thing about them. They are pretty inexpensive and much more invisible than Google Glass. Granted there are some situations that would warrant prohibiting use of Glass and most of those situations already prohibit the use any cameras or microphones etc so that point is rather small.
I kind of hate to agree with Schmidt on his point. If you have something you don’t want people to see or hear you then don’t do it or don’t do it in public. One can just as easily and secretly use a smart phone to record things and with better quality. As far as businesses banning Glass I find it a bit hypocritical when businesses have the ability to record their customers but customers cannot do the same to the business/employees.
Creating specific laws to ban Glass the just a freaking stupid idea. If the law is THAT specific Google could just change name and then the law would be more worthless than it already is. Of course its West Virginia who wants to go there anyway?
Banning Glass while people are driving is a bit short sighted no pun intended. I would argue using glass while driving can make driving safer. Glass could be used as a HUD for drivers. It can display the car’s speed, direction, location, distance to nearby vehicles and other information the driver can use to drive safely and the driver never has to lower their head and take their eyes off the road.
If someone tried to take a photo of me peeing in the restaurant bathroom with a cell phone I’ll know it and whack his head off…
but if someone comes in with Google glasses what do I do? ask them to take them off (can’t whack him cause I don’t know if he’s photographing or not ) ?
of course there’s miniature spy camera stuff but that’s rare (and its hard to protect yourself from ‘specialized perverts’ ) but Google wants Google glasses to be ubiquitous like cell phones.
as for banning Google Glass, lots of places like my local swimming pool’s change areas have banned cell phone use due to the cameras.
Didn’t your mother tell you to never hit someone with glasses?
Go ogle is out to make themselves a exception to that.
Well, as crazy as it sounds, maybe you should thank google for flushing things out. Many (but not all) of the concerns with Glass may also apply to an inconspicuous smart watch.
So if they weren’t wearing glasses, you wouldn’t mind somebody peering down at you while you’re peeing? I suspect the reaction would depend on your measurements! 😀
Good point there. I agree there are some situations and places where Google Glass should not go or be. But I feel that the same would apply to currently existing technologies/devices as well cell phones, mobile devices with cameras etc. I just think that singling out Glass seems a bit unnecessary.
If someone walked in a bathroom talking on their phone or something like that would ask them to put it away? Because someone looks like they are talking on the phone doesn’t mean they actually are. They could be filming.
Are you saying only the low level pedestrian perverts would use Glass? I say that jokingly. Glass, for the pervert who can’t afford better gear.
Google may want Glass to be as ubiquitous as cell phones and thats what many people think but thats not really going to happen.
Google Glass is absurd and so are the gerks that keep hyping it.
You don’t need a HUD for a virtual dashboard in your car for instance. You need an interface that doesn’t exist you idiot.
Why the fuck should people have some ugly map thing layered over their vision treaveling in an 80 mph projectile? You shouldn’t. It’s called turn by turn directions called out from ur cell phone.
It’s called cruise control. It’s called abstraction and automation, not mixing in a mobile phone UI over your vision.
I hate to say this guys but the best interface… the best software… the best technology is invisible.
Totally disagree. A full windshield screen overlay could enhance your vision a hundred fold. Highlighting cars, pedestrians, overlaying the road with a colored pathway to your destination, so many possibilities.
Nope. Glass will only introduce multiplied blind spots.
What the hell are you talking about? If the interface doesn’t exist fucking make it. Apple, Google somebody could make one. Thats what we are talking about, making new shit. I was thinking of something similar to the HUD military pilots use. HUDs exist in various forms it should not be that hard to do something similar in car using something like Glass
I wasn’t talking about maps per se just other information a driver could use or receive using Glass or something like glass. Using visual and audio queues.
“the best interface… the best software… the best technology is invisible.” What the fuck is that. Thats just fucking stupid. Makes no sense. Tell me some examples of what you are talking about.
The first Glasshole I see, I will laugh right in their face.
Great, Glasshole. I yjink you have invented a word that trully says it all. If wearing a jawbone phone device walking around talking nonsense is not nerdy enough, this glass device will make one a super nerd. First Glasshole snaps a pic of my wife will find his $1500 POS stuck permantly in his eye.
besides the privacy issues I think that the glasses will hard to navigate.
‘Just blink to take photos’ — that means you have to switch the function off and on all the time otherwise every time you naturally blink a photo is shot.. (Got dust in your eye … Blink blink blink and you’ve just shot your hubby peeing in the bathroom )
also Android folks say ‘bigger screens’ on phones are great because it makes them easier to use (touch the icons, see things etc) — so don’t they think using your ‘eyeballs’ to fiddle around the controls is going to be much harder than using a ‘small’ phone screen? You have to flick you eyeballs to that corner and to this corner precisely to do stuff — sounds hard.
also from what I read for functions like for GPS you still need to carry a PHONE link to your goog glass. Size of of the glass an issues for hardware components?
Wearable computing ‘guru’ Richard DeVaul who went to work on Goog Glasses USED TO WORK FOR APPLE. He was working in a team under Ive. I suspect Apple found the current tech not promising. (I have no doubt Apple has top teams working on wearble tech but apple as usual just keeps quiet about their R&D)
If Ive and Gang ever do it they’ll probably do it right.
(Just my 2 cents. )
“‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,’ ”
Like wearing a pink cowboy hat?
If I ever come across someone wearing a pair of Google Glass and I happen to be within their eyesight, I will promptly flip them the bird just in case they are filming.
What about my button cam? Big brother is out there and all you sheep do is bleat!
MacDailyNews Take: Why blow $1,500 on Google Glass when you can get “CREEPER” tattooed on your forehead for under $100?
Or “GOOGLE SPY”
I was taught from a young age, on the playground that it was some what frowned upon to smash dweebs in the face if they wore glasses.
This has all changed.
So the little Google car has snoop troops now. Our privacy started to fade with street view. Now we have it to the next level…or lost it.
You guys need to get a life . I will stick them in their eye, flip them the bird? If Apple created these, they’ would be the “coolest ever”. Stop drinking the Kool Aid and enjoy that someone else is pushing the envelope in Apples absence.
I’d rather Apple have access to what I see and do than Google, but either way a device that you can wear and record at all times without the knowledge or consent of the person(s) being recorded is a bad thing. Just the ease with which a video or picture can be taken with Google Glass is scary.
Question of the day: If one wears glasses, how can one use “Google Glass”?
Clearly they plan to offer prescription lenses, after an appropriate optometric consultation and extended to ophthalmological exams followed by laser surgery or retinal implants.
The Glass is only the introductory apparatus.
This has been your timely Minority Report bulletin.
AND, the “CREEPER” tattoo doesn’t have pieces of the Googlie Glass device sticking out of your skull.. That embedding happens when someone slams you in the face with a baseball bat for wearing them..
I think Google Glass’s main issue is not it’s design, it’s the privacy issue regular folks are concerning about. Of course, privacy is not and never will be on Google’s radar anyway.
But Google may realise in the near future that the instinct for privacy translates into a readily monetisable commodity; and so it may begin offering attractive packages to you, premiums that limit its indiscriminate auctioning of your personal browsing and consuming habits to salivating advertisers, in exchange for a reasonable sum of money. Industry-standard sociometric calculations point to an average fee of US $40 per month in 2013.
For an additional executive fee in trlple digits, it may offer to “forget” your web browsing history when subpoenaed by government agencies.
Privacy may never have been a civil right, but even if it becomes one, Google is very bright and imaginative, and conveniently lacking conscience, it will find a way to make money regardless of any tepid law that is passed despite hardcore lobbying by people that really, really want to sell you auto parts, teeth whiteners, and reputation management services.
I took a look at the google glass website. Nicely presented. Although I think that I would look like a complete tool walking round wearing them and I think the design looks stupid. Do Google really think that masses of people are gonna start walking around with them on all day? I don’t think so…although I could be wrong.
This exactly what fascists say:
‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,’ said Eric Schmidt, then Google’s chief executive, in 2009.
Thank you Eric T. Mole for being your usual asinine self.
Privacy remains an innate human right. That’s not going to change. Ask the offender to remove their Google Glass from their head, if required, in order to maintain your personal privacy. Be nice. 😉
What a joke!
Google talks about privacy and yet the only reason this impractical product has been made is to data mine people’s info.
Jesus – when will people wake up to google!
Regarding use of those glasses in the UK, google will NEVER be allowed to sell them. Wear them in the UK while driving and it will invalidate all insurance.
The police will ban them too – Christ those glasses are even a bigger problem than people texting on their mobile phones while driving!
I get tired of hearing the “if you’ve got nothing to hide why are you worried” argument.
Think about the types of conversations you might have with your friends late at night in a bar for example. The language you might use, the jokes you might make, etc. Now think about the conversations and language you might use talking to your mother or grandmother. Think about how you act around your boss or your colleagues. Think about how you act around your partner. We all change the way we speak, the way we act, the views we express etc depending on the situation and the person we are talking to. That isn’t hiding things as such, it’s just part of life. Exposing absolutely every side of your personality to absolutely everyone isn’t necessarily a good thing. That’s why people are so selective about what they share on Facebook for example. It’s not about having nothing to hide, it’s about privacy. Imagine a late night conversation with a friend about concerns you might have over your partner or job. Are you happy for everyone (your partner and boss) to know about it? Is that having something to hide?
I like point well said but I will ask this. Would you have such conversations in a public or exposed place? How much do you trust the person you talking to, in order to express such concerns?
I am pretty sure Glass has a limited microphone range, no better than a smart phone. a person could just as easily and even more invisibly record conversations than Glass supposedly can.
About your Facebook comment some would argue that people aren’t selective when they put stuff on Facebook. Thats why people have lost jobs, friends and spouses because of stuff posted on Facebook.
If people are worried about personal privacy and security they can and will and should do things to protect and insure that. Like not having sensitive conversations in exposed public areas. Having said conversations with trusted individuals. etc
Imagine this… You walk into a store … A sensor on your Glass picks up a signal from the store… Everything you look at is transmitted back to Google and then sold to marketers to help the hone on on your interests…. In Google think this is good for you because it targets exactly your interests….really no need to inform you of this cause its for your benefit…… Thanks Goog
Too late. that basically already happens. Thats what those supposed store membership and discount cards do. Those little mini cards people swipe when you check out and give you an extra discount when you shop at certain store. Also record all the purchases you made and then that information is given/ sold to marketers.
Like I haven’t been able to buy glasses with a built in camera for ages now.
People as a whole are just dumb about technology.
Yes lets all panic and make laws for a flash in the pan technology product that will be a distant memory in 5 years.
No wonder the USA is on the downward spiral – our collective intelligence is crap.