It seems to me that if you’re going to strap on a set of Google Glasses (or is it now just called Glass?) and deal with info scrolling in front of you as you move around your world, you’re going to be a bit distracted. Check out some of these videos from Google about this not yet released product and let me know how useful/dangerous/inspiring/crazy you think the Glasses are and how they connect up with some of the themes in Pariser’s book, The Filter Bubble.
- “Google Glasses Project” 7 May 2012
- “Google’s Sergey Brin Previews New ‘Google Glass'” 10 September 2012
- “How It Feels [through glass]” 20 February 2013
The concept of the Google glasses is an amazing technological advancement in the information technology field. You can begin to see what could become of it in further future development (ex: driving aid for alerting you of blind spots, cars on the adjacent lanes, gps, etc…) The Google glasses while extremely innovative, could also be problematic for advocates of privacy. I am not saying that wearing these glasses will enable you to have x-ray vision, but it can certainly record videos and take pictures of you without you knowing (so as long as you speak softly to the voice recognition I suppose). The Google glasses to me is very much like a smartphone, but in this case its less obvious when you take a picture of a stranger with the glasses as oppose to doing so with a Samsung galaxy note (you kinda get the picture). In the Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser mentions that personalization is becoming the next big thing on the web, and the effects of it could numb us from more important societal issues. Will the Google glasses numb us from whats really important? – Could it begin to personalize what restaurants we have looked up and begin to provide recommendations based on those searches? One definite possible answer to the above question is yes.
You know what Google Glass reminds me of? Those computer screens that humans have set in front of them at all times in the movie Wall-E that shield them from the reality around them and that instead deeply immerse them in a consumer wonderland (here’s a screen grab that captures the image).