Executive summary: No.<\/p>\n
According to some<\/a>, the introduction of Google’s latest product – the Glass(es) – will\u00a0undoubtedly\u00a0herald the end of\u00a0civilisation\u00a0as the we know it and the survivors will be skittering from bunker to bunker in a forlorn hope of evading surveillance. Actually the biggest threat Google’s Glass(es) have to the world, is the threat to proper grammar – they’re\u00a0glasses<\/em>!<\/p>\n The strange thing about the lists of problems encountered with Google’s Glass(es) is that they are “problems” that are already here. Google\u00a0has<\/em> done something nifty with their product, which is basically to integrate possibilities into something a non-geek can use. And it is not as if it is particularly revolutionary – people have been looking at augmented reality on smartphones for years and thinking that it was pretty cool, but wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t have to hold up your smartphone all the time?<\/p>\n The big problem is the threat of pervasive surveillance, and threats that come about as a result of that pervasive surveillance. If Google were never to have invented these things, we would\u00a0still<\/em> have a problem with pervasive surveillance. As other have pointed out, the use of video (and still) recording on smartphones is already bring in an age of pervasive surveillance; or at least pervasive surveillance under the control of individuals as we already have pervasive\u00a0surveillance\u00a0by corporations and government.<\/p>\n It is true that there are negative aspects to pervasive surveillance, but it is also true that there are positive aspects too. Street crime becomes a far riskier proposition if everyone around can just say “Ok. Start recording video.”. People getting up to foolish activities being “outed” on Youtube? The more it happens, the less the pain.<\/p>\n And of course make laws to punish the\u00a0publication<\/em> of privacy invading video but not the\u00a0recording<\/em> of it; with a proper public interest imminity. That is what the public\u00a0should<\/em> be interested in, not what it\u00a0wants<\/em> to be interested in.<\/p>\n There are those who say that publication of\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0activities onto social media sites may make it harder for people to get employment. The fault here is not what is published to social media sites\u00a0<\/i>nor<\/em> people who take part in such activities, but with the\u00a0employers<\/em> who insist on having employees so\u00a0squeaky clean. If you never employ people who have danced naked on top of a table, you’ll end up with boring employees.<\/p>\n And I’ll bet that there is a high incidence of naked table-top dancing in the past of anyone whose thinking is inventive, creative, and out-of-the-box. Or in other words, employers should be going out of their way to hunt down and employ the naked table-top dancers (No I probably haven’t).<\/p>\n There are those who say that it will somehow increase bullying. It is true that this will be an extra tool in the arsenal of bullies, but in can also be an extra tool in the arsenal of those targeted by bullies. To stop what happened to Amanda Todd<\/a> (and others), we need to stop bullying whether assisted by technology or the old-fashioned kind.<\/p>\n And of course we have the argument that Google is powerful enough already, and Glass(es) will make that worse. Well, first of all Google Glass(es) won’t be the only product of this kind out there. And if Google is too powerful, it is time to chop them down to size rather than blocking this product.<\/p>\n At least the hysterical reaction of some businesses<\/a> is giving me a new retirement fund possibility. When I eventually get around to getting some,\u00a0mine<\/em> will have\u00a0prescription\u00a0lenses in, and any business that wants to ban me will get sued for discrimination against the “disabled”.<\/p>\n We need to be careful of condemning a technology for the poor behaviour of people, when it is the poor behaviour that is at fault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Executive summary: No. According to some, the introduction of Google’s latest product – the Glass(es) – will\u00a0undoubtedly\u00a0herald the end of\u00a0civilisation\u00a0as the we know it and the survivors will be skittering from bunker to bunker in a forlorn hope of evading surveillance. Actually the biggest threat Google’s Glass(es) have to the world, is the threat to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,7,489],"tags":[1101,1100,542,729],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","category-general","category-security","tag-bullying","tag-glass","tag-glasses","tag-google","category-4-id","category-7-id","category-489-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-L2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}