Google Glass in 10 years: the view from dystopia

This is actually a fairly optimistic projection. Consider how difficult it would be for a secret policeman to infiltrate a dissident group in this kind of environment.

The real dystopia comes with privileged groups being able to block recognition.

While it's likely I'd be the person not wearing Glass in 10 years, the scenario in the article shows a world in which people would likely not judge a person by their appearance, but rather what info comes up attached to their profile(s). Good for INTPs who don't care for chit-chat.

This sounds horrible.

Wow! I've always had a thing for dystopian literature, and the world this article presents actually seems plausible. Two ideas I particularly found intriguing:

-The idea of using an avatar to mask your true physical appearance. This seems like an appealing idea since changing your avatar on a settings panel is easier than keeping well-groomed and presentable. Perhaps citizens of the Google Glass world no longer feel the need to stay healthy and attractive? Could this level the playing field and take sexual attractiveness out of the picture altogether? Never again would someone be "out of your league." Will all our loving relationships be calculated and planned based on some OkCupid-esque compatibility algorithm? Perhaps a side-effect of this is a higher rate of sustainable marriages and a decreased divorce rate. So not completely bad and creepy.

-The way the author claims "You know you have free will, but don’t feel like you need it." I've felt for a while that the more realistic dystopian future is closer to Brave New World than to 1984, in which people willingly give up their freedom rather than have it snatched away from them. Instead of saying "You know you have free will, but it doesn't really feel like it," Pananberg opts for the phrasing "don't feel like you need it." It seems to suggest that free will in a Google Glass world is a burden, and that giving up that freedom to a benevolent intelligence just feels easier.

Either way, when I finished the article I pressed the "like" button, sending the event to my Facebook Timeline so that all my friends can stay connected with the things I find interesting and so that Facebook's Hadoop clusters can factor it into their advertising algorithms, allowing the company to more intelligently display products I would be interested in buying. I'll tell you one thing, that no longer includes Google Glass.

>The biophysio meter has been gauging the mood in the room, color coding them for convenience. Personally, you’ve always found that red hot conversations give you a headache while ice blue ones bore you to tears. The computer is able to pick up all the sounds in the room and sift through the conversations. You seek a color combination somewhat in the middle, a group of people not talking about sports or fashion.

Actually, I want this.