A future made of Glass • Hacker News Board

Re: A future made of Glass

#41

Post by angersock » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:13 PM UTC

nrivadeneira wrote: post #9

I'm always amazed at how much anti-Glass sentiment I see in the tech community. I personally think it's going to be amazing. The best analogy I can think of is the heads-up display (HUD) in video games. The current use cases shown (texting, weather, pictures, etc.) are insignificant in comparison to the potential for combining with other wearable computing devices such as Fitbits, Fuelbands, Thalmic MYO's, etc. Of co…

Here, let's go the other way (maybe they even go together!):

Let's imagine a world where you sign up for discounts on certain goods in exchange for allowing your Glass to randomly take pictures throughout the day. This data is mined and tagged and sorted, until one day the .gov or .mil or some hacker decides to pull it and use it for nefarious purposes.

The fact is that the nerd fantasy of getting a HUD (to track what, exactly? Ammo? Health? Some numbers in a database you've been trained to equate with self-worth?) is not worth the societal cost of losing privacy.

"But we've already got smartphones with cameras!" doesn't work--the camera is there, and likely just a change of app policy away from being always on.

This is such a shortsighted idea.

Re: A future made of Glass

#42

Post by sveme » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:15 PM UTC

There seem to be two major topics governing the front page of hackernews lately - the NSA leaks and Google Glass (though Glass was obviously much earlier). And reading through the comments about these two topics feels like being on two completely different web sites, with completely different audiences: a device tracking minute details of your life, that is sold by an advertising company, intended to use all the information available to sell you even more stuff you don't really need, is hailed nearly uncritically as the next big thing. A secret service that tries to track all physical and virtual movements of every living human is rightly criticized as detrimental to democratic societies.

Glass is a wet dream for intelligence services. I would have expected these two topics to influence each other much more. Is it because there are indeed two disjoint HN populations (or rather n disjoint populations), or because some of a nerd's aggravation is easily soothed by the latest cool gadget?

Disclaimer: I find Glass fascinating and creepy at the same time, so I could fully understand the latter possibility.

Re: A future made of Glass

#43

Post by Sven7 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

bluthru wrote: post #32

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." This goal seems far less noble since unveiling Google Glass.

The best way to achieve that noble goal would be to open up their search index (unlimited API access) and build a marketplace around search, just as they have around Android, Youtube and Chrome.

Search has a very long way to go and they can be moving much faster than they currently are.

Re: A future made of Glass

#44

Post by WiseWeasel » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

davmar wrote: post #35

i think glass will find more adoption with commercial uses than with consumers. military, construction workers, police, racecar drivers, pilots, etc. those people actually can use a HUD for more than just checking twitter comments and they won't look weird wearing it. for consumer uses, i hope the future is not glass. people should interact with people. today our phones can go in our pockets and we can talk face to f…

It's sad there's not more awareness of the optimal form factor for wearable computing revealed all the way back in 1981 [1], if maybe a bit oversized and rudimentary by modern technical standards:

http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/312162/312...

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082186/

Re: A future made of Glass

#45

Post by WayneDB » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

kmicklas wrote: post #37

Spearchucker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was ambivalent about Glass before Snowden's leaks. Now there's absolutely no way. Glass is little more to me now than a white-labeled data front-loader for the NSA. Which is a shame in a way. If Glass turns out to be compelling it might have been the reason for me to sign up for a Google account. Now, no way.

Tin foil much? Just wait until someone puts Linux on it (i.e. not Android).

Seriously? The one thing that all the "tin foil" people were talking about for decades is finally proven beyond a shadow of a doubt - and you're still going to refer to them in a derisive tone?

Re: A future made of Glass

#46

Post by lucian1900 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #14

alphakappa wrote: post #3

I have to respectfully disagree that this is the future. Is the future comprised of devices that you have to consciously wear on you all the time (I can barely stand to wear the prescription glasses I'm supposed to wear, let alone glasses that will occasionally provide me with some utility) On top of it, is the future of HCI in devices that you have to talk to? (Siri, Glass) Not only do I have a very hard time gettin…

Why don't you interact with computers in your native language?

Because that is entirely infeasible for most languages that aren't English.

Re: A future made of Glass

#47

Post by nsxwolf » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

pseudometa wrote: post #19

nsxwolf wrote: post #8

Yesterday I realized Google Glass could cause QR codes to finally take off.

QR codes are sold by marking folks to other marketing folks. If it is relying on Google Glass to finally take off, you can put the nails in the coffin right now.

It's the friction that makes it useless. I saw a QR code on the window of a Chevy Volt that said scan for Volt info. It would have taken a lot longer to find and use a QR scanner than to just enter Chevy Volt into search on a mobile browser.

If QR scanning was a first class citizen and I could just look at it and instantly get the information, I can see QR being used by real people.

Re: A future made of Glass

#48

Post by molbioguy » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

Google Glass is an innovative product that will surely cause some problems. I admit I'd love to have one, but given what cellphones have done to life, I fear that we are rushing into radical changes without due thought.

Privacy issues when Glass users record every interaction they have (and potentially post to their social networks). Capturing my daugther's first words is sweet. Capturing my naked partner could be different. No need to hold up a phone -- very convenient. And it will surely all be there on the web.

Glass also could further the trend towards self-indulgent isolation and distraction. Are looking at me or reading mail? Texting while driving is bad, reading tweets and viewing images while driving (all hands free) will be worse.

People already spend too much time photographing/capturing experiences instead of actually experiencing them. Glass will accentuate this. The goal in life should be to live in the present, not record for posterity. And frankly, I have my own life; I don't want to share every bit of yours...

Re: A future made of Glass

#49

Post by nrivadeneira » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #41

nrivadeneira wrote: post #9

I'm always amazed at how much anti-Glass sentiment I see in the tech community. I personally think it's going to be amazing. The best analogy I can think of is the heads-up display (HUD) in video games. The current use cases shown (texting, weather, pictures, etc.) are insignificant in comparison to the potential for combining with other wearable computing devices such as Fitbits, Fuelbands, Thalmic MYO's, etc. Of co…

Here, let's go the other way (maybe they even go together!): Let's imagine a world where you sign up for discounts on certain goods in exchange for allowing your Glass to randomly take pictures throughout the day. This data is mined and tagged and sorted, until one day the .gov or .mil or some hacker decides to pull it and use it for nefarious purposes. The fact is that the nerd fantasy of getting a HUD (to track wha…

What a ridiculous slippery-slope assertion. The same argument could be said for the telephone - "Inevitably some company will offer discounts in exchange for random recordings of your phone calls. Everyone will sign up for that and then a hacker will take advantage of it."

There are at least two reasons stuff like that doesn't occur: 1) The cost of recording, storing, parsing, and analyzing all that data far outweighs any sort of tangential benefit a company may get from such a policy. That's on top of the massive PR risk. 2) The number of people that might sign up for privacy invasion in the interest of a 2 for 1 Big Mac would be so insignificant as to not constitute any sort of grand 'societal loss of privacy'.

Re: A future made of Glass

#50

Post by mordae » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

I few years back, I welcomed these gadgets as awesome ways to improve one's life, to make it much more interesting, efficient. Nowadays, when I start to grasp actual capabilities of myself and people around me, after seeing what power bad people have over the rest, not so much.

In fact, I am scared to death every time technology like this appears. I know it will be misused, it will become another instrument for hurting people. Or at least as long as we will tolerate it. And we will. It's what we (smart people) are good at. Tolerating. Coping. Working around. Fixing things for ourselves, mocking others who don't understand how.

What do I see in Google Glass? More behavioural programming via advertisements and/or information manipulation. Further corrosion of privacy (of others, wearers can turn them off). New symbol of higher social class, even more prominent than a smartphone.

Yeah, mock me.