Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#51

Post by csallen »

Silhouette wrote: post #46
csallen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Glass may fail, but it seems obvious to me that the perpetual shrinking of technology is an unstoppable trend that was set in motion decades ago. It turns out that computers, and phones, and recording devices, and the internet are all really useful technologies, and people like having access to them wherever they go with as little hassle as possible. As time approaches infinity, the likelihood of our brains beco…

Trying to stop it is impossible, and merely complaining about it gets us nowhere. On the contrary. I fully expect that in many places, overtly creepy technology like Google Glass will shift a long-overdue privacy debate that seems to be gathering momentum. If technology like Google Glass becomes socially unacceptable and illegal, it will not become pervasive in the manner you described.

If it became illegal, sure. The chances of that are almost nil though. Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays, and public cameras have been commonplace for decades.

It if becomes socially unacceptable, then it's just a matter of time. People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting. What happens when technology improves to the point where it looks like a normal pair of glasses? What happens when we can put a chip in a contact lens? A phone in your brain? Your brain in a robot?

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#52

Post by krapp »

csallen wrote: post #51
Silhouette wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to stop it is impossible, and merely complaining about it gets us nowhere. On the contrary. I fully expect that in many places, overtly creepy technology like Google Glass will shift a long-overdue privacy debate that seems to be gathering momentum. If technology like Google Glass becomes socially unacceptable and illegal, it will not become pervasive in the manner you described.

If it became illegal, sure. The chances of that are almost nil though. Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays, and public cameras have been commonplace for decades. It if becomes socially unacceptable, then it's just a matter of time. People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting. What happens when technology improves to the point where it looks like a normal pair of glasses? Wh…

>Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays,

Yes but they don't point that camera directly at everyone they talk to, all the time.

>People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting.

I think it looks kind of nice for what it is. It's still creepy though.

>What happens when we can put a chip in a contact lens? A phone in your brain? Your brain in a robot?

OK... those last two are just bad ideas all around. In any case though I personally am less concerned with the form factor or the technology as I am the premise that concerns about privacy are irrelevant because the surveillance gear is ever advancing in complexity.

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#53

Post by csallen »

krapp wrote: post #52
csallen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it became illegal, sure. The chances of that are almost nil though. Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays, and public cameras have been commonplace for decades. It if becomes socially unacceptable, then it's just a matter of time. People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting. What happens when technology improves to the point where it looks like a normal pair of glasses? Wh…

>Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays, Yes but they don't point that camera directly at everyone they talk to, all the time. >People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting. I think it looks kind of nice for what it is. It's still creepy though. >What happens when we can put a chip in a contact lens? A phone in your brain? Your brain in a robot? OK... those last two are just ba…

When you go out in public you quite often have cameras pointed at you. You just don't care because out-of-sight, out-of-mind. If those same public cameras were extracted from ceilings and placed on extremely conspicuous tripods sitting on the ground, I bet people would feel less comfortable, despite little having changed.

Reminds me of the guy who got kicked out of the Seattle restaurant a few weeks ago for refusing to remove Glass. The restaurant said it didn't want to open its customers up to the possibility of being recorded without their consent. Of course, on the restaurant's very own Facebook page were numerous shots of customers dining, many of which were obtained without any knowledge or consent. The hypocrisy was lost on them, unfortunately.

People underemphasize form and overemphasize function.

When it comes down to it, most of us are being photographed all the time. Exponentially more-so today than anyone was 100 years ago. And with the rise of smartphones, substantially more-so today than anyone was even 10 years ago. Smart glasses are merely another rung on the ladder. Every argument you make could have been made for smartphones as well.

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#54

Post by malandrew »

csallen wrote: post #22
mildtrepidation wrote: post #2

Ugh, I really hope not. I can't see any reason people wouldn't use this, though, since it's a lot less likely for someone to care about other people's privacy or convenience than their own. I can certainly see myself asking people to take them off if they want to talk to me (unless they're the same people that currently browse/text/play on their cell phones during conversations, as that's a conversation you might as…

I really don't like this mindset because, ultimately, it's a losing one. Technology marches on. It's already possible for people to wear undetectably-small cameras and computers on their bodies, and we're heading toward a world in which these types of devices will not only be feasible, but both affordable and useful. In other words: mainstream. Given the reality of the situation, it's short-sighted to poke fun at "Gl…

I would imagine that we will transition to being a remarkably more tolerant society than we are today. When these video cameras and microphones are everywhere, every one will be vulnerable. The first victims of this loss of privacy will suffer the most, but hopefully when it starts happening so often that everyone knows someone who has suffered, we'll start changing our perceptions of how bad some taboo statements and actions really are. A lot of people are going to be exposed as a little bit racist, a little bit misogynist, a little bit misandrist, a little bit classist, a little bit sexually deviant, a little bit xenophobic, etc. etc. etc. All these minor transgressions will be blown out of proportion at first, but eventually we'll realized that it's normal to harbor thoughts and act in ways that are more taboo than they should be. Human diversity is a wonderful thing, and this should highlight that what we all have in common are our differences, including in ways that aren't totally socially acceptable today.

I just hope such a transition to toleration happens quickly.

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#55

Post by Silhouette »

csallen wrote: post #50
Silhouette wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't like this mindset because, ultimately, it's a losing one. Technology marches on. Of course, but just because we can do something, it does not mean that we should . I could commit numerous offences in the next half hour, causing substantial harm to many of my neighbours, whether that be damage to their property, injury to their person, harm to their reputation, subjecting them to something that distress…

I agree with everything you said. What it comes down to, however, is your last sentence. Who decides what is and what isn't "respecting the reasonable wishes of others"? Who decides what constitutes "good manners"? What's reasonable in one decade may be unreasonable the next. The bad manners of the last generation are common place acts today. That's the nature of change. And it doesn't happen by itself: it happens be…

The thing is, the answer to how all of this will end is blindingly obvious. Assuming technology continues to improve, then CLEARLY people will find it useful to turn themselves into walking computers/phones/cameras. Yes, society as we know it will change as a result, but it's been doing that since the dawn of time.

Sorry, but I still don't buy the inevitability argument here. You are considering only the potential upsides of new technology. If there weren't potential downsides with serious adverse consequences as well, there wouldn't be so many of us who are concerned about things like the erosion of privacy.

The difficulty with this particular issue is that it is hard to predict exactly what the adverse effects might be, because we've never had the technology to surveil and record the general population on this scale before, but by the time we know, it may be too late to do anything about it if the answer is a very bad one.

Sure, society might eventually evolve to forgive youthful indiscretions while conducting job interviews, and to avoid insurance-based systems where the insurers have a clear interest in not dealing with anyone who is actually likely to make a claim, and to understand that the former pop star who's been on the BBC News home page in recent days because he has the same legal name as another musician who just got sent down for decades for committing some very nasty crimes is not the same person even if his picture was shown alongside the relevant headline by Google.

However, right now, none of those things is even close to true, and having privacy that allows people to segment their lives and share different parts with different other people is how we deal with that problem. Even if we do eventually reach that level of maturity as a society, which is far from certain in itself, it will surely take several generations to get there.

So no, I don't think the outcome here is blindingly obvious at all. People might find it useful to have permanent recordings of their own lives and anything they encounter in it, but this cuts both ways, and they might find the disadvantages of having anyone else being able to just look them up far outweighed the benefits of being able to (legally and socially acceptably) use always-on, covert recording devices themselves.

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#56

Post by Silhouette »

csallen wrote: post #53
krapp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Almost everyone carries a camera with them nowadays, Yes but they don't point that camera directly at everyone they talk to, all the time. >People don't like Glass because it looks clunky, nerdy, and distracting. I think it looks kind of nice for what it is. It's still creepy though. >What happens when we can put a chip in a contact lens? A phone in your brain? Your brain in a robot? OK... those last two are just ba…

When you go out in public you quite often have cameras pointed at you. You just don't care because out-of-sight, out-of-mind. If those same public cameras were extracted from ceilings and placed on extremely conspicuous tripods sitting on the ground, I bet people would feel less comfortable, despite little having changed. Reminds me of the guy who got kicked out of the Seattle restaurant a few weeks ago for refusing…

Everything you say might be factually true, but it doesn't follow that no-one has been bothered by it until now. Some of us have been raising concerns about things like pervasive surveillance by governments and/or big businesses for some time. But the issues aren't sufficiently well understood yet by the general population, nor directly harming a large enough subset of that population, for most people to feel strongly about them.

Particularly with the relative hardship many have faced over the past few years, they are quite understandably more concerned about things like keeping a roof over their head and putting food on their children's plates. But every now and then you see people up in arms over things like how much it costs for a new driver to get the (legally required) insurance in the UK today, and you get a glimpse of where we're heading if we continue on our current course.

A disproportionate number of the people I know personally who already share similar cautious views to my own are involved with technology. I suspect this is because of the awareness we share of how technology and in particular all this data could be used, even if the data is merely being collected today and not yet exploited. Most people don't realise the full implications of what is already happening yet, so they aren't concerned enough to act today, but that doesn't necessarily mean they would still be OK with something if they were fully informed or knew that it would eventually affect them or their loved ones and not just other people.

Re: Why 2014 is the 'year of smart glasses'

#57

Post by csallen »

Silhouette wrote: post #56
csallen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go out in public you quite often have cameras pointed at you. You just don't care because out-of-sight, out-of-mind. If those same public cameras were extracted from ceilings and placed on extremely conspicuous tripods sitting on the ground, I bet people would feel less comfortable, despite little having changed. Reminds me of the guy who got kicked out of the Seattle restaurant a few weeks ago for refusing…

Everything you say might be factually true, but it doesn't follow that no-one has been bothered by it until now. Some of us have been raising concerns about things like pervasive surveillance by governments and/or big businesses for some time. But the issues aren't sufficiently well understood yet by the general population, nor directly harming a large enough subset of that population, for most people to feel strongl…

To be honest, I worry about how all this data could be used as well. I just hope we can focus the conversation around the more more productive topic of stopping malicious activities, rather than around the frivolous topic of stopping technological advancement.
Post reply on HN