A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky • Hacker News Board

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#181

Post by corresation » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #80

corresation wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember how douchey the bluetooth headset people were? ... but the kids wearing large, crappy headphones in other environments (e.g. at meals) are kind of pathetic. Isn't this really judgmental? Doesn't this say more about you than about them? I'm completely serious. I do not judge people on the tools they use in their life that is of no consequence to me. The same holds for Google Glass -- it is somewhat perverse,…

What's your point? It's irrelevant if thinking someone with a bluetooth headset is douchey is judgmental, the point is if enough people think that's the case, particularly young people, then it's doomed.

The discussion about Google Glass and wearables that we hear has zero input from young people. It's the middle aged white guy telling the world what he thinks from his blog.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#182

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #103

resu_nimda wrote: post #44

I am actually pretty shocked at the responses here on HN, of all places. Not because, as technologists we should all automatically love any new technology, but because, as technologists we should have perspective on its inexorable march. How many times have we laughed at definitive statements, pontificating on this or that newfangled thing, that were proven to be wildly off-the-mark only a few years later? How many t…

Similarly, privacy is going away, and future generations won't care. You can already see it with the kids. This keeps being said, but it doesn't have to be that way and may not stay that way for long. For one thing, if kids were so careless about privacy, they wouldn't be using Snapchat.

Privacy is a major driver behind the slowing teen use of Facebook. All these kids friended anyone and everyone, and now Facebook feels more public than private to them--so they use it less.

My younger siblings and their friends each have around 1500 to 2000 friends on Facebook. They hardly use their accounts anymore for that reason.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#183

Post by aaronbrethorst » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

thechut wrote: post #154

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #121

I don't think the Walkman is a good comparison at all. Instead, look at the boom box. Big headphones today, or the Walkman in the 80s didn't invade someone else's space. They allow a person to withdraw. Boom boxes, and Google Glass, on the other hand, are explicitly outwardly focused. They force your presence upon others.

You clearly haven't used Google Glass. With the exception of the camera, everything is inward focused. Everything you do and see and interact with glass happens with only visibility to you. Nobody else can see what you are seeing. I wouldn't compare it to the boombox at all.

I have, so don't make such sweeping assumptions. I've also been around people who are using them. I find their use in my presence to be an invasion of my personal space.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#184

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:12 PM UTC

People stopped caring about headphones to the extent that they liked using headphones themselves.

The biggest problem with Google Glass is that it does not meet a clearly defined need or desire that most people have. So there is nothing to balance the dorkiness.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#185

Post by jff » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:13 PM UTC

Everyone's so busy shitting themselves over Glass users "recording everything all the time". Oh no! They might have a recording of me entering a bathroom! Maybe they'll record me talking about the movie I saw last week!

Where is all this footage going to be stored? Decent-resolution video is not exactly small. How long will it take to fill up the 64 GB on your phone? If you have a 1 TB disk at home to archive the video, how many days worth can you store there? People certainly won't want to automatically upload to Youtube, because then they'd be broadcasting their home address, the location of their hidden house key, their credit card info every time they pay for something, etc.

And how long can you record video with Glass before the battery dies? I've heard that the battery is good for about a day with "normal" use; I don't think capturing video and sending it to your phone for storage all day long counts as "normal", I'd expect to get maybe 2 hours tops.

Have a little bit of fucking perspective, maybe.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#186

Post by syntaxfree » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

dhughes wrote: post #75

It was the same with cellphones. My uncle likes to tell a story of when (sometime before 1985) he had his brick phone and was talking on it in the entrance of a K-Mart. He was leaning up against a wall back to everyone trying to be discreet with the new fangled invention of a cell phone. As he was talking an elderly women was lurking behind him, he could hear her looking through her change purse. He said he realized…

That says something interesting about behavior and how the function/form relation is contingent but slow-moving. Star Trek communicators were supposed to be used on loudspeaker and looked directly at, and yet when we got flip phones we used them exactly like rotaries.

Your uncle had a mobile, but when he needed to talk in public, he needed the kind of physical anchoring that was associated with talking on the phone in public -- enough that he generated the illusion of being on a payphone. (Much like if you talk on a cellphone that's connected to a charging chord, you still generate the illusion of a landline).

What does this say about glass? That we want it to work like things that are already there -- an always-with-you screen, for example, or a mini-GoPro -- and it might take a while to really come on its own. If it ever takes off, of course. Google has deep pockets but the acceleration is unrelenting and unforgiving.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#187

Post by rprospero » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #103

resu_nimda wrote: post #44

I am actually pretty shocked at the responses here on HN, of all places. Not because, as technologists we should all automatically love any new technology, but because, as technologists we should have perspective on its inexorable march. How many times have we laughed at definitive statements, pontificating on this or that newfangled thing, that were proven to be wildly off-the-mark only a few years later? How many t…

Similarly, privacy is going away, and future generations won't care. You can already see it with the kids. This keeps being said, but it doesn't have to be that way and may not stay that way for long. For one thing, if kids were so careless about privacy, they wouldn't be using Snapchat.

It comes down to a question of whether kids are careless about privacy or whether they don't care about privacy.

We'll take my great-grandfather for an example. He'd be horrified about how careless I've been about protecting our racial purity. How could I be so careless as to marry a women without realizing that she's not only a dirty papist, but also one of those swarthy French‽

However, the truth was not that I was careless, but that I didn't care. I know all of these things, but they didn't matter to me. Similarly, I know someone who broke federal privacy laws with respect to my personal information. I could report this individual, but the simple fact is that I don't care. If he'd posted the entire data set to wikileaks, I still wouldn't care. It's not that I have nothing to hide - there's some pretty embarrassing stuff in that data set. However, everything in that data set, good or bad, is true.

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#188

Post by syntaxfree » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

motters wrote: post #118

Google glass has its problems, but barring any major catastrophes I expect augmented reality eyeglasses to be very popular perhaps by the end of this decade or the beginning of the next. I see Google glass as the ZX-80 of augmented reality.

Does this mean that every teen can write google glass apps now (Z80 assembly was really easy to learn) but in twenty years time AR technology will be unwieldy, crashy and overfeatured?

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#189

Post by tzs » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

jff wrote: post #178

tzs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video surveillance is nigh-ubiquitous in London, and this appears to be both accepted and tolerated. Closer to home (US), I was probably recorded on camera 10-12 times today alone - anywhere from office buildings, retail stores, gas stations, etc. Are any of those London cameras, or the dozen cameras you suspect record you in the US, in public restrooms?

BREAKING NEWS, HN USER TZS CAUGHT URINATING IN PUBLIC RESTROOM URINAL, SHOCKING FILM OF HIS CLOTHED BACK! Are you expecting Glass wearers to suddenly start leaning over urinal partitions to film you pissing? Or poking their heads over stalls? Both of these are pretty goddamn unacceptable where I'm from, Glass or not. If someone is so weird that they want video evidence of themselves going to the bathroom, and they ha…

I take it you have never encountered a trough urinal?

Re: A 33-Year-Old NPR Story Convinced Me Google Glass Will Stop Looking So Dorky

#190

Post by Avshalom » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:45 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #180

Avshalom wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Segways did not fail because they made you look dorky. They failed because they were an extremely expensive toy that didn't solve anyone's problems and were bulky enough that they made new problems when people tried to use them.

I would say exactly the same things about Google Glass.

Yeah, if heads-up computing fails in this iteration (and I suspect it will in this iteration) its not going to be aesthetics it will be because no one can build a compelling use case for the price. Privacy/Social-Contract concerns will probably worsen that, but I really doubt they will be sufficient on their own.