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

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

#201
post #199

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.

Segway needed early adopters to drive the price down, but couldn't get early adopters in part because nobody wanted to be the first person seen riding a Segway to work. Speeding up intra-city commuting without having to walk or ride a bike obviously would be awesome. When people pointed this out back when the Segway came out even the fattest nerds were saying they were being lazy, but the truth is most technology hel…

3000 dollars (the price of a used car)

a range which meant you were going to need to schlep it into your apartment/office to charge every day

taking up an incompressible 2-3 persons worth of space in an elevator/hallway/sidewalk/cubicle

no parking infrastructure

little/no ability to navigate grass and probably highly recommended not to drive off a curb

no extra carrying capacity

plus extra speed is either useless on a crowded sidewalk or makes you a giant dick on a crowded sidewalk and also useless if you're with some one who doesn't have that speed.

... so that you could walk a little less.

It was not a compelling product.

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

#202
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nah. the phone is actually easier to hold/use. the ONLY reason i use the tablets more is battery life. Given equivalent processing power/battery life, nobody would choose a tablet. the screen real state simply does not compensate for the lack of public use, uncomfortable long session use, etc. give me a phone with decent battery life, and i won't even mind the occasional magnifying glass attached to it.

> nah. the phone is actually easier to hold/use. That's just like, err, your outlier opinion man. Now, the phone might be easier to hold with one hand, but the iPad is easier/better for lots of tasks. From reading books and comics or watching videos to using music creation apps, drawing apps etc. Anything where screen real estate matters. > the ONLY reason i use the tablets more is battery life. Given equivalent proc…

kinda of missed the point.

They buy wifi only ipads because the form factor is embarrassing to use with 3g anyway.

a clumsy ipad is still less clumsy than a phone+power pack+cables

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the primary negative reaction is the voyeuristic-rejection of having a camera always pointed at you (that may or may not be recording) Google should put an LED light on Glass that turns on whenever it's recording, just like MacBooks.

People are funny. Probably most do not want to be recorded without their permission, but many of them will think of situations when they want to be the one silently recording. And some of those situations would actually be valid, recording cops for example. So, unless there is a law, I can't see forced LED for recordings. If Google tries, then one of the most popular apps for Glass will be a hack which deactivates th…

Or Sharpie sales will spike.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only way I could see privacy not mattering in the future is if knowledge stops being equivalent to power. Even if everyone knows everything about everyone, I don't see that knowledge ceasing to be useful for manipulation.

The important question to me, then, isn't whether the embarrassing (or mundane) secrets are true, but whether they would give someone the power to manipulate the subject of those secrets, or to manipulate others with respect to the subject of the secrets.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought your comment was going the other way. The same generally is true of handheld cameras. Can you recall a situation where a stranger snapping a photo that had you in it caused a problem for you?

Here's such a case: a website [1] dedicated to taking pictures of girls in public transport without asking for permission before nor after [2]. Quoting from the opinion piece, > “Well, when I saw that I was in a posted photo, it scared me… and then afterwards, blah! But maybe there isn’t the need to post these photos online… I feel like I’m in a catalog for rapists or other sick people. It was quite shocking…” [1] ht…

There are cases, but they are not the norm. CCTV has been abused too, but abuses are also not the norm for CCTV, either.
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