Imagining a future dictated by Google Glass | Hacker News Reader

Imagining a future dictated by Google Glass

e27.sg

60 pointsjackyyappp30 comments

Charlie Brooker already did this, as a lavishly produced 45 minute one off drama.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)

(Episode 3 is the relevant one, though you should watch all of them.)

Yup, a true eye-opening short series!

However, the emphasis in Black Mirror is more on an "augmented sensing from birth" perspective and the many implications if yourself, authorities and others have access to this archive.

On the other hand, this excellent Sight video is covering the "gamification" of life.

Either way, both cover faily dystopic visions of the future not readily found in the mainstream.

The article missed one important scene from the video - the last one.

Maybe mind control stuff is too far reaching but consider another possibilities: for example censorship. If we would have only one news and data stream all the time in front of us, then you will be literally not able to see and hear censored things.

One can imagine that the contact lenses could remove some object from the vision in real time. Frightening.

Isn't most mass media fairly uniform anyways? I remember hearing criticism that the Rwandan massacre was overlooked for quite a while because most airtime / view attention was dedicated to the OJ Simpson trial.

Agreed. My point was that uniformity will increase when content will be provided by one company (take Google Glass for example).

And you are right - it's partially happening right now. I highly doubt if website can gain popularity while being banned from Google search result.

I especially liked how she characterized the experience of the Sight system crashing while she was running with the assistance of a running/exercise application: 'Sight crashed, I didn't see anything. I couldn't find my way home. I didn't see anything!'

Good illustration of cyborgism: her tech-augmented vision is so tightly integrated into her life that she "can't see" without it.

This vision of the future seems surprisingly lonely. Aren't we becoming a hivemind? Wouldn't it become more likely, rather than less, that manipulative types get caught and have their career and reputation instantly destroyed? Wouldn't status depend on which communities you're part of, not what products you consume?

The products one consumes is the most visible, and easily acquired information about a person. Plus, the product marketers will be pushing product-as-status over community-as-status as hard as they can!

More like this http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-guy-who-worked-for-money

Nobody comments here on the profile way to get to know people. "Are you vegetarian? You didn't write that in your profile..."

I guess we are already so used to this kind of virtual interaction.

last.fm compatibility - 88% foursquare - 74% you both LIKE this and this...

I actually think in this context "writing on your profile" is actually outdated. More likely when you sign up for a dating profile it cross references your online shopping accounts and gives you a suggested profile automatically that will be partly based on the amount of meat your purchased etc.

So for the past five years, it's been pretty common to hang out with friends that moved across country to catch up and all just talk about the same crud we saw online.

If we extend this trend, then perhaps I won't feel a need to catch up with friends since we're just consuming the same data feed all the time. It certainly hasn't made my friends more interesting, and I am sure I am just as boring to them.

Whether this is a problem is a much more interesting conversation. I'd like to have a coffee with someone over this.

It's funny, because it seems the exact opposite to me in many cases. Sure, my best friend and I occasionally shorten conversations by acknowledging we both saw the same stuff on reddit, but we also follow very different bubbles overall. One friend is far more interested in gaming news and funny videos, another in politics and law, and another in finance. I mostly follow science and tech. We each have a separate filter bubble, and we each have something interesting for the other person whenever we talk. Talking to these people makes me realize what a narrow slice of the world I consume, and I love hearing them talk about what interesting things they've found. The internet has greatly expanded the amount of niche content we can consume, and I'm aware of that whenever I speak to them.

That's not to say we don't talk about non-internet things, but I'm just focusing on that since that's the topic of discussion here.

It's hilarious to imagine the effects of software glitches. Like getting the wrong suggestions for the date scenario. Or wrong instructions for a task.

There's already the common story of people trusting their car's navigation too much[1]. It will only get more common, though, and you're right that it'll be a hoot.

1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6197826/Driver-foll...

Not as dramatic, but I've fallen victim to that before. I was driving back late one night from Boulder to Denver and wanted to get to an address on Market St. I was tired, not very familiar with the area, and didn't realize at the time that Google Maps had chosen the address on Market St in San Francisco. It didn't click for me until I had gone a little ways into the mountains and reception on my phone cut out. Sigh...

So what was the last scene about? Was he on a date with a real person or testing a robot prototype?

It's implying that he can take control of her (a real person) using some sort of back door built into the software of the Sight product. Presumably since he's a coder at the company that makes it.

Groundhog Day. As many tries as you want.

She asked him when they were at dinner if the rumours were true that his company could manipulate people's minds, since he works for the company, but he said no that was crazy.

In the last scene he was outed as a gamer who was collecting badges by going on dates and treating them as part of a game just to level-up and collect badges.

When she, his date, jumps up in disgust you see him access her account/brain and hack her brain then says "Let's try this again" ... it was true!

Heh, I suppose most people would use it this way.

I believe we need to fully utilize our brain before switching to external help - maybe there's going to be an app for that?

Are you referring to the myth that we don't use all of our brain? http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp

Why were his home displays publicly viewable? If anything her displays (twitter, messages, etc) should've been filling the blank spaces.

I thought that part was interesting. How did they sync up? She was on his home network so the default is his stream? This also implies that there is some kind of stream syncing problem. What if we are in a public place and we all watch slightly different streams? We all have separate experiences? Who gets the rights to different public streams? How many billboards are currently showing on this blank white canvas on the highway? How many virtual worlds are currently overlapping the real world and who has the rights to the default one?

That's how you share what art and style you have and like. Sight knew she was in his house and this displayed his interiors for her to see.

Public vs private interiors.

Yeah, maybe this portion of the vid wasn't as well thought out as it could have been.

Have a look at the new ShowCase TV series Continuum for some ideas on how an implanted Glass chip may enhance police work in the future.

Read Charles Stross' Rule 34 for an insightful vision of what technology like this might be like for a policeman to live with daily.

Not sure how much I'd like a world in which everything that's said or done is recorded. Where you have to turn the thing off to explore ideas for fear of being taken out of context in court. And where you have to explicitly prefix any grey area conversation with "off the record" to enjoy (questionable) privacy protection...

Gamify everything!!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com