Hacker News Reader

Comment by comex | Hacker News Reader

This article starts off promising, with valid complaints about the "antidote to distraction" idea and the perils of being recorded, but then derails into paranoia. "Anything you say" might well end up on YouTube, but it's not going to be "tagged to your online identity, and stored in Google's search index", in order to "instantly bring up documentation of every word you’ve ever spoken within earshot of a Google Glass device." Such a feature would provide no benefit for the person taking the video in the first place, and would, of course, cause an uproar if ever introduced, so it's ridiculous to believe Google would introduce it just because they're working on a HUD. At worst Google might (might! it would still creep a lot of people out) introduce a search-by-face option for YouTube, but it would still presumably be limited to videos people explicitly decided to upload... maybe the ability to search by text at the same time? I'm not seeing it.

View on HN

The argument I took away from this article isn't that we should be afraid that Google is working on some all seeing eye that could be used for evil, but that Glass represents a large step in the erosion of our privacy.

Bit by bit for years we've been uploading our personal information into the public domain. If I tell Facebook I'm a married man who is in to prostitutes and Graph Search exposes it to the world[1], I've erroded my own privacy unwittingly.

If I walk out of a brothel and someone catches me with their Google Glass, now they've eroded my privacy. At first it seems like a small step, no one has Google Glass, what are the odds of me being exposed? But time marches on and technology becomes ubiquitous (especially technology as legitimately useful as Glass). New technology comes along and builds on top of the old and it wears away at our privacy, a little at a time.

I'm sure the married men on Facebook who put they are in to prostitutes did it under the pretence that it would just be shown to whoever they are friends with. Suddenly Graph Search comes along and they're exposed. Apply the same model to Google Glass, and you end up with something like what the author is talking about.

[1] http://actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com/

I see the article as showing what could be done even with today's technology. The only bottleneck I see is lack of high speed wirless connectivity and a large user-base.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if this becomes standard in 50-100 years as you can't really stop the march of technology and miniaturization. Will it be Google that does this or someone else? It doesn't really matter. It is something to be aware of.

Just because the integration of all these disparate technologies and services hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't.

Yea, it does get a little paranoid, but the point is certainly valid. In coffee shops and restaurants we tend to have semi personal conversations knowing that even if someone is listening, we'll never see them again and the little snippets they hear of the conversation (bitstream) will cycle out of their memory soon enough. Try having that same conversation when someone with Glass sits down next to you. Its a very valid point, it can change the entire dynamic of a pubic space, without a socially acceptable way of telling the person to stop - like if they were blabbing on a cellphone.

I remember this article a few months ago: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/cyborg-professor-claim...

I sided with the guy with the glasses, after reading this article, not so much.

*Note, when I first read this article, there was no freaky picture with it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com