Thoughts After a Week with Google Glass | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts After a Week with Google Glass

lukew.com

31 pointspascal0750 comments

Tried them a few months ago, my impression/fear was that they would:

1- go the Segway route (== dorky)

2- go the bluetooth headset route (== douche)

Sad, maybe, but then again the Segway is so awesome to use!

As far as head mounted displays go, they appear to be among the smallest on the market. The Vuzix M100 [1] see marketed and styled much more towards the douche demographic. While the Golden-i [2] ends up looking like an orthodontics device marketed to dorks. And there really isn't much in between. Epson's display [3] blocks your vision so that's unworkable, and it looks like the wrap around sunglasses my grandmother wears while gardening.

1 - http://www.vuzix.com/augmented-reality/products_m100ag.html

2 - http://www.mygoldeni.com/gallery/

3 - http://www.qrcodepress.com/augmented-reality-glasses-may-fin...

Well, the more I think about it, the more see that being a "dork" or a "douche" is not the problem here:

The problem is that it's a disguised projection of power onto others.

The user is implicitely saying to people around him:

"I can film you and you can't/don't/won't - I can show this to the whole Internet whenever I feel like it. In other words, I control your behavior."

So, Google basically wants you to suck up to the tag line: "Get more power, at the cost of the people around you."

In this context, physical aggression kind of begins sounding plausible, actually...

All of which were possible with a phone camera, the only difference with glass is that it's harder to know if the device is recorded.

you are not walking around with your handheld camera pointing at everything you look at.

Most people have two cameras pointed at everything they look at. The recording is just very low fidelity right now.

But these cameras don't have an "Upload to YouTube" feature.

Why is this relevant? 20 years ago the idea of everyone carrying around a pocket-sized camera was unthinkable. Today, it's reality. Things change.

Google Glass is totally different than phone camera. When someone videotapes with a camera, the person draws attention to himself and his purpose is usually pretty clear.

That's why I specified that the primary difference was that it's difficult to tell when the device is recording.

The comment I was originally responding to was about the ability to record and distribute video evidence of behaviour and how it alters the power dynamic. That is not new, what is new is the panopticon-like system where you don't know if you are being recorded.

I think glass as a physical product looks cool, and I don't yet have enough paranoia as part of my day-to-day that I'd feel weird about somebody wearing it around me. But I can't see wearing one all day, there's simply no use-case I can think of for me to have one on while sitting at my desk at work.

I like the idea of a head mounted display that doesn't block your vision. It's too bad it's not a true hud. That's going to limit the applications tremendously.

I like having a camera on it. I agree with this article's assessment about the quality of the pictures.

It's great getting directions while hands free, I can almost get those today on my phone with a pair of headphones. Once I set the destination, it becomes hands free. I can even listen to music/podcast at the same time and even have my phone record my distance with an exercise app.

About audio only I can hear, headphones work fine for this and it doesn't feel like a brain worm is burrowing in.

It's almost like you can get 90% of the glass experience with your phone in your pocket, a pair of $10 headphones and a bluetooth google now button on your wrist (fictional). I'd say add in a clip on display or something for a hud but there appears to be incredibly few of those around...and the ones that are out there are bulky enough to by mistaken for a orthodontics headgear...

and I guess that's where glass really is great, I just wish I could repurpose the display a bit...

it's kind of "meh" right now, but we'll see where the apps take it

I think the visual component is important, but you could otherwise get reasonable mileage I assume by having a smartphone, earpiece and Myo [https://getmyo.com/] cooperating.

I think they look really lame. Good side is that at some point in the future, there'll be a better looking product and we can look back at these old photos from 2013 where people were running around with "bricks" on their glasses and above the ear.

Can you imagine what Glass can do to medicine? Imagine a doctor wearing Glass, repeating the patient's symptoms and being given a dynamically updated list of differential diagnoses with formulary medications and next steps in management based on the most recent research. It would be the perfect assistant. I get hot and sweaty just thinking about it.

At what point does the doctor become unnecessary? Someone or some thing needs to know how to interpret the patient's symptoms accurately, but I imagine after expert systems focusing on symptom-> recommendation become commonplace that the next step will be to eliminate the role of the interpreter.

This is basically the same as expert systems back in the 70s, with a cooler UX.

Unfortunately it will probably fail again due to mostly the same reasons, difficulty in knowledge collection and user rejection (by medics, for example) as they feel to "proud" to be "replaced" by a machine. :-/

It sounds dreadful. I would much rather they be using a tablet so they can be 110% sure that the symptoms and diagnoses are clearly articulated. Having them rushed across a tiny screen or read out sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Devices like Glass should only be used for small, simple problems where a wrong answer isn't going to result in someone dying.

I'm doing the PGM class on Coursera, and Prof. Koller mentioned that one reason the expert diagnosis systems never took off in the 90s was that it was hard to integrate them into the doctor's workflow.

She also mentioned that situation was changing with the advent of usable tablets, so maybe we'll see some progress here.

Patient examination is rarely about lack of information to complex research, but really about the art of listening and empathy. Therefore, Google Glass like device will most likely distract the doctor from focusing and empathizing with the patient.

Locker rooms will never be the same with Google Glass. Peeping at ATMs when someone is using it... I can already see the criminal class thinking up a multitude of uses for it.

On the plus side, it would make an excellent exercise companion. Heart rate monitor, current speed, calories burned etc.

"Peeping at ATMs when someone is using it"

Couldn't they already do this easily with small cameras disguised in pens, buttons, etc? Or a zoom lens from afar watching an ATM?

As for locker rooms, watch out for Robert Scoble in the shower: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/inherent-dorkiness-of-...

I don't understand. The glasses are in front of your eyes, so anything you record you would also be seeing naturally with your eyes. If you can record somebody's ATM button presses with the classes, you can simply see the presses with your own eyes.

We don't yet know what the specifications of the consumer Glass will be. It could have digital/optical zoom in the camera. Also a program could be written to recognise a person's fingers and make statistical assumptions about the keys they would be most likely to press.

But I think the ATM argument is moot anyway. Far easier to skim the card or simply rob them.

You think it's easier to physically overpower and rob someone than to shoulder surf? The stealing of the pin is part of the card skimming.

Brain is not a recording device, it has a shitty visual memory, you can't show the recording to your friends or share on YouTube.

Imagine that half the people in a locker room were always videotaping using normal cameras – do you expect everyone to be comfortable with that?

That's just technology and cameras. Right now they are good enough and cheap enough that one is in every pocket on your phone. 10 years and they be smaller, faster, better, and cheaper and there will be more. At some point they won't be noticable and higher fidelity then you can imagine. Good? Bad? Yep both and then there are the things we haven't thought of. It's just how technogy is.

There are already websites dedicated to catching a glimpse of a woman's breast as she goes about life (the "nip slip") there will be full hd video of people doing all sorts of embarrassing things when they thought others weren't looking. The locker room might actually be safe, there is still a moral code there and not a lot of phone camera porn

"Peeping at ATMs when someone is using it..."

I think that's more of an argument against ATMs :)

I've seen several comments around the web from privacy advocates along the lines of "I'll punch anyone I see wearing glass" or "I'll rip it right off your face" etc.

Have there been any reports of this happening yet?

You expect Internet Tough Guy Syndrome to manifest as physical action?

Spend a week in one of the Anarchist newsgroups on Usenet during the early 90s to see how far that usually goes. ;)

Edit: Bonus - you'll understand why Fight Club was so popular.

I certainly hope not. I was quite shocked to see such comments on Hacker News. While I can understand disapproval for the device, but a proud proclamation that someone would physically abuse another person, that seems out of place and very wrong.

http://eyetap.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcd...

Not Google Glass, but similar.

I overheard a guy at the supermarket checkout, he was saying to what seemed to be his GF that he would actually kick people with a Glass from behind because that way he wouldn't be recorded... not very happy thoughts, I have to admit.

What's true though is that we're taking a very dangerous road here:

1. Google Glass means total and permanent surveillance

2. Total and permanent surveillance means people will be afraid to use their right to freedom of expression (out of fear of blowback)

3. Suppressed freedom of expression means: Democracy is dead and a police state becomes very realistic.

Who in their right mind wants that?

I'm not sure punching people in the face or kicking them in the back counts as "freedom of expression".

no one said that. you are mixing physical violence in. could you elaborate what you mean?

daivd's reply to this was reasonable and civil, but you'll have to turn on showdead to see it, now (though none of his other recent comments are dead).

Hiding opinions you disagree with is not what the downvote arrow should be used for.

This came up in a pub a few days ago, and one guy piped up to say "If I see anyone staring at me while wearing one I'll hit them".

The guy next to him laughed and said "Brilliant, then he can kick your ass, film it, and put it all over YouTube".

When it comes out, I'm going to buy one, and I'm going to wear it everywhere. I'm willing to bet that no one says anything, and that those that think about doing so won't. People say whatever they want on the Internet, or around friends at the pub, but in the real world they won't bat an eyelid.

Thay may not complain directly, but they may start disliking you, stop associating with you etc.

If they "stop associating with you" on account of a pair of glasses, perhaps they were not your friends..

Well, I didn't mean just friends. If you do something other people don't like or something that is socially weird, the average person (friend, stranger, etc.) will have a lower tendency to associate with you.

As much I see the usefulness in Google Glasses, this is how its mostly going to end up. People especially your co-workers will become less open and careful around you since everything they say or do can be recorded and used against them. Why would they risk losing their job over some out of context comment or inside joke that you have a copy of.

I think people's reactions to Glass pretty cleanly divide into two camps by their reaction to "you could be being recorded by anyone at any time":

A. those who actually find this to be a novel problem unique to Glass, and

B. people who have assumed that since inconspicuous recording of others has always been possible by, say, someone wearing a wire, it was a factor that is unable to be discounted from one's daily activities, and thus it was best to just act as if it were always the case unless one has taken specific steps to guarantee one won't be being recorded. (People with the security mindset, in other words.)

The latter group don't seem to have any problem with Glass: they already had their freak-out long ago when inconspicuously recording others around you became possible. Making it easier doesn't change anything for them; it just gives the power to record others around you to people who don't really have a strong motive to use it. The real "attackers" (in the cryptographic sense) never needed it to be easy; they had the motivation and the resources to use the clunky old methods.

You've stated my position (B) better than I've managed to. Thanks.

I do agree that it is independent of glass, but glass is part of the ongoing trend of extensive recording of our lives with and without our consent. Technology changes everything and as you are saying, people need to adapt.

It's interesting that the most recent presidential election in the US was influenced by a video recording of one of the candidates taken without their knowledge (the 47% comment by Romney). I think it's safe to say that this happened in 2012 because video recording devices are more common and smaller and that google glass and similar devices will only increase that trend. It's kind of like how the Nixon Kennedy debate being aired on TV changed american politics forever. And how "video killed the radio star."

I think that's a bit of an overstatement, but some people can react similarly like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDumyGJdLrU (one guy goes around and videotapes people). Of course, I'm not saying that what the guy does is equivalent to wearing Google Glass. Considering that the camera indicator can be disabled, I wouldn't be comfortable around people with Glasses.

Like cellphones, I expect they'll become objects targeted by thieves - only it's potentially easier to steal since it's sitting on somebody's head, and their focus may not be on their surroundings if they're interacting with Glass.

> Where to voice control: while the voice recognition is great, there are few places you actually can make use of it. At the office and in public talking out loud to your glasses is not an option.

Yet!

In 2002 I clearly remember being shocked by a cyclist screaming in to his bluetooth headset whilst careering down the road. That's an extreme example, but talking "to yourself" whilst walking is already common in some cities.

Amazing that they were allowed on the casino floor. I would have expected different from a Vegas operation.

I'm pretty sure they fall under existing bans. Casino personnel probably just don't recognize them for what they are yet.

I would have expected that their highly paid, highly resourced security teams (watching via the CCTV, all the time) don't have up-to-the-day information on possible spy camera tech available to consumers.

I meant "DO have"!

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