Hiding from Glassholes
If/when these things become popular, I predict an increase in the wearing of hoodies and burqas.
What do the following have in common: a hand holding a half-litre carton of milk, the back of a balding head, a grinning selfie taken in a mirror and a wonky street scene with nothing of any interest going on? That’s right, it’s your life – courtesy of Google Glass. A number of colleagues have spent the last few weeks playing …
...used to be a term for people too old to be able to work out how to program their VCR (so the LED clock on the front would be all <blink>00:00</blink>).
Once the same demographic get Glass it will take on a whole new layer of meaning.
I'm off to reserve GoogleGlassAutoShareFail on tumblr and flickr
--
Hank Waggenburger III
Connect to me on PicBum ButtPlugg!
"...people too old to be able to work out how to program their VCR..."
Or, if they lived in Adelaide, people who got sick of resetting the clock all the time after the near-daily power cuts and dropouts that form a part of the backdrop of life in this benighted city.
I was wondering about that one, I installed itunes once, last century some time. looked at it got 1/2 hour said 'fuck that for a game of soldiers' uninstalled it. filed it away as the sort of thing people who watch the x factor would use, and never looked back.
instead I use this amazing app.... windoze exploder :-) had to kick it in the goolies a few times when it tried to get all 'itunes' on my ass. But now it knows whos the boss.
The big difference between the all pervasive surveillance of a CCTV society vs. a Glasshole society is agency: All these Glasshole cameras are being actively directed and are linked to a user who immediately gets to decide if the footage is worth doing something with, probably without the subjects knowledge or consent. Footage can also be constantly buffered dashcam style so users can retroactively decide to save something for posterity.
My concern is that in both the CCTV and Glasshole worlds I can do an embarrassing trip-stumble-faceplant combo in the street, but only in one of those worlds I can worry about being on Youtube within the hour.
Picture this: A man running along a path with two dogs, each on a leash held in each hand, he trips, the dogs don't stop running, he couldn't let go of the leashes.
He performed the most amazing full-on perfectly flat bellyflop to the ground I'll ever see in my life.
He's lucky I didn't have any video recording device active because that clip would've likely gone viral. Had there been CCTV in that area there's almost no doubt a cheeky operator would've gone "I'm getting a copy of that & sending it to my mate".
Quote
"Paranoid I may be, but I doubt the months of digital video held in NSA vaults of me picking my nose are going to get me rendered on a top-secret Ryanair flight from Stansted to a five-year waterboarding holiday at Guantanamo."
Are you really, really, really sure about that? wisest not to temp fate methinks.
Time to pop me coat on and head out into my Spy Camera Free area and down the Pub for a quick one. No cameras there either. Plus, if I know the landlord, any idiot daft enough to poke their head round the door wearing a 'google Glass' type device will be quickly dispatched into the adjacent Duck Pond complete with glass device. do the locals have anything to hide? Shhhh better not to ask, Nudge-Nudge, wink-wink.
"Plus, if I know the landlord, any idiot daft enough to poke their head round the door wearing a 'google Glass' type device will be quickly dispatched into the adjacent Duck Pond complete with glass device"
Although not glass I was once on the receiving end of a similar fate for daring to take a picture of my mates in a bar. The landlord (a dodgy fellow running a VERY dodgy pub) took offence to being in the background and tried to take my phone and snap it in two. I grabbed it back, was punched in the back of the head by a regular, picked up and thrown in a nearby (in the pub garden) river in November. I then called the police, the landlord was arrested, charged with assault and perverting the course of justice (he refused to give up the names of the regulars who helped him assault me)...because it wasn't his first run in with the law he got sent down for 5years and still has 3years to serve.
The pub shut down not long after and was demolished to make way for a nursing home. So if your landlord really thinks he has the right to do things like that, good luck to him, but it wont end well for him, his family or the regulars that like drinking there.
I am pretty friendly with an ex-landlord/landlady couple who are well versed in the local pub/club scene, and had a good natter with the managing landlord who took over from them temporarily after they left - all parties confirmed that dodgy pubs 'allegedly' using drugs, fencing of stolen goods, etc to prop up their business isn't exactly rare (the managing landlord had dealt with dozens in his time, my mates had a rash of people trying to 'get in' with them and use the pub to flog drugs in private - who were told to feck off), and neither are people 'falling down the stairs' after having a 'difference of opinion' with the landlords.
That said, a better way to get back at knobend landlords is to threaten their license - many ways of doing this, but of course, only if they are utter twats.
Anon as I have a rare name, am easily traced, and have also had a couple of people lose their license because....they were utter twats. Lockins till 5am on weeknights with music blasting on a residential street, etc. I'm pretty laid back, but I work 9-5 for a living, have my limits, and 'go fuck yourself' as a response to a request to get them to tone it down wasn't the best way to get on my good side.
Given that I still go round their house for coffee/dinner/generally setting the world to rights every other week, I'd say they would. There are several dozen other people who do fit the description you provide though, who they frankly just can't abide. I'm one of three people from those days that they speak to through their own volition.
I'm not one to ingratiate myself where I'm not wanted. Except here of course, chum ;-)
Why do most articles concentrate on the camera part of google glass? Surely the defining feature is the always available screen in front of your eyes? I would have thought the main use of google glass is seeing information all the time, message notifcations, directions, google now cards (stocks, football scores, travel times/alerts). Photo taking must be a small part of what you can do. In fact I wonder why there is not a version without the front facing camera, a lot of the privacy concerns would then go away.
I wonder why there is not a version without the front facing camera, a lot of the privacy concerns would then go away.
This. Why not make the camera detachable and optional then if you really want some PoV video you can always attach it as and when it's actually appropriate to use.
> . . .
In fact I wonder why there is not a version without the front facing camera
. . . <
The same reason why there's no TV without a remote, no Laptop without a keyboard and no tablet without a touchscreen.
It's its main input device. To actually be useful, and not just a very small, very bad GoPro, you have to be able to point and ask at a party: "OK, Glass, that watch there, how much does it cost and where can I buy it?" or, with the kids in the zoo: "What are these animals called?" or "Where am I and how do I get home?"
Microphone only would be pretty lame, I think.
"Surely the defining feature is the always available screen in front of your eyes? I would have thought the main use of google glass is seeing information all the time, message notifcations, directions, google now cards (stocks, football scores, travel times/alerts). "
Please tell me you are joking, do people really believe this is worth spending £k on? roll on the first bit of malware for the Google Glarse
This post has been deleted by its author
It's not that they won't let you out of Stansted, just that there aren't any signs. Or if there are, they're incredibly well hidden.
Funnily enough I was watching a program on architecture the other day, that claimed it was the best airport designed up to that time. Although I guess that is rather like being offered the choice of smallpox or ebola.
A lot of the pictures are going to be banal, but sometimes it would be convenient to have a camera immediately available to capture illegal actions. I commute by bike, and so many times I wish I could capture pictures of people cutting me off, or blocking the bike lane and the pedestrian walkway.
Though, to make it work well, it must be recording all the time. Like Steve Mann's camera. Google Glass is so far behind Steve Mann it's ridiculous. There's way more of Mann's philosophy on his blog.
A lot of the pictures are going to be banal, but sometimes it would be convenient to have a camera immediately available to capture illegal actions. I commute by bike, and so many times I wish I could capture pictures of people cutting me off, or blocking the bike lane and the pedestrian walkway.
A lot of cyclists in London already have helmet mounted cameras. Which will provide useful defence evidence for when I finally lose my temper after yet another two-wheeled tosser rides through a red light while I'm crossing the road.
Cyclists wearing Google Glass? Jeepers, aren't they satisfied with never looking behind them, they want to never bother to look what is in front of them?
They should lump bicycles in with mopeds, get some mirrors, indicators, number plates and protective clothing on them and have the bastards learn the traffic laws.
Irrespective of anything else, many thanks for those links. You're right - Meta's product appears to make Google's look like a child's toy, and to be far more useful and usable. I'd actually consider giving Meta Glass a try, once the price came down to something mere mortals can afford. Not so Google's Glass. What's not to like about glasses (bearing in mind I wear glasses anyway as I don't get on with contact lenses) that allow one to bring up a virtual computer or phone and use it pretty much like a real one, barring the lack of haptic feedback?
Where is the anti-glasshole technology? I thought it was possible to jam video cameras with infrared transmitters, and movie studios were doing it to thwart people who were taking a videocam into the theatre to pirate movies, videocams being sensitive to light just outside of the visible band.
Wouldn't it be possible to make a hat studded with IR LED's or something and have it generate a confusing IR field that would disrupt the Glass's camera? It would kind of be like wearing your own Glass disruption field. Or the entire bar could be fitted with some kind of IR jamming device (think super bright lamps with filters installed that only pass IR.)
Wearing clothes made of this stuff should pretty much do it.
You're welcome.
Anyone worrying about their image being captured by Glassholes should have been taking precautions for quite some time already, the number of phones out there being used with cameras is in the billions. Somewhere i am sure is a recorded number of how many pics and videos are taken daily world wide, there can be few of us who have not been recorded unknowingly, especially if you live in a big city or a place like Ibiza full of tourists where I live.
Fortunately for me the plastic surgery,sunglasses, wig and false leg seem to be helpful in hiding my true identity.
My objections to Glass are the head twitching, talking to the air and general dorkiness, when everybody else is a dork I may consider joining them.
I remember when cell phones were a new thing; anyone standing or walking in the street talking to a black house brick was considered a twat! It's not so bad being that twat when you are one of millions.
Your record player example clearly applies to mobile phone -- screen too small for internet, keyboard too small for typing, music player doesn't support folders, mapping which should work with GPS wants expensive data feed as well. Takes a sixty page manual to explain it all (if you're lucky).
When I find a toaster that also makes coffee without compromising either function or second guessing (wrongly) whether I take sugar or not, I might take smartphones more seriously.
I bought an N95 and much later an HTC One X precisely because the map data was built in and didn't need a data connection.
The N95 needed a software patch and this removed the map data.
The HTC One X had a patch pushed to it which removed the map data (or removed the app, can't remember).
Glass does have some interesting ideas, that are pretty revolutionary :
All your conversations are recorded, logged, converted to text, and indexed into a database.
This database then becomes your 'offline memory'.
This database can then be real-time cross referenced with the current conversation / query.
In normal-speak this means that the phrase 'I never said that' will become redundant.
THIS IS THE FUTURE.
not the glasses, but the IDEA of recording everything that happens to you.
as a memory-aid.