[KyadCK]

I do not consider making a house in minecraft "new". The amount of work and detail that goes into it can be impressive, and it can be pretty, but it's still just a collection of existing things used in a slightly different way then how someone else used them.

When 802.X was invented, it was impressive. If someone came up to me today telling me they invented a way to turn sound waves into electronic signals using a magnet and the vibrations from the sound to carry the information far away and turn it back into sound waves again, I'd ask them how far, then point them at either a telephone or a microphone and speaker. They still get props for doing it, but that doesn't make it new, or even special.

So by your standards, visible light communication for computing systems is not new nor novel? Regardless of your response, I see we will have to agree to disagree here.

And it covers everything you wrote after the word facebook. Your example is Opt-In, but you claim always-on. They do share everything, but you have to share first, which is not always-on. Example doesn't apply.

I can easily say that you have no proof that video recording will become always on and saved and shared in the open. But now you're calling it sensors which changes the topic off google glass and video, so no comment. If you want an example of how video hosting is done, look at... well, any video hosting site ever. Still requires upload, which is Opt-In. Or maybe streaming, like Twitch.Tv, which is also Opt-In.

And for the bit, duh.

Ok, we seem to be stuck in the Opt-In vs always-on issue.

My question is, how can you call something opt-in when someone or something other than you can collect information about you and upload it, which is the whole point of worry about these kinds of devices being made ubiquitous.

Regarding Google Glasses, I'll quote myself a few posts ago.

What I'm mentioning isn't related directly to the Google Glasses per se, which is why you see me repeatedly saying "these kinds of devices" instead of just saying "Google Glasses" or a specific device.

But what you need to understand is that what I've been saying will happen. It may not be with this specific device, but it heralds the coming of other devices which will.

Visable light communication: Fibre Optic networking. Again, been in use for decades. Made in the 70's actually. I do not call 40-year old tech "new", no. Not in the world of technology anyway. Maybe if your point of reference starts somewhere in the 1500's it could be considered new.

How can you call something always-on if it requires someone to submit? A very large part of your original argument (as I read it anyway) consisted of these cameras being always-on, and it always streaming and the data being saved at some site where everyone can look it up. Are you telling me you're now going to back that off to what Battuta has been saying about the big worry being other people uploading it? Becasue that's very different.

Look, man, there's a pretty basic and pretty novel phenomenon at work here: in the course of your day to day life, without any opt-in, any action whatsoever on your part, you will be open to tagging, commenting, and shared information pooling by anyone who looks at your face.

That is the basic outcome of the convergence of wearable networked devices and next-generation image recognition and search algorithms. It is not remotely like the status quo. It is quite manifestly different even from the current era of opt-in social networks like Facebook.

In the current era, someone could conceivably take a picture of you, upload it, get it tagged with your name, use that name as a search term to hunt for other information on you, and maybe compromise your privacy.

In the notional Google Glass era, someone can glance at you and instantly see what other people who've glanced at you have recorded. One basic example would be a thumbs up/thumbs down system for looks: you could walk down the street and on a lark thumbs up/thumbs down everyone who passed, and other people using the same service would then be able to access those aggregate ratings when they saw those people.

I don't want to argue with you, because for the most part I agree with your argument about how it could be implemented.

The only problems I would have with what you're saying is it's highly reliant on things that have yet to be invented (advanced image recognition that actually works well and fast enough for the type of use you're talking about), but that'll come around soon enough, so that'd be a weak argument in itself.

Otherwise, all I'm disputing (or trying to anyway) in this thread is straight up paranoia reactions vs actually thinking out what would happen. What you've come up with both probably would, and actually could, happen. Constant always recording and saving could not.

[Ghostavo]

Visable light communication: Fibre Optic networking. Again, been in use for decades. Made in the 70's actually. I do not call 40-year old tech "new", no. Not in the world of technology anyway. Maybe if your point of reference starts somewhere in the 1500's it could be considered new.

Visible light communication has nothing to do with Fiber Optics other than the fact that they both use light. But regardless, if you find that any article related to Fiber Optics today is somehow "not new" I guess we will have to discuss this subject elsewhere.

How can you call something always-on if it requires someone to submit? A very large part of your original argument (as I read it anyway) consisted of these cameras being always-on, and it always streaming and the data being saved at some site where everyone can look it up. Are you telling me you're now going to back that off to what Battuta has been saying about the big worry being other people uploading it? Becasue that's very different.

Battuta's argument is more immediate than my own. He posits the privacy concerns from this specific device and other very similar to it.

What I am claiming is that this is just the first step towards ever more invasive devices.

The fact is that domotics already has sensors and devices that collect information that are always on and centrally store it somewhere. Smart environments applied to large public spaces have the same idea but with the added privacy concerns.

As for how this related to this device, is that this is possibly going to be one of the first commercial, personal device that has the capability to gather visual, audio and other type of information with almost no user input and that are always ready to function, unlike a smartphone which needs someone to hold it up for example. The fact that for now these devices may not share information besides social networks and whatnot doesn't change the fact that we need to figure out how to function in a society with little to no privacy, either we want to or not.

Summarizing, Battuta's concerns are more immediate and related to this device, mine are more long term and they relate to information gathering from the environment around us regardless of which device.

[Scourge of Ages]

Face tracking and automatic photography (smile detection) are two technologies already implemented in many modern digital cameras.

Googles wouldn't need to constantly be recording high-res video and streaming it to the web. All it would need to do is notice faces in its field of view, and take either low-res (just enough for recognition) or narrow FOV photos; pair that with a program to filter and crop the photos, and GPS data already on your phone, and you have a very transmittable, easily taggable, automatically uploading photo of everyone in front of a pair of googles.

If that person has a social networking profile, the image could be autmatically linked to it; otherwise, it would be floating around in the cloud and just linked with other images of you. Soon enough there's a record of where this anonymous person is and has been, and all it would take is for one person who actually knows him to say, "oh hey, look at Bill getting drunk!" and then all the Bill photos are now forever linked to his name, and any other information the people around him provide.

This specific situation is probably a bit extreme, but I'm sure that an app to do that could be available within days of launch, if it's not already included in the built-in suite. All it would need is a database and people to turn it on.

The reason that this technology is so alarming is not that it's new - all these things already exist - it's that googles or whatever smartphone-connected wearable camera can automate the process, and will make it much more difficult to tell when it's happening or not.

[Drogoth]

The ability to take pictures and video unanounced is unfortunate to others

Actually, it's announced via voice command (or so this demo heavily implies. Perhaps there's a touch function, but I didn't see one)
I'm fairly certain you can hear people acting odd with them going around places saying "TAKE PICTURE! TAKE PICTURE YOU BLOODY THING!"

Now, when these things read minds, that's where I'll be worried about people surreptitiously taking pictures of my male model posture


Which is something that people seem to have missed in regards to the whole privacy thing. Pictures from phones can be done far more stealthily than someone talking to themselves

Untill you rebind the  photograph function to "Blink once"

I don't think that's possible. The thing is a screen, not a sensor. It can't tell when you blink. At least as far as I have seen out of it so far, I could have missed that functionality.

[The E]

Yes, Google's Glass can't do that. Doesn't mean that Google is going to be the only vendor of these devices, or that Google's interface concepts are the only ones possible.

[Phantom Hoover]

The ability to take pictures and video unanounced is unfortunate to others

Actually, it's announced via voice command (or so this demo heavily implies. Perhaps there's a touch function, but I didn't see one)
I'm fairly certain you can hear people acting odd with them going around places saying "TAKE PICTURE! TAKE PICTURE YOU BLOODY THING!"

Now, when these things read minds, that's where I'll be worried about people surreptitiously taking pictures of my male model posture


Which is something that people seem to have missed in regards to the whole privacy thing. Pictures from phones can be done far more stealthily than someone talking to themselves

Untill you rebind the  photograph function to "Blink once"

I don't think that's possible. The thing is a screen, not a sensor. It can't tell when you blink. At least as far as I have seen out of it so far, I could have missed that functionality.

Then connect it to a Bluetooth device in your pocket or something. The point is you cannot simply rely on self-regulation like that with devices which are so inherently flexible.

[Black_Yoshi1230]

What the hell have I run into?

As much as I would love the HUD/HMD with onboard SatNav (compass, sensor packages, live traffic), wait, that would spell me dying in a car because of the distractions. Maybe as a backup instrument for other vehicles...

... No thermal, IR or NVG.  Wait, that would eat up a lot of power.

[Luis Dias]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/12/4094336/death-by-notification-will-google-glass-drown-us-in-data

[yuezhi]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24757224

Ms Abadie was cited for breaking a Californian law which prohibits people from watching TV while driving.

She is now considering whether to take legal action to fight the ticket on the grounds that the device was turned off.

If your not going to use the damn things then why bother wearing them during a dangerous activity?

[Mongoose]

The real question is, why charge someone using a blatant misapplication of the law, especially when the thing wasn't even powered on?

[karajorma]

You can be charged for drunk driving as long as the key is in the ignition. I don't see much of a difference here.

[AdmiralRalwood]

You can be charged for drunk driving as long as the key is in the ignition. I don't see much of a difference here.

I'm not sure how that's comparable to this case; you can't be charged for drunk driving just for having beer within reach.

[karajorma]

You can be charged if you are wearing the beer in front of your eyes though.

The reason you can be charged for having the keys in the car even if you're not driving is that you've shown that there was a very good chance you intended to drive. This case is basically the same thing. If you're not intending to use the Google Glass, why the hell are you wearing them while driving? Hell, why on Earth would anyone sensible deliberately block part of their vision with something like Google Glass while driving unless they intended to use it?

In addition, she absolutely was speeding and it's pretty ****ing easy to turn them off after you get pulled over and claim they weren't turned on.

Quite frankly, I've got no desire to see using this sort of thing turn into the next texting while driving. There is no good reason to wear these things while driving. Take them off.

[Bobboau]

gps that you don't have to look away from the road to see is not a good reason?

[karajorma]

Not really. Until someone can prove different, I'm of the opinion you should be pulling the **** over if you need to consult your GPS.

c.f handsfree phone use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_and_driving_safety#Handsfree_device