[FIZ]

Despite whatever they trademarked, I'm still gonna call them Google Goggles.  Just way too much fun to say.

[StarSlayer]

Although, these would be fantastic for my use at work.  Far better than the current body-worn cameras available on the market for law enforcement, and the search features would be awesome...

"Ok glass, do I need a respirator when working around ethylmethyldeath?"

CopSpace?

Course being a pessimist I can just imagine all the joys of stupid asshats who screw around with their phones while driving now spilling over to all aspects of life and ratcheted up to eleven.

[Sushi]

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see if social evolution can keep up with the technology if (or more likely, when) this becomes ubiquitous...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, it's better than walking around looking down at a smartphone the whole time. Emasculating, as Sergey Brin called it in his sales pitch - I can see where he's coming from

But on the other hand, privacy is a serious concern here. If I see some guy filming me (or, let's say, airport security, or a kids' playground...) with a smartphone, I am aware of that, and can tell him to GTFO if I so please. With the Google Goggles, there's no way to tell if he's filming or not. Even if it had a visible indication that it's filming, it only takes one misguided techie to open it p  and cut a wire or two. So I tend to agree with this article, expecting widespread bans - in fact, the first ban has already popped up.

Now, if it didn't have the camera, then it becomes just cool Would probably make the thing quite a bit more compact, too.

[Luis Dias]

Without the camera it's a pointless device. With it it's a complete ****fest socially speaking. And it costs 1500 bucks. And it needs a smartphone to operate adequately.

It's ****ing dead on arrival, folks. It won't "change" anything. At most, it will have some effect on some niche situations.


Nothing to see here, move along.

[Drogoth]

The developer model costs 1500$. The consumer model (shipping next year) is supposed to be quite a bit less.

I honestly don't think its dead on arrival, and a lot of the privacy concerns with it can just as easily be done with a variety of other devices readily available on the market.

[yuezhi]

Ouch. Maybe I'll just get a smart watch instead.

[Klaustrophobia]

the tech itself: cool. i guess.  not something i'd ever use.  still don't even have a smart phone.

the insane proliferation of "social media": not cool.  has this trend really taken society so hard that we need facebook literally on our faces?


i'm not terribly concerned about the privacy aspect.  there's not really anything new here.  it honestly looks to me to be an overhyped peripheral for a smart phone.  move the camera and a mini display to your face.  i mean, it's about time someone saved us from having to raise our arm up to our head.

[deathfun]

There are already jurisdictions talking of banning it due to privacy concerns.  Seems a little crazy because technology is just an enabler of behaviour, but something like this is tough to adapt to.

I don't see how the privacy concerns are any different than people running around with cameras
Which we do already

[Ghostavo]

I think we as a society should start discussing how we can function with little to no privacy.

Because in the end, that's where we are headed and outside of starting to ban technology, there's nothing we'll be able to do to stop it.

[Drogoth]

Security through obscurity is the best defense I think.

I mean honestly, the mass hysteria about being tagged in facebook photos for example, as if facebook is somehow going to use those photos against you. The simply honest truth is that for 99% of people, your private information doesn't matter because no one bloody cares.

And even today, if anyone really wants to know things about you, you can't stop them.

See Blizzard and their developer's poor attempt to justify real ID by revealing his name. Privacy is already dead. Google Glass won't change that.

[NGTM-1R]

A number of states in the US would simply make this a walking lawsuit device because they have two-party consent rules about using photos.

And the user gets sued constantly. Good times!

[deathfun]

A number of states in the US would simply make this a walking lawsuit device because they have two-party consent rules about using photos.

And the user gets sued constantly. Good times!

Go go litigation happy folk!
This whole conversation reminds me of Watchdogs by Ubisoft...

[Luis Dias]

Security through obscurity is the best defense I think.

I mean honestly, the mass hysteria about being tagged in facebook photos for example, as if facebook is somehow going to use those photos against you. The simply honest truth is that for 99% of people, your private information doesn't matter because no one bloody cares.

As if no employee was never fired because the employer found out your photos. Or as if people aren't denied jobs because they were searched in facebook and the results weren't... family valued.

And as if you even had a choice. Your friends take a photo of you and post it. And tag you. And everyone knows about it.

I agree, it's probably the future, but it's a dark one.

[Wobble73]

Security through obscurity is the best defense I think.

I mean honestly, the mass hysteria about being tagged in facebook photos for example, as if facebook is somehow going to use those photos against you. The simply honest truth is that for 99% of people, your private information doesn't matter because no one bloody cares.

As if no employee was never fired because the employer found out your photos. Or as if people aren't denied jobs because they were searched in facebook and the results weren't... family valued.And as if you even had a choice. Your friends take a photo of you and post it. And tag you. And everyone knows about it.

I agree, it's probably the future, but it's a dark one.

The bold part? Why then couldn't you sue for unfair dismissal, after all, what has that to do with your ability to do your job?

[Ghostavo]

It's not just photos themselves that are worrying. It's the fact that we now have the ability to have a consumer-grade device that can practically be ALWAYS recording not just images, but audio and other types data as well (say, GPS coordinates as an example).

If these types of devices reach a certain critical mass (and they will sooner or later) and have no restrictions, what little privacy was there in public spaces will disappear completely and everything little thing about you (what actions you take, what you say and to whom, the places you visit, etc.) may be stored somewhere for someone to see.

Sure, smart phones have the same capabilities as this device, but the form-factor enables a much better use of those capabilities since it's always pointing at stuff, unlike smart phones.

[KyadCK]

It's not just photos themselves that are worrying. It's the fact that we now have the ability to have a consumer-grade device that can practically be ALWAYS recording not just images, but audio and other types data as well (say, GPS coordinates as an example).

If these types of devices reach a certain critical mass (and they will sooner or later) and have no restrictions, what little privacy was there in public spaces will disappear completely and everything little thing about you (what actions you take, what you say and to whom, the places you visit, etc.) may be stored somewhere for someone to see.

You mean, like a phone?

There is nothing new or special about this except it's on your face. You can do the same thing pretending to read text messages with ease. They do have limited battery and storage, it's not like you can record forever. Plus, since it can detach from the glasses, they can simply ask that you take it off in the same fashion they can ask you to turn off a camera or put away your phone.

The era of no privacy has been here a while now. It's called MySpace, followed by Facebook. Between people being stupid by uploading everything, and then being stupid uploading things of other people and not just them, your privacy is gone. This will change nothing at all. If you didn't want your information out there, you should never have joined Facebook or anything like it.

[Phantom Hoover]

Security through obscurity is the best defense I think.

I mean honestly, the mass hysteria about being tagged in facebook photos for example, as if facebook is somehow going to use those photos against you. The simply honest truth is that for 99% of people, your private information doesn't matter because no one bloody cares.

As if no employee was never fired because the employer found out your photos. Or as if people aren't denied jobs because they were searched in facebook and the results weren't... family valued.And as if you even had a choice. Your friends take a photo of you and post it. And tag you. And everyone knows about it.

I agree, it's probably the future, but it's a dark one.

The bold part? Why then couldn't you sue for unfair dismissal, after all, what has that to do with your ability to do your job?

How do you tell that you were denied a job offer because they made a negative character judgment from social media? They're not going to tell you.

[General Battuta]

It's not just photos themselves that are worrying. It's the fact that we now have the ability to have a consumer-grade device that can practically be ALWAYS recording not just images, but audio and other types data as well (say, GPS coordinates as an example).

If these types of devices reach a certain critical mass (and they will sooner or later) and have no restrictions, what little privacy was there in public spaces will disappear completely and everything little thing about you (what actions you take, what you say and to whom, the places you visit, etc.) may be stored somewhere for someone to see.

You mean, like a phone?

There is nothing new or special about this except it's on your face.

I think that's a pretty key difference. It's really easy to tell when someone is photographing or recording with a phone, since they have to hold it up and move it to keep the target in frame. I don't think you can do the same thing pretending to read text messages with ease - you can maybe do the same thing pretending to read text messages with difficulty, since that's a pretty unnatural pose for reading text messages.

Plus, since it can detach from the glasses, they can simply ask that you take it off in the same fashion they can ask you to turn off a camera or put away your phone.

I don't think many people are going to cross a subway car to ask that guy to take off his Googoggles. But he'll still have the ability to upload - even without particular intent - geotagged data that clearly identifies where you were. And so for that reason I say -

The era of no privacy has been here a while now. It's called MySpace, followed by Facebook. Between people being stupid by uploading everything, and then being stupid uploading things of other people and not just them, your privacy is gone. This will change nothing at all. If you didn't want your information out there, you should never have joined Facebook or anything like it.

I don't think this is just an extension of that era, I think it's quite a new one. This is the eversion of the opt-in for no-privacy rule we saw on Facebook into the real world, and there's no opt-in any more. There may not even be an opt out.

[Ghostavo]

It's not just photos themselves that are worrying. It's the fact that we now have the ability to have a consumer-grade device that can practically be ALWAYS recording not just images, but audio and other types data as well (say, GPS coordinates as an example).

If these types of devices reach a certain critical mass (and they will sooner or later) and have no restrictions, what little privacy was there in public spaces will disappear completely and everything little thing about you (what actions you take, what you say and to whom, the places you visit, etc.) may be stored somewhere for someone to see.

You mean, like a phone?

There is nothing new or special about this except it's on your face. You can do the same thing pretending to read text messages with ease. They do have limited battery and storage, it's not like you can record forever. Plus, since it can detach from the glasses, they can simply ask that you take it off in the same fashion they can ask you to turn off a camera or put away your phone.

The era of no privacy has been here a while now. It's called MySpace, followed by Facebook. Between people being stupid by uploading everything, and then being stupid uploading things of other people and not just them, your privacy is gone. This will change nothing at all. If you didn't want your information out there, you should never have joined Facebook or anything like it.

Like I tried to mention, it's just not the ability to upload information, it's the pervasiveness of it. Nowadays you have to consciously upload that data, imagine if you don't have to do any interaction for that data to be uploaded. Also, you don't have to have joined a social network to have your data uploaded somewhere. I don't have Facebook and I'd wager I have a lot of photos of me uploaded there.

And it won't stop with these consumer-grade devices. A whole range of other devices are starting to be deployed thanks to the long term trend of ubiquitous computing.

Take a look at this, as an example.