Thar be the Devil’s beady eye watchin’ ye.
by Jergling
I’ve been thinking about Google Glass, and I don’t like it. I think it’s taking wearable computing in the wrong direction. It feeds you information when you don’t want it, and isn’t powerful enough to function without the internet. Anyone who’s used Google Now on their phone knows what I’m talking about here – it starts making assumptions about your life, that one-time events are daily occurrences that everything you search for on Maps is somewhere you want to visit. Those are software issues, sure, and they can be worked out, but that’s not my main problem with it.
What I’m talking about is Glass’s nature as a service, rather than a product. The hardware is just an way to access Google’s servers, and be fed results back over the internet. This is not a computer that’s made to function as a PC, it’s a computer that’s meant to function as a remote terminal. It’s taking the last bit of privacy out of portable devices in a way that people once fantasized about, and now that it’s happening, things don’t seem so rosy.
Look at that sweet 3-inch monochrome CRT, baby.
I like big computers. I like hefty, luggable machines with CPU-hungry software that doesn’t need to ask a server rack in California how to do its job. If I’m going to let my computer connect to a remote server, it damn well had better not be mandatory, because that reeks of privacy intrusion. What I’m saying is that while cloud storage and cloud computing are fine when we ask for them, creating a device built with the innate inability to function offline is bad for everyone. People look at glass and see a cool new way to be connected, but they fail to recognize the price they pay in personal data to keep it working.
To be clear, I’m not saying Google is malicious, I don’t think they are. What I am saying is that no one should be able to hold our information over our heads like this (in the clouds, if you will), and Glass takes Google from partial to complete control.
What I do want to see in the near future of wearable computing is simply more convenience; more ways to access your networks without having to pull a phone or a computer out. I feel like the Glass project has become inexorably caught up in the idea that this has to be accomplished with a heads-up-display, but that’s honestly very short-sighted (pun intended). Wrist-mounted displays are cheaper, less intrusive, and more socially acceptable than an omnipresent head-mounted screen. Additionally, the Glass module is underpowered because it’s undersized. Rather than simply reducing the capabilities of the machine, it would be economical and ergonomic to pair it with a pocket- or shoulder-mounted core unit. That way, some of the number-crunching can be handled locally, and components could be upgraded or swapped out without needing to replace the display unit.
That’s what I’m thinking about right now. I’ve been a fan of wrist-mounted computers for a long time, and it’s frustrating to watch journalists pile on the HUD bandwagon just because Google said to. We’ve seen a lot of really half-baked ideas from Google lately, and this one is shaping up to be yet another. They have this issue where a lot of smart people do really good work on a really bad project, and not one of them takes a step back and looks at something like Google+ and says “You know, we don’t really have an endgame here, maybe we should drop this project.”
Profanity Filter Testing Domain 