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Revenge of the Nerds

30th Apr 2013
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I sort of like the idea of Google Glass but it makes me uneasy in the sense that it's a further and quite significant social encroachment, as if people staring at their phones all day wasn't already bad enough. So, in a sense Google Glass signifies to me that we've gone too far down a particular blind alley and we probably ought to do a reset and rethink what we want technology to do for us, and why.

There's also a sense that Google Glass is a product of the lunatics finally having taken over the asylum, in this case the lunatics being the one-time social outliers - nerds & geeks and what have you - only these days they're not so much outliers defined by poor social skills and bad hygiene as much as they're outliers with Lamborghinis who are increasingly architecting larger and larger parts of our tech dependent society.

And with Google Glass they're subconsciously having the last laugh by now insisting we all walk around wearing nerdy spectacles in their own image, like a post-modern nerd remake of the Mao era communist China social uniform.

My money's on the smart watch as a much more socially digestible form of personal tech.

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By Henry Osadzinski
30th Apr 2013 09:58

Tentatively excited

There are some recent articles on Engadget that, while not intentionally, put me more at ease regarding the privacy aspect. While I don't have an issue being seen / filmed when out of the house, I wouldn't want people to feel put out or worry that I was doing that to them if they didn't want it. The author, who was on the Glass "Pioneer" program, had taken to raising the device up onto his forehead in situations where he was concerned about people thinking he'd be slyly filming or taking photos (like at airport security checkpoints).

I agree that there'll be people who, like with smartphones, won't be able to stop checking statuses, posting updates or generally fiddling with Glass but I'm cautiously excited for a piece of tech that means I'm not going to be focusing on a phone screen when I just want to check a text, get directions or take a photo. To me, a paired-up watch doesn't really cut it as it just presents another screen to look at that gets in the way of everything else.

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