They might kill the project even before starting it.
I am still a little stunned that either nobody at Google knew how this was going to be received, or that they didn't manage to take that person seriously.
The whole "no one wants to be filmed in a bar or public places" thing is exactly what I'm talking about: People had no competent understanding of the device or it's capabilities, so had irrational views about it. ;)
Specifically, it was as obvious if you were filming with it as if you were holding up your phone camera (you had to hold it steady and the screen is lit up while it's recording, which is pretty visible), and Glass was a terrible video camera because it was a mediocre 2010-era cell phone camera connected to a device prone to massive overheating that had an approximate battery life of fifteen minutes if it was doing video.
IMHO, it's best use case was notification and call handling, and it would've been a far superior device if they left the camera off of it entirely.
- Please don’t record me in a public place.
- Chill, it’s not a very good camera!
The fact that Google sold it as a prosthesis didn’t help. I have a friend whose roommate invited over a guy who refused to take his Google Glass off, because he argued it was a part of him. Exactly what a woman wants to hear when she’s making toast in her pajamas.
Anyway I think the common thread here is when tech takes something that used to be socially symmetric and makes it asymmetric. Having a potentially always-on face camera is different than pulling out your phone. The person using their phone has to stop what they’re doing, and it’s usually pretty obvious that they’re taking a picture. Not so with the face camera person.
Similarly, Duplex takes something that previously required symmetric investment of time and makes it asymmetric. In theory you could have a virtual assistant burn up hours of someone else’s time and it would cost you pennies. Any emotional blowback would be safely absorbed by a relentless robot.
This just means your friend's roommate's friend is an unpleasant person. Nobody ever asked me to take mine off, but depending on the locale, I probably would have had I been asked.
> Having a potentially always-on face camera is different than pulling out your phone. The person using their phone has to stop what they’re doing, and it’s usually pretty obvious that they’re taking a picture. Not so with the face camera person.
Google Glass is not an "always-on face camera". As I indicated, it is a 15-minutes-on-at-best face camera, that might literally burn the face of anyone who had it on for fifteen minutes. (Seriously, after the Galaxy Note 7, I'd be a lot more scared of the thing and the LiPo it hangs just behind your ear.) And, also as stated, it's extremely obvious when it's taking a picture.
The few days I saw him he was getting chatted-to about it, mostly by women.
I also took it to Paris for a week, and definitely had some fun conversing with people about it through a bit of language barrier (my French is not good, but serviceable), customs was not super thrilled I wore it through their line though.