Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

Are people really vain enough to not wear these kind of things because it makes them look geeky/bad? Maybe you remember how you all looked to 'normal' people sitting with laptops or even mobile phones (I remember the time when it was very geeky to have one). Wall street guys with this brick-with-antenna looking busy and such?

How does it look better for a group of teenage girls with parents sitting around the dinner table in a high class, $200/person meal restaurant all staring in their SIII's, glow of Facebook on their faces than them wearing these classes and having at least the appearance of them caring about the food/ambiance?

How does it look worse for the suave business guy with the chiseled cheekbones, reeking of male oils, lotions and other useless crap crashing with his iPad HARD into a lamppost (it moved!)? (saw this a number of times; I bet if you live in a big city you see this daily)

Let's not talk about the, normally vain people, who want to 'experience their music' and thus wear HUGE headphones on the street for high-end sound on their Dark Side of the Moon.

I don't see how these glasses make you look worse than that? Newsflash; you already look like a moron anyway with the electronics you use NOW! What does this do to make it worse? If anything it improves (a few) of the above use cases if executes well (which does not seem to be the idea Google has with it, but luckily we have hackers and I guess they trust them to make it work).

It's all signalling. Huge headphones, lotion scents, $200 meals send the right signal to the right people (target, subculture). They do look "cool", just not to you because you're not the intended recipient. Partially, you're not the intended recipient, because you don't see them as "cool".

Well, $200 meals can be nice; I wouldn't call them cool, but if the food is really good, I can see you eating there. I don't see why kids would sit there all with their phones/games out and not talk during the entire meal. Or why parents would allow such a thing.

But for the other things you are right; I don't get that, but I see what they are doing. So I see what you mean, and that was exactly what I meant; this guy is trying to look cool and attract the babes while he crashes into a lamppost reading his 'urgent' iPad content. That's sending a signal as well and that's what I meant.

It can (and will probably) be cool to wear those glasses in the end, if not from Google, maybe from Apple or someone else.

Heck we have the debate on Craigslist's UI on HN every so often - ugliness won't necessarily stop a good product.

Putting it this way - if it works, and is useful, enough people won't care.

As long as the leading edge of the population thinks its worth using, it will have acceptance. If it enough good applications are there for it, people will flock to it.

> I don't see why kids would sit there all with their phones/games out and not talk during the entire meal.

Because as this thread has pointed out, $200 meals aren't cool to everyone. Those kids couldn't care less; they'd rather be socializing with their friends (on Facebook, obviously) than talking to their parents.

That's another way of looking at it indeed. My parents would've thrown my telephone in the toilet though. Family time = family time.

Yeah, they are: I'm still amazed how people comment on the ugliness of my smartphone (the first Droid) - yeah, it's bulky, get over it. Some take a look at my laptop (Elitebook 8530, quad core) and ask if it's from like, "1999 LOL". Not to mention the looks I get while walking around with my Bluetooth headphones (over-the-ear Nokia BH503) - I'm almost embarrased... almost. But they can all fk off altogether, because at the end of the day, I care about function, not style...

Google's Glass looks GREAT - I hope it doesn't go the way of Bluetooth headsets (which are for douchebags, you see) for the general populace...

Bluetooth headsets used outside of the office/car says to people that my phone calls are so important that at any time I am likely to ignore any social protocol (train, toilet, bank, whatever) and take this call.

Google glasses say to people that at any time I am recording every move that person makes and potentially (a) putting it on Youtube, (b) laughing about it with my friends, (c) handing it over to the police etc.

It is unquestionably for douchebags.

If they had a colour-changing patch to show other people when they were and weren't recording, that would be enough for me. I realise they have to be capturing video to be of much use, but a way of indicating that it's not hitting a permanent storage medium would be really handy.

The equivalent of the red LED on a camcorder indicating it is recording.

Precisely, only less obtrusive.

Compare to the Japanese (I think?) law requiring cellphones to make an audible sound when a picture is being taken.

I wonder how those laws and courts will deal with Google Goggles there.

I couldn't care less what you look like or what other people think of you or me.

What I care about is you not recording me without my permission. And that's what these glasses represent to a lot of people. One selfish person invading the privacy of a lot of other people.

I think if you walk down a street you will already be filmed by countless cameras (surveillance, for starters), and they will only be getting more. No turning back now.

But nobody is going to tag that video with my name and uploaded for the world to see forever on the web.

Well you could end up on any number of tourist photographs, automatically tagged by face.com and Facebook. And why would people who wear glasses upload every second of their life and tag it (and how - tagging takes time)?

This is the thing a lot of people don't realise. If you record a 12 hour day, when do you have time to watch it back or publish it? It kind of reminds me of the guy who wrote down every thought he had for 3 months http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3857621.stm . In the end he couldn't do anything else but write, it's not something anybody could sustain.

The reality will probably be that people actually watch back only a small amount and share less than that. The interesting application is a kind of augmented memory, or TiVo for your eyes. In which case it's going to be personal encounters or extremely novel public situations that will get reviewed. The average man on the street doesn't need to worry unless he's riding a unicycle.

Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror explored a pretty dark outcome for personal recording devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3.... This seems a more likely danger than privacy invasion, people tend to be egocentric on the whole, they care more about themselves than a random person on the street.

Who knows how it will work anyway. I also envision something like a TiVo (or other DVR). They would be constantly capturing video but only keep so much in the buffer. If something happens, you have the chance to actually record it (including the buffer in case it took you a few minutes to recognize it was worth keeping). I seriously doubt very many people are going to end up with 12hrs of raw video to review. More likely a hand full of clips. Depending on how big the buffer is, the clips would probably not be any harder to review than say 300+ digital photos from a day of sight-seeing.

You have a point there (which I never thought about), but that point has passed if you live in any modern city. It was one (of many) reasons I live in nature; I don't really mind people taking pictures/videos with me accidentally in it, but it's too much to know that i'm getting recorded somehow 24/7 with every step outside my house. I saw the number of camera's in Amsterdam grow rapidly; both government and consumer. I don't give that much about privacy but this is just a bit over the top.

Then again, I never thought about it, because the goal of Glass is exactly the very LAST thing I would use Glass for. I don't take pictures as it is and doing it from my POV doesn't seem interesting at all. What I want is being able to walk (and sit without getting my mobile office out) and do some (!) work. Like for instance when I have team meetings via Skype and I need to see occasional demos and slides, there is NO reason at all why I cannot do that on the move. If I can walk through the mountains and occasionally look up/right or wherever to see a slide or screen, it would allow me to do a LARGE % of my daily work in nature while walking. And I see a lot more things which can be done now with Glass without needing complex and weird human interaction.

And when you need to do something real, you just sit down, flip open a tiny computer (openpandora is my poison) which you connect to the glasses (for instance, via VNC which is the most obvious option) and presto you have a full screen without opening some big laptop or disturbing the peace with (power) cables etc, nor do you appear to stare into a laptop in public; you never have to actually look at the pandora to do your work.

> What I care about is you not recording me without my permission.

I can record you with a phone in my pocket and half of the people around you have a smartphone capable of video recording. The only change Google Glass will introduce in this regard is a better angle.

I have to say it's a view that few people share. I have worn a lifelogging device in public a number of times and the amount of people who have a problem with the privacy aspect is approximately 1 in 50 or so. Admittedly this is among people mainly < 30, and I imagine the sentiment might be higher among older people. But the point is, it's probably going to happen.

If it makes you feel any better, the sheer amount of data you get out of these devices makes it unlikely your image will ever be misused or shared around on purpose. The worst you can expect is to be the extra in somebody's holiday recordings. I walk through central London on a regular basis and I'm sure I must be ruining the shots of several dozen tourists with traditional cameras by now.

Do people alter their behavior around you when they know you're recording? Do they watch what they say and do, or how they behave. I know I would have a very hard time relaxing and letting my guard down if I knew/suspected that anything 'funny' I did or said would be up on youtube/facebook within minutes.

Well the device I have only takes still pictures and no audio. So it's not quite as invasive. (For the curious it's a Vicon Revue - http://www.viconrevue.com/home.html) Initially some people joke about making sure to get their good side or whatever, but very quickly they forget about it and most don't seem bothered at all.

I think the thing is it quickly becomes not the focus. It's not like you have a TV crew following you, or even a video camera pressed to your eye. It doesn't draw attention very much, aside from the initial question about what it is. So people are able to quite quickly forget about it and act normally.

On the other had I suppose if I frequently uploaded pictures of people from it, especially if those where unflattering or embarrassing, people might start to mind more.

> if I frequently uploaded pictures of people from it, especially if those where unflattering or embarrassing, people might start to mind more.

Given the history of the internet and humanity - its clear that this will inevitably happen.

As the cross section of people using glass and the members of humanity grows, chance of misuse approaches unity.

EDIT: The discussion on invasions of privacy were also raised when (Nokia?) camera phones first came out. People were concerned by the possibility of someone surreptitiously filming/photographing you.

People did adapt and camera phones are a mainstay today. They just have audible clicks when a picture is taken. (I believe that was the mandated solution)

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