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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.

One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability.

Here's a video of my daughter running around the playground from the perspective of my wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc

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I'm very confused by this take.

It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy.

You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games.

It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.

> think you're talking to them

Yeah that's still weird. Last time it happened to me was in the City of London near Liverpool St (ironic as we're talking about banking phonecalls). Out of nowhere a guy walking towards me starts speaking, for all the world like he's trying to talk to me, so I stopped and said "Hey, can I help you?"

Nope, strides on past, then I noticed the airpods.

> City of London

Thanks to binge-watching CGP Grey's channel this week, I know exactly what you're referring to, and why you wrote it fully-specified like that!

> I really like them

Do you expect your opinion to change as your daughter grows up and makes her own experiences with being filmed all the time?

I feel reminded of those always on AI cameras from a few years ago (google?) that were advertised to young parents because that’s like the one singular moment where it’s pretty uncontroversial to do this.

Kids are cute and full of energy, hands full, don’t want to miss a moment.

But smart glasses have real implications for our society around bullying, harassment, stalking etc.

All things that older children and young adults are affected by the most

If I were in high school again I would not want smart glasses to be normal

That's a valid point. I think that kids should be able to live with experimentation possible without consequences. In practice, most teens have smartphones now and are indiscriminate in recording them. If anything changes here it will have to be the practice of recording people has to fade because it's impossible to be certain you've not got a smartphone across the room videotaping you. And in public there's no proscription on other people using their smartphones to video you as well.

I doubt I'd even notice if someone was leaning back and video recording me from their seat as I walk down the street. It would just look like a lounging person reading social media.

But yeah, I probably would prefer to have her have access to at least some private spaces without any recording so she can rest easy, but in public that's a societal shift and the smart goggles add very little. It's just inherent in computers that their processes to see also store high-fidelity. Presumably with sufficiently advanced video generation all acts will be deniable or some other such thing will occur.

That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. We ended up not using the glasses very much eventually but I'm glad we got some happy moments.

> Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.

Two very different use cases. The vast majority of folks wearing AirPods are listening, not talking. The former is not disruptive to others while the latter is.

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