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Comment by personlurking | Hacker News Reader

Someone in a Reddit comment coined the term 'glasshole', likely in reference to the type who walk around with the bluetooth piece talking loudly about 'important' things.

For those who have seen the film Children of Men, there's a scene in there of a young man in a nice apartment who is playing video games on a strange, futuristic headset which, if I remember correctly, somewhat resembled Glass. He looked like he had psychological problems.

We're getting closer and closer to Surrogates/Gamer/Sleep Dealer/etc, something I'm not excited about at all.

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I find this mentality so, so strange to see, especially coming from what I assume are fellow engineers/programmers.

We're at a time where almost literally every single book every written is with me in my pocket everywhere that I go, as well as every piece of music ever recorded, and every film ever made.

I have the world's largest library, bigger than anything that the Greeks or Egyptians could have even dreamed, and I carry it with me, every day, in my pocket; most of the people I know do too! We're all constant patrons to humanity's most complete and largest collection of art and information.

And now this library is being made even more available to me. I can immediately call up the sum of human history just by glancing in my peripheral...

...and this scares you? You don't like it?

Is this fear?

Certainly there will be assholes. One of the saddest things I saw last year was people at burning man constantly hiding behind a gopro or other camera, and I called them out on it constantly "be here with me! Don't hide behind that lens!" etc.

But these people have existed forever. There has always been cameras.

And for distractions there has almost always been books.

The glass isn't "new" in that sense, it's just better.

While I don't deny the huge advances you mention, what scares me is what will eventually become the mainstream use case for the device. Given, I don't know what that use case will be but I'm pretty sure it will not improve human interaction.

As for your assumption re:engineers/programmers, I am just a full-time lover of tech news and a part-time cynic of where what I read will take us.

I don't think the OP ever said they were scared. Not liking it and being scared of it are quite different things.

In the same way that these technologies have made data access easier, they've made being a rude asshole easier. There have never been more ways to not pay attention to the person talking to you, and to put a digital wall between you and the people you are supposed to be interacting with.

Information has existed forever. Tech makes it more accessible. Assholes have existed forever, but tech introduces brand new ways to be an asshole.

Famously, "Cyberspace is where you are when you're on the phone." With Google Glass, that becomes "Cyberspace is where you are."

That has obvious pluses, but it's foolish to ignore the minuses on the other side.

It will always be there, always demanding a fraction of your attention.

You'll get used to it, certainly. But that won't mean that it's not taking part of your attention. It will just mean you got used to it taking part of your attention.

The question is how much attention we have to spare.

Indeed, our brainpower is finite. We have dramatically increased the amount of data available to our brains, but not our brain's ability to process it. I believe that cellphones, Google glass, and other "augmented reality" systems are all just stepping stones on the path to a direct neural link to cyberspace. Hopefully, by the time we reach that end, we have the ability to boost our brainpower so that the new surge of information does not diminish all our other senses.

At present, too many people equate "having literature on your cellphone" with "understanding that literature." For certain types of information (e.g. manuals, data tables) having a searchable format is almost as useful as already knowing the contents. Having a searchable copy of Hamlet, however, is not nearly the same thing as having read it. When the day comes that I can have a ethernet port in my head, and downloading a text file of Hamlet is virtually the same as having read it with my eyes, I will gladly sign up. But until then, looking around at all the people with various headsets, phones, and now Google glasses, I will chuckle to myself, because all I see are glassholes missing out on the world around them.

It's interesting to think about how underutilized some of that knowledge actually is in the broad scheme of things - for instance, how popular is reading the classics of literature, versus the latest novella of the day?

Changes in technology have a fundamental impact on the way humans interacting with the world (for better or worse), an interesting book called The Shallows [1] highlights some of these points. Is the technology we're utilizing moving us in a direction that is long-term beneficial or harmful? People can access information more easily, but at the expense of what - lack of focus? Problems with deep thought and long-term planning?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp...

The biggest issue I see is that information has become cheap and hence just less valuable. How much more would I get out of reading Shakespeare if I didn't have hundred's of blogs analyzing everything he's written? Before, I might join a discussion class or really read the stories and take the time to find meaning in them. The fact that its right there lends itself to just almost not caring.

"Better" really depends on your opinion of what's going on. The problem with someone stuck behind a camera isn't the camera, it's the act and result of sticking yourself behind it: Making that easier and less apparently-intrusive doesn't take away the problem, it means people will be doing exactly the same thing (probably more people, since it'll be more convenient) and you'll still have the same reduced fraction of their attention, you just might not realize it right away.

At best they'll have to fidget with the device less and might be marginally less distracted, but this is still just making the problem easier to cause. You're happy to have all the media in the world at your fingertips, and that's understandable; however, now everyone can have all that media right in front of them, between them and you, very easily.

Maybe I'm just very short-sighted (I do have an awful prescription, har har), but I see absolutely no way this could do anything except make the problem you describe worse.

Have you stepped outside recently and seen just how many people are stooped over a smartphone? We're living in that reality right now, only people are developing neck problems doing it.

It's the trend for even further individualization in society. We are already as a society less communal and having another device that is even more always on, gives us even less reason to interact with our fellow human beings.

Gargoyle from Snow Crash also comes to mind. I don't yet know if this is a bad thing or just another stage in the way humans live our lives, but it's definitely going to be interesting.

I downvoted you, because your entire comment is predicated on the fallacy of generalization from fictional evidence, and what I'll call "argument by pithiness".

I upvoted him for exhibiting what I call "argument by imagination".

Very well, but imagine Glass at its potential. And now compare that with the images in such films (fictional as they may be) where people are shown just loafing around all day and night, doing nothing but interacting with their headset because everything (minus nourishment) can be attained via their headset.

I think there is ample evidence that the technology made available to use in recent years (Bluetooth headsets being a great example) have been used in ways that tend to annoy people. I think it's at least a valid argument that Glass might exacerbate that.

Giving credit where credit is due. The Reddit user who coined the term I mentioned was hoikarnage, under the "A first look at Google Glass' UI" video posted the other day.

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