Basic Liberty Letter: Google Glass – Cool or Creepy?
Personal thoughts about the implications of innovate internet access tools…

Google’s recent presentation of their own “Project Glass,” a wearable set of sophisticated eyeglass-like lenses that can overlay selective, intelligent information directly in front of your line of sight, got my imagination running wild thinking about the future possibilities of similar technology. I began to think about what it would be like to have the internet essentially one step closer to becoming a part of your brain. Imagine the ease at which information can be accessed when multiple cutting-edge technologies are combined into a wearable device.

For instance: Imagine you’re a tourist in New York City. You bring your “smart glasses,” or “Google glasses,” or whatever you want to call them. 

Before we imagine what your experience might be like, let’s first talk about what the capabilities of your glasses are. They are capable of taking pictures and recording video hands-free and discreetly. They are capable of displaying information directly in front of your eyes without interfering with your normal line of sight. They are capable of recognizing people’s faces, objects, QR codes, roads, and various landmarks. They are equipped with an accelerometer, and know exactly when and where you tilt or turn your head. They are equipped with GPS and mapping software. It has a microphone and earpiece speaker, which not only allows you to make calls, but can also hear you speak, know what you are saying, and respond to various commands and dictations. And of course, they are capable of connecting to the internet. This is not science fiction. This is all technology that exists now and what Google plans to implement in their glasses in the next few years.

So, hypothetically: From your arrival in either of New York City’s (currently) disgusting airports, you glasses immediately give you information on public transit. It directs you to a shuttle, and from there a train. It shows you the departure times of trains and buses. Perhaps you can even purchase your tickets just by talking out loud. Once you arrive at your hotel, your location has already been known by the hotel and you are checked in. Outside your room, your hotel door can detect you, and unlocks automatically. You lay down on the bed for a short rest. Maybe you’re discussing where to eat with your traveling companion – your glasses automatically suggest local restaurants and displays a menu, prices, and Yelp reviews. You ask your glasses to call the restaurant and you make a reservation. You pay from your glasses. After the meal, maybe you’ll dictate and post a Yelp review of the restaurant without ever pressing a single button.

The next day, you wake up and look out the window. You glasses show you the weather forecast for the day, so you know what to wear. It displays local news and all your emails in your inbox as your sip some coffee. You decide to go to a museum. As you walk, arrows appear in front of your eyes each time you approach an intersection, pointing you in the right direction. Inside the museum, the glasses can recognize all the works of art and give you interesting information about the particular piece. As you look at an ancient roman statue, the glasses recognize it from internet data, and tell you who created it, when, and any other information you want to know. You can take pictures of things that interest you without having to fumble for a camera.

Maybe you decide to rent bicycles. As you bike though New York, your glasses can direct you along routes that have bike lanes. It can show your current and average speed, your distance to your destination, and any other information you want. You can take a phone call while biking, or send a text message by talking. You can even make a video of your ride.

Later on, as you sit in a coffee shop, your glasses use its facial recognition software to alert you that you happen to be sitting next to a liberty activist whose blogs you’ve read online. You introduce yourself and have a great discussion about politics. Before the end of your conversation, you’ve automatically confirmed each other as Facebook friends and made an appointment in your calendar for a political gathering the next day. At the gathering, you can look people up on Facebook by simply looking at them, and seeing directly in front of your eyeball all the information that they have elected to share about themselves online.

As you walk down the street, your glasses recognize landmarks and shows you interesting and relevant information. Boxes appear around recognizable objects and are all links which invite you to explore anything you want further.

If you’re visiting from abroad and you’re not a native english speaker, you can set your glasses to automatically translate what people are saying to you. Maybe the translation comes up on your display, or maybe the translation is whispered to you in your ear. To talk, maybe you speak a quick sentence in your native tongue, and the english translation appears immediately in front of you, which you can read from. Or, even cooler, if the person you are talking to also has the glasses, you can simply speak your own language, and english can be whispered into your new friend’s ear. You converse easily, each in your own language with which the other is unfamiliar.

And that’s just what’s capable now.

Okay, so the question is: Cool or Creepy? If you say “creepy,” I understand where you’re coming from. This is a level of instant and hand’s-free access to all the world’s recorded information that is sure to give some people information overload, and is sure to raise concerns about privacy. Not only will people’s online information be more readily available, it will also be much easier and discreet to record audio and video and stream it directly to the internet cloud. There will surely be a day when some people are able to easily record their entire lives. Literally. Data and wireless transfer and storage is becoming so cheap and easy that it will not be difficult to record everything you do, see, say and hear 24/7. Want to recall an interesting conversation you had 3 years ago? Don’t bother with your memory. The recording will be much more accurate. Can’t find your keys? Your glasses will search the cloud database and show you where you saw it last. Your children will be able to go back and see their first birthday from your perspective. I could go on.

Perhaps the largest concern along these lines is the government factor. If the government has access to this level of detail about your life, it could spell trouble. Did you buy a bicycle on Craigslist and not pay tax for it to the government? Did you run a red light when you thought no one was looking (Google was!)? Did you smoke a cigarette in a public park where it was prohibited? If you choose to volunteer this information and put in online, then the government, like it or not, has access to it, and therefore an excuse to abuse your rights. Fines, harassment, and arrest are all liabilities of allowing government access to your private life. Unfortunately, Google has been known to volunteer this information at the request of governments. Also alarming is government-mandated software tweaks that allow them backdoor access to private information though privately-created software applicaitons. Sure, they are supposed to have a warrant to do this, but government lawlessness, as we all know, is on the rise. However, I like to think of a future without government. Implicit in my opinions here regarding this technology is the premise that the state will one day become irrelevant.

So, despite these concerns, I’m personally leaning towards the “cool” side. Sci-Fi books and films of the past portray robots as a humanoid assistant. When I was a kid, I thought: what could possibly be cooler than having a personal C3PO or R2D2 following you around? Well, the answer is: Google glass. Perhaps infinitely cooler and more sophisticated. Robots are not going to become the predicted humanoid. The robots will become part of us. The only thing is, I’m not sure we’re ready for it. We’re already seeing somewhat of a generational divide among those who have embraced smartphone technology and those who are baffled and frustrated by it. As this technology becomes more advanced, that divide will only get greater. And it may not be just a generational divide. It may be a divide among those who want to be “wired” and those who choose not to for whatever reason, be it personal preference, or religious, etc. As I see, the technology is on track to be so advanced that those who don’t embrace it will be left behind. I’m not at all saying that being “left behind” is better or worse – I don’t know – but I am saying that there will be a large potion of society whose brains will literally change and adapt to accommodate the higher-level availability of information and how to process it and multitask and still function as a traditional human being.

Technology has always been something people had to adapt to – the learning curve of new computer software, for instance, required that people invest time and energy learning how to work it before they to able to make it work for them. The future, as I see it, is a place where technology will adapt to the user so seamlessly that we won’t even notice or care how technologically advanced our software and hardware has become. It will become so integrated with our lives that disconnecting will be uncomfortable, even painful.

Maybe the answer is: go easy on the technology. There may be no turning back.

Thanks and peace,

Nick Foley
The Book of Nick Newsletter
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