Sunday Times 2
Google Glass club
View(s):Dorkiness of early fans of the device may kill off the craze before it starts
By Nina Gologowski
It’s a computer strapped to a user’s face at all times while called revolutionary and technologically savvy by its creators.
But in the rest of the world, Google Glass is being compared to the pocket protector, the Bluetooth and even the Segway – in other words the epitomes of dorkiness.
Predecessors: This photo, tagged Google Glass team 1995, has been circulated on Twitter
As seen in a Tumblr image gallery titled, White Men Wearing Google Glass, early critics – presumably most who haven’t tried the device yet sold in stores – laugh and poke fun at those photographed wearing the spectacles that straps a camera to its user’s head.
A writer at Wired implores someone to start a contrasting gallery titled: People Who Look Cool While Wearing Google Glass.
That has yet to happen.
The designers behind the headpiece which enables its users to take hands-free pictures, send email, and talk on the phone among various other uses, acknowledges mass resistance to the spectacles. But they insist most just need time. ‘Our goal is to make the world better,’ Google chairman Eric Schmidt said of the device at Harvard University last week.
‘We’ll take the criticism along the way, but criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it,’ he said. Still public critics are already calling Google Glass wearers ‘a**holes,’ dorks and even douchebags.
It’s not a far off cry from some of the first critics of the Bluetooth, a similar hands-free device which allows its users to take personal calls. ‘You mean the doucheset?’ a Yelp user commented on a 2008 message board titled: ‘Pssst…..You look like a DORK with your Bluetooth headset on…’
‘I just had a guy walk into my store with his blue tooth and I could not take him seriously!’ another wrote. ‘”Douchebag” is the perfect description!!’ Some reasoning for the hatred toward this particular earpiece are accusations its users appear to think of themselves as being far more important than they really are.
‘If you are power walking on the treadmill and are on your BT conversating, congratulations, you ARE a douchebag!’ another wrote.
Image aside, critics are attacking Google Glass for its astounding abilities as well. Some accuse its camera as being a potential destruction to public privacy, with some stores and private establishments having already banned customers from wearing them inside.
When Glass users give an audible command of ‘OK, Glass, Take a picture,’ the software kicks in doing as it’s told. While that ability is already widely upsetting to some who fear they could be undesirably photographed in public, there’s now an app that allows users to perform this function silently as well.
Called Winky, this new app allows its users to silently order photographs taken with a mere wink of the eye. ‘I’ve taken more pictures today than I have the past 5 days thanks to this,’ Winky’s developer Mike DiGiovanni from Roundarch Isobar said on his Google+ page.
‘Sure, they are mostly silly, but my timeline has now truly become a timeline of where I’ve been.’
Further stretching concerns on privacy is new talk this week of Glass user’s own privacy being violated. One software developer this week warned of hackers’ ability to remotely control the device, in effect seeing and hearing everything the wearer does. ‘They have control over a camera and a microphone that are attached to your head,’ software developer Jay Freeman who was selected to test out Google Glass said in a blog post this week.
‘A bugged Glass doesn’t just watch your every move: it watches everything you are looking at … and hears everything you do. The only thing it doesn’t know are your thoughts,’ he writes. Then there’s caution thrown at the device’s lavish cost – currently expected to be $1,500 once released – as a danger of easily being stolen.
© Daily Mail, London
GOOGLE GLASS ALLOWS USER TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE WITH A WINK
With a quiet wink of an eye Google Glass users will now be able to take a picture thanks to one of many new apps released and currently in development for the device.
Ordinarily Glass users must deliver an audible command of, ‘OK, Glass, Take a picture,’ to kick in the camera’s software. However with its release this week program Winky will additionally give users the option of silently ordering the command.
‘You might not think it’s hard to say “Ok, Glass Take a Picture” or even just tap a button. But it’s a context switch that takes you out of the moment, even if just for a second,’ Winky’s developer Mike DiGiovanni from Roundarch Isobar explained on his Google+ page on Wednesday.
‘I’ve taken more pictures today than I have the past 5 days thanks to this,’ he continued. ‘Sure, they are mostly silly, but my timeline has now truly become a timeline of where I’ve been.’
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