Google glasses: fun accessory or dystopian control device?

[northstar]

Google glasses had barely been publicly announced with the expected excitement from a smattering of IT types and early adopters before thought provoking, critical articles starting hitting the internet. Here is one I found particularly insightful and powerful.

So what do you think, knights of Avalon? Are Google glasses a fun, harmless accessory or do they herald the fast approach of something far darker?

I have pulled some quotes from the blog post and included them below but it is best to read the full piece on the author's blog.


Google Glass: obedience to the Matrix (http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/google-glass-obedience-to-the-matrix/)
by Jon Rappoport, April 14, 2013

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/google-glass-obedience-to-the-matrix/

...A great deal has been written about sci-fi disaster movies as predictive programming; the audience is being prepared for real-life monster false-flag operations, leading to greater government clamp-downs on freedom.

Well, I think the more important programming is in the area of behavior—as in, operant conditioning. “This is the way to think and behave.”

Be not-human. Imitate the characters in these movies. Be rigid, effective, shallow, mindless. It’s the latest cartoon of life.

Google Glass is a perfect extension of all this. Wear these special glasses and gain new powers. Access the Cloud in a microsecond. Step up your efficiency quotient. Merge with Glass. Experience androidal existence at a new level. Your own mind and imagination are minor qualities. What you really want is a ticket to miles and miles of useful information and you want it now, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.

You need directions? Here they are. You need cues to improve your real-time social interactions? Here they are. You need to record the people in your vicinity, so you can play it all back later and see how you could have maximized those eight minutes in the conference room? Here it is.

Wear Glass and merge with Glass. You’ll be an unstoppable one-two punch. You’ll amaze your associates. You’ll be the first person on your block to own a Friend who guides your actions.

Because, make no mistake about it, the next step in Glass is anticipation. The machine will know what you want before you do, and it will give it to you, right in front of your eyes. Why wait? That’s old-school. Glass already has the answer before you ask the question. It’s more efficient that way.

Talk about conditioning. It will take and make a profile of You. Then it will know what to deliver and when. The profile will rub away your rough edges. It’ll delete your complexities. It’ll remake you as a streamlined pseudo-human and fulfill the needs of the imitation-you.

Eventually, you’ll catch on. You’ll enact the suggestions and demands of Glass before it passes them on to you. You’ll be entrained. At that point, Glass will re-form a better profile, based on your new reaction-time.

You and the machine together, in an enclosed meth-like bubble, moving and acting faster and faster to gain an edge.

They could, at that point, put you on an assembly line with all the other robots and you would perform admirably. And you might well want that, to test yourself against complete unthinking machines, to gauge your progress.

In fact, society itself will have moved light years beyond current androidal archetypes: delete all unnecessary action and thought. Do away with interior reflection. Blunt imagination down to a nub. Find the fastest route from A to Z and effect it.

You’ll want to watch a movie, and the holographic experience will be yours. It’ll last a few seconds. Through the latest version of Glass, you’ll be flooded with a download of basic sensation-essence. That will be the movie. You won’t even remember what you saw, but you’ll know it in some neurological compartment, and with Glass, you’ll be able to discuss it with your friends.

[william r sanford72]

i think this tech has been around for awhile...now for sell to the public with a few tweaks.also info download um...???abductees have been relaying just this kinda thing for years.good thread.

[sheme]

Im waiting for my corded phone- Wifi may be responsible for my neighbours Bees CCD, last thing I want to do is put an antenna on my head. Barrie Trower has warned us!

[william r sanford72]

Im waiting for my corded phone- Wifi may be responsible for my neighbours Bees CCD, last thing I want to do is put an antenna on my head. Barrie Trower has warned us!

i cant recall the artical in american bee journal i read years ago on just that topic sheme..but some some studies were done by placing hives around and under cell towers and no conclusive evidence was made.bees use sun light..spectrums pos. of sun in sky..gravity...and a few other ways to find locate food source and to find home..if your really good at math and observing..you can get a almost precise location of where said bee is going by watching them DANCE!! sorry this info still blows me away every time.feel like a kid.i have a book outta nebraska i got from marrion ellis?? i believe about learning the bees dance.but as i was saying i think its a combo of many things causing ccd. health and immune number one..cell towers and wifi.number 2...earth changes number 3. pick one or all the above.thanks for thinking about the bees sheme. also sorry off topic.my bad.:o

[northstar]

thanks for thinking about the bees sheme. also sorry off topic.my bad.:o

No problem at all friends, you know how much I love the bees. :)

[soleil]

just saw a news snippit and then searched online for a news article...

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/18/google-glass-resales
Google is barring anyone deemed worthy of a pair of its $1,500 (£980) Google Glass computer eyewear from selling or even loaning out the highly coveted gadget.

The company's terms of service on the limited-edition wearable computer specifically states, "you may not resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person without Google's authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the device will be entitled to any refund, product support, or product warranty."

Welcome to the New World, one in which companies are retaining control of their products even after consumers purchase them.

It was bound to happen. Strange as it may sound, you don't actually own much of the software you buy today. You essentially rent it under strict end-user agreements that have withstood judicial scrutiny. Google appears to be among the first to apply such draconian rules to consumer electronics.

"If it takes off like iPhones did, this is going to be part of people's everyday activity, and now we are starting down this path that is going to be completely controlled," said Corynne McSherry, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's intellectual property coordinator. "It's not clear to me what they are doing is unlawful. It's a contract issue."

The company knows if the eyewear was transferred because each device is registered under the buyer's Google account.

For the moment, not just anybody can buy the eyewear.

Google has created the Silicon Valley equivalent of a velvet rope under its so-called Google Glass Explorers program. If Google liked what you posted on social media under the hashtag #ifihadglassand, Google grants you the opportunity to fork out $1,500 for the Explorer edition of the headset.

Google declined comment. Google also isn't saying when it would lift its velvet rope and whether the same draconian terms of service would apply when it does lift the velvet rope.

Google's tight rein over the gadget came to light today when one of the first would-be owners of the device abruptly halted an eBay auction because he feared reprisals from Google.

"After getting a message on Twitter from Google saying I had been selected as part of the program a couple weeks ago, it just came to mind if they are giving out to a limited number of people, I could put it out there on eBay and sell it for a lot more than $1,500," said Ed, a Philadelphia man who halted his auction Wednesday. (Wired.com agreed not to publish his last name as a condition of him telling his story.)

Because the only correspondence Ed has had with Google is the initial tweet about his acceptance into the program, he had no idea he wasn't allowed to sell his Google Glass, which he had been authorised to purchase for $1,500 in the coming weeks. Instead, he found out via the Glass Explorers Google+ group.

He also discovered that some were upset that he had the audacity to sell his Google Glass headset.

"People were acting like I had did something sacrilegious," he said.

Once Ed learned of the terms of service, he ended the auction -- which began at $5,000 (£3,300) and ballooned to more than $90,000 (£59,000). No one from Google or eBay had contacted him about the auction, he said. He still wants his Google Glass Explorer headset and hopes that Google doesn't hold it against him for trying to sell the device.

"I'm willing to fork up the $1,500 for it," he said.

The tech world, including Google, won an approval-of-sorts to control its stream of commerce in 2010, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said licensing language controls resales.

The case concerned a dispute about whether a California man could resell Autodesk software on eBay. Autodesk prevailed in a lawsuit, and the San Francisco-based appeals court pointed out that the shrink-wrap agreement between its customers forbade the resale of it.

The Software & Information Industry Association, whose members include Google, Adobe, McAfee, Oracle and dozens of others, urged the court to rule as it did. The Motion Picture Association of America also sided with Autodesk.

Federal regulators cited that decision last year (.pdf) when it blocked mobile-phone owners from lawfully unlocking their phones to run on a compatible carrier of choice, saying the ruling was "controlling precedent." That's because people don't own the software on their phones that controls access to carrier networks, regulators said.

For Ed, it's all a lost opportunity to cash in on being one of the first selected to buy Google Glass.

It would have been "exciting," he said, "to get $100,000 (£66,000) for something that only costs $1,500."

This story originally appeared on Wired.com

i definitely wouldnt want one.....this just looks like a lotto, looking for "winners" who may regret it later? not sure.

[northstar]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/18/google-glass-resales
[i]Google is barring anyone deemed worthy of a pair of its $1,500 (£980) Google Glass computer eyewear from selling or even loaning out the highly coveted gadget.

The company's terms of service on the limited-edition wearable computer specifically states, "you may not resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person without Google's authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the device will be entitled to any refund, product support, or product warranty."

Welcome to the New World, one in which companies are retaining control of their products even after consumers purchase them.



That's a great article teradactyl!
There are so many very troubling issues around Google glass.
The freedom to do with it what you want is just one of many concerns, in my opinion.