Will You Be A Glasshole?

At Google’s I/O conference last year, when a team of skydivers gave a live relay from the built-in camera on the glasses to the audience below, Google introduced Google Glass, the company’s immersive augmented-reality wearable technology. Google Glass happens to looks uncannily like Steve Mann’s EyeTap.

This man has his device BOLTED TO HIS SKULL.

Last month, Google rolled out its Google Glass website.

“Using Google+ or Twitter, tell us what you would do if you had Glass, starting with the hashtag #ifihadglass.”

Winners get to spend $1,500 on a pair.

People have entered a competition so they win the chance to spend $1,500.

Software developer Andre Torrez could probably make that back inside of a week:

#ifihadglass I could record your face and location and give it to a massive advertising company.

— Andre Torrez (@torrez) February 20, 2013

Already, Google Glass has had its share of criticisms.

Glasshole – That know-it-all guy you’ve always hated, only now he’s got 4G and Google+ connected to his face. Thanks Google.

— Startup L. Jackson (@StartupLJackson) October 16, 2012

Thank goodness I didn’t attend Google’s Glass Foundry event back in January. If so,  I wouldn’t be writing this now because of the NDA I would’ve been asked to sign. If any of those attendees fall into a manhole as a result of distracted walking, Google would only pay them $100. These events have spawned countless Glasshole sightings around New York and San Francisco, including Sergei Brin (Google co-founder) riding the subway wearing a pair.

His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Brandy was also spotted at Mountain View’s Googleplex wearing them. Pictured because she’s far prettier than Sergei Brin.

That’s not before San Francisco bar co-owner, Tom Madonna of Shotwells posted on Facebook about the Glasses, which in turn prompted King of The Angry Nerds, Robert Scoble, to praise the device. Scoble might have then gone on to demand metal legs.

I’ll be one of the heaviest users of Google Glass in the world. I’m excited by getting them. But there are times and places where I expect that I’ll be asked to take them off. There will be times I ask other people to take their wearable computers and recording devices off too.

So, if you are a bartender, you better watch out. Those of us who will be wearing Google Glass are often influencers, rich, and willing to change OUR behavior when it comes to spending our money, time, attention. Hint: I tip well and drink a lot of expensive Scotch (although I’m trying to cut down, which the Glass will help me with too).

Too bad for Scoble if his Google Glasses are attached to prescription lenses. I wonder what his interaction would be like with Steve Mann, who requires special tools to remove his EyeTap. Or would Scoble fly into a scotch-fueled rage and act like a French McDonald’s employee?

The Atlantic went into more depth on Tom Madonna’s Facebook post, going so far as to interview him, eliciting more details of what had actually happened:

‘When you buy a new phone, it’s in your pocket, but this, you’re wearing something on your face. Anyone that cares what they look like is not gonna wear Google glasses. That’s my opinion,’ Madonna said. ‘If you are super nerdy and you like to show off that you’re in tech and smart and all those things, I can see you probably wearing Google Glasses, but you are probably in a bubble or … new. We’ve all heard all this stuff. Like, this guy moved to SF and he comes to the bar. He’s from Scottsdale and he’s using all these [tech] words. I had to stop him. I said, ‘You sound interesting and different in Phoenix, but you sound boring here. You are cliche.’

What’s the worst that could happen though?