Will You Be A Glasshole?

How about being picked up in a bar by some drunken glasshole using the awful SceneTap app because you’re his chosen demographic? Or a criminal who’s used PittPatt’s software to data-mine your Facebook or dating site pages to disarm you because they know too much about you such as having knowledge of your address, phone number, and workplace?

TSA Agents could be able to wear Google Glasses whilst scanning crowds, using facial recognition software like Polar Rose, PittPatt, or Face.com to pick out likely offenders from the No-Fly List. Because facial recognition software isn’t perfect, maybe the TSA could tie into the TrapWire system.

Throw in some technology that Microsoft has patented for Kinect, allowing the company to target advertising based on your emotional state.

How about eye-tracking software that allows advertisers to more accurately sell you products based on your gender while wearing Google Glasses? Remember, Google is a company that has stopped ad-blocking apps for Android and advertising is its number one source of income.

Or you could just let Adam Harvey do your makeup.

Will those that become enamored by Google Glass be Like countless others who walk around waving $500 pieces of technology around like magical black mirrors preventing harm or sit by the doors of city buses using iPads or MacBook Pros as iPods who are then surprised when they get pepper-sprayed or punched in the face to have their products stolen, eliciting no pity from passers-by? What will they do when their $1,500 Google Glasses attract the attention of thieves?

Are you going to call those same police officers looking up your murky criminal record from the Cloud as they question you? Rio de Janero’s 2014 World Cup police will roll out exactly this kind of technology.

Or how about your boss calling you in for a meeting to talk to you about your performance while looking at pictures of cats on Cute Overload?

What about the thought of YouTube descending into WorldStarHipHop video chaos, where every video has some clown yelling “WORLD STAR!” over the events?

How about ruining stand-up comedy? Or movies? Or plays? Do you think the Alamo Drafthouse will have to update its no talking or texting rule to include a ban on Google Glasses?

What’s to stop people from using Glass to record movies, stream previews direct to the internet, or ruin punchlines for audiences waiting to see a comedian’s latest tour? That’s already happened. Patton Oswalt has had run-ins with people recording new, try-out pieces in small, intimate shows. Doug Stanhope has more pro-active suggestions,

People bootlegging shows on cellphones and putting material out before it’s finished is a problem for every comic, but compared to all the upsides of what the internet has done, it’s a fact of life that we’ll learn to adapt to even if it means finding these people and killing their families in front of them.

In these scenarios, of course, we’re simply imagining bad situations, but these many speculations aren’t even the worst-case scenarios. Edward Champion came up with a detailed list of 35 more on his blog, Reluctant Habits. We’ve already seen number seven, an increased risk of violence.

Oversharing and checking in. Foursquare, Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr all tell people where you’re not with geo-tagging. Please Rob Me lays out the problems with oversharing. (Argument 21, according to Edward Champion.)

Before Glass, this was already a very legitimate concern. In 2010, The Daily Beast‘s Lisa Riordan Seville reported on how Foursquare inspired strangers to stalk people. Seville describes how social media strategist Carri Bugbee checked into a restaurant on Foursquare. The hostess came over to Bugbee, telling her that she had a telephone call. Bugbee answered the phone and was greeted with a male voice who found her Foursquare check-in and told her that she shouldn’t use the service because people could learn where she lived. Then he called her a ‘stupid bitch,’ among other insults.

Google has explicitly said that it won’t employ these technologies on the company’s products. Just Picasa. For now. And opting in is an extremely effective as a deterrent, right? Never mind that Facebook sets profile pictures to be visible by default, and Google+’s demands that people use their real identities, which works so well, especially given Vic Gondutra’s history of flip-flopping and bowing to external pressures in deference of people’s personal lives. The Electronic Frontier Foundation states the case better than I.

It is well within the rights of any company–Google, Facebook, or otherwise–to create policies as they see fit for their services. But it is shortsighted for these companies to suggest that ‘real name’ policies create greater potential for civility, when they only do so at the expense of diversity and free expression. Indeed, a shift toward crafting policies requiring “real” names will have a chilling effect on online free expression.

However, where technology gives, it can also take away. Apple has been beavering away on a method to shut down your iPhone’s camera feature, reports RT.com:

Apple has been working on a plan that will allow concert halls, sporting arenas and other venues to install infrared sensors that will detect iPhones going into camera mode and promptly disable the device’s ability to snap a shot or film a video. Explicitly, the patent states that it will use new technology to ‘capture a second image that includes an infrared signal with encoded data’ and from there could shut-down a phone’s recording capability or else introduce a compulsory watermark.

Suck it, you bunch of Glassholes.