Looking at Technology
First your face, then your soul: Google-powered glasses offer web surfing at theblink of an eyeball
Forget your fingertips. All the information on the Internet will soon be right at your eyeballs. Like, RIGHT AT your eyeballs.
The New York Times reported this week that our friendly soon-to-be-overlords, Google, will be releasing a pair of glasses by year's end that accomplish the work of your Android Google app. A small screen that sits a few inches from the eye will allow the a user to stream information as via 3G or 4G technology.
Instead of keeping your head down on that cumbersome Android phone ALL THE WAY DOWN in your hand, you'll be able to just search the screen a couple inches away from your eyeball. Then it's just a skip and a jump to implanting these suckers in our brains. And then Google owns us all. Hooray!
No name is available yet. So until then, we'll just call them the Creepy Terminator Glasses (CPT, if you prefer) and await our eventual brain implants with a mix of terror, awe and slack-jawed obedience.
Damon Brown at PCWorld warns that these glasses will allow Google to finally learn exactly what it is that we do every minute of our waking lives so they can better advertise and own us. Not sure how the Google offices could use recorded footage of the millions of hours we already spend on their site(s), but having their technology right at eye-level would be an easy way for them to record us consuming and spending. Not to mention our "alone time."
The thought of having that much technology all up in your face is a bit disconcerting, especially with how distracted we all get just sitting at a computer. Having access to the Internet on our phone obliterated prolonged eye contact in social interactions. What hope do we have after these glasses come out?
On the one hand, work meetings and church sermons will be exponentially less tedious while secret surfing on your Google glasses. On the other hand, if you thought texting while driving was bad, driving to work with these glasses will be downright impossible.
But for those of us who wear glasses every day in Austin, it would likely be a minor adjustment. I just hope they come in fashionable plastic frames.
No name is available yet from the Google X offices of Mountain View, Calif. So, until then, we'll just call them the Creepy Terminator Glasses (or CPT, if you prefer) and await our eventual brain implants with a mix of terror, awe and slack-jawed obedience.
