4 isn't particularly surprising. People rightly believe that they have the right to decide who records them. A stranger walking in with a camera when they're in an intimate/family/business situation feels incredibly intrusive. If you walked in with your phone held out in front of you as if you were recording you'd get the same reaction.
What's interesting is that some recording is acceptable to people. A friend researches lifelogging (methods to record your life experience). He has worn a Sensecam (a device that takes still pictures every 30 seconds all day long, with a button for 'I am using the restroom now') with no complaints from anyone. He explains what he's doing and they are fine (it's very visible hanging around his neck). He asked a student to wear a Sensecam with a sound recorder and noone wanted to be anywhere near that guy, because sound was a record they could be held to. I see the potential in such devices, but there is a balance that has to be respected, between the public and the private.
Sounds like a fun way to remember the details of each day. Could also be a way to get decent snapshots without fumbling for your phone, since the frequency is so high.
I think the Narrative camera looks nicer and is smaller than Sensecam. http://getnarrative.com
It's got a couple of 'outside research' uses, the one I think is least trivial is as a tool for Alzheimer's suffers to review their short-term memory. It makes a real difference to their quality of life, improves their recall and gives them more confidence around their memory.
This reaction seems very luddite to me. I'm not saying I don't understand it. Rather I'm saying it's a product of now and will have to change over time.
If some blind guy walked in with his Google Glass connected to his brain so he could see and was ask to remove them do you think the "please remove your glasses" would be acceptable? "But sir, I can't see without these as I'm blind. Are you really going to discriminate against blind people?".
Cameras embedded in eyes are coming. First they'll be for the blind. Then they'll be better than real eyes and probably be used for soldiers. Then they'll become fashion/must have along the same lines as a smartphone is today for most people. When friends can all see in infrared in the dark and you can't or can zoom in and read something small thing 600 meters away, or can drive through fog with their augmented reality eyes or recall whatever they need on demand few people will stay un-augmented.
I get that people don't want to be recorded. I just see it as they have no right not to be recorded because they have no right to choose how I remember things. If we invented a tech that could read my memory and produce a video then what? They've already invented digital memory that can be connect to brains. So if my brain was digital would that make a difference? If you don't want me to see you don't go out in public. Past that you have no right to decide how I remember you. Whether it's with my memory of you, a sketch I made, a picture I took or, a video I recorded. Those are all just augmented versions of me.
>> If you don't want me to see you don't go out in public.
Going out in public should not mean that my activities are automatically recorded and published by anyone that wants them. It's not like I have an expectation of privacy, but I do have an expectation that in general it's none of your business and I really don't want to be recorded, tagged and uploaded.
There's a huge conversation to be had about anonymity in society and freedom from pervasive surveillance, and it's nothing to do with being a luddite.
I think you totally sidestepped his argument though.
If everything everywhere is being recorded by someone, such as memory recording or a blind persons implants, who are you to say you can't be included?
They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world, which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have the right to say he cannot remember it?
Sure, it's slightly different than these days of a person with a camera, but it's an extended concept. One that is important to think about, imo.
Days will change in the near future, being recorded won't feel special. With so many devices, so many recordings.. it just won't matter. You'll have to invent some type of scrambler if you still care, when that day hits.
>. They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world, which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have the right to say he cannot remember it?
It's not about memory, it's about pervasive uploading, tagging and tracking. It's about amalgamation of masses of data on a worldwide scale, such that every detail of everyone's life is collected and aggregated by massive companies, fuelled by well-meaning idiots handing them video feeds with associated timestamps, GPS locations etc etc.
That's not a world I want to live in, where people record everything, feed it via google and facebook, and suddenly a third party company in another country knows everything you do, without your ever needing to interact with them.
Please get it through your head IT'S NOT JUST THE RECORDING
(though that is offensive enough)
I think calling it a 'shared world' is making implications about the use of the recordings. If everyone is recording everything do I have access to all of that? If they catch me looking stupid as I run do I have the right to find/share/look at footage of them picking their nose?
It's not that it feels 'special', it's that there are implications to asymmetric information gathering that are uncomfortable and difficult. Saying 'society will just change so the technology doesn't feel weird anymore' is maybe not the best way to tackle those issues.
But they are already. If I'm out I public and see someone do something I'm free to report that . "Hey, I just saw some guy totally embarrass himself doing XYZ". What's the difference between me writing it or sketching it vs recording it except one of degree?
The augmented me in the future will have digital memory and digital eyes and I'll be able to make and share perfect copies of those memories but they're my memories to share just like the are today and have been since forever
Actually--I think costumes will be socially acceptable in the future. I know some of you are laughing, but in great
Britain a lot of people are tired of being photographed wherever they go. I personally don't like to be photographed. I guess I getting older, but I liked it when
cams were too expensive to put up Everywhere. I've thought
about putting up a website devoted to selling costumes and anonymity, but don't want to cater to just smart sociopaths.
Society disagrees with you. Current societies have a rule that I have in most cases a right to be not recorded by you, even in public spaces. This is not always made a law, but is a general norm of society.
Your hypotheticals about digital memories: we will cross that bridge when we get there.
My impression is these days society doesn't care about recording in public spaces unless you're actually following someone around with a camera without their consent. There were similar objections when camera phones first came out, but people eventually realised that just having the camera doesn't mean you're recording everything around you. I suspect there will be a similar realisation with glass.
Sometimes it's not about what you're doing, but what you can be seen to be doing.
Objections about camera phones have subsided because people understand them better. Unless someone is pointing the phone at you, which is usually an obvious action and not something that is widely done covertly, you aren't being photographed. But there are still concerns: I'm about to go vote in an election where there will almost certainly be "no camera" signs up at the polling station and specific advice against taking selfies that might inadvertently contravene laws about disclosing who voted for whom.
You have no such guarantees with a camera that by design is always looking out with the wearer and doesn't advertise whether it's recording or not.
Yes. I agree. Our need/want for privacy is generally being eroded as we interact with new technology. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing. We get to judge continuously each available technology - old and new . Current consensus is that Google glass is creepy. Future consensus might be different.
Society doesn't disagree with me. People report with their memory what they see other people do all the time without permission of the person their reporting about. They've been doing that since communication started, long before cameras, long before even pens and paper.
The only difference is in the future I'll have augmented eyes and an augmented brain and be able to share perfect digital copies of my memories. Society will realize it's the same as it's always been. Those people trying to be thought police and telling me what I can and can't remember and how I can and can't remember and who I can share my memories with will be seen just as silly as they are today for non-augmented memories.
If some blind guy walked in with his Google Glass connected to his brain so he could see and was ask to remove them do you think the "please remove your glasses" would be acceptable? "But sir, I can't see without these as I'm blind. Are you really going to discriminate against blind people?".
Now that's a whopper of a strawman argument. I'm impressed.
The 'seeing' argument isn't important. It's the 'recording' bit that people disagree with. If a blind man went around recording everything his device 'saw' and uploaded it somewhere, sure, people would quite reasonably complain. This is (presumably) why the equivalent aural device, a cochlear implant, doesn't come with Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.
I record things with my memory all day long. Today I saw a girl who looked about 23 with pony tails in a blue sweater ride the 10:47am J train from station X downtown. She bordered the 3rd car, sat next to a guy with red pants on and started playing Candy Crush Saga". She got off at the same top as me and I saw her walk into the Museum of Sex on 5th Ave".
In the future I'll have augmented my brain and my eyes and instead of having to write what I wrote above I'll just post some video. Same memories. You don't have a right to tell me how I remember them nor how I share them nor who I share them with.
Everyone would be ok with blind people keeping their augmented reality glasses on, the same way guide dogs get special treatment today. Why does it have to be an all or nothing thing?
It's not luddite to not want to be recorded. On the contrary, it is rude to assume that everyone consents to your recording in casual public settings. Perhaps regulations could be introduced that devices must display a red light when recording, which would at least give notice that recording is taking place. Maybe there could even be a wireless protocol where you can set a "do not record" flag for yourself, analogous to the "do not track" flag for web browsers.
It's luddite not to realize you're already recorded in the memories of everyone who saw you today and that in the future when their eyes and brain are digitally augmented nothing will have changed except the fidelity of their memories. They'll still see you. If they feel like it they'll still tell others what they saw you do or how you looked or where you were. That they happen to be digitally augmented will be irrelevant.
It doesn't help that Google Glass is synonymous with an entire ecosystem of related technology. An assistance device for a disabled person is completely different to a translation device or a POV camera for a cyclist. Yet we tie them together into a single monolithic product that is both extremely bland and slightly creepy. I would much rather have an ecosystem of cheap low power devices that do one thing well. It is far to early to bundle everything into a single device.
Recording and remembering are not the same thing. You cannot publish, replay, run algorithms on, .. a memory, this should be pretty obvious? Invading peoples privacy by recording them is not part of your rights. It has been possible for quite a while now to record people -- it has never been okey without their consent -- just because "new" technologies allow sneakier ways todo so doesn't magically make it okey.
What do you call non-fiction books and newspaper? They're people's memories transcribed. Some reporter watches the president do X and then wrote that down. That's recording.
Here's an example of a recording I made today in my head. I was on the way to work. I saw a blue chevy license #E17HV2 cut me off and then proceed to go down the freeway at around 80mph. A police officer was near by and sped after him. A few minutes later I saw he'd been pulled over by the cop."
That recording was in my brain. I just shared with with you. The guy speeding has no right to tell me I can't remember it. He has no right to tell me I can't share it (which I just did).
Video is the same thing just higher fidelity. Augmented me with digital eyes and digital memory is still me, same memories, same rights.
I am surprised by all the down votes you got. To add to what you wrote, if someone is really hell-bent on recording surreptitiously in public, they have long had (cheaper) options such as these: http://www.spybase.com/Body-Worn-Spy-Cameras-s/101.htm
I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
To me, one of Glass's biggest problem has always been its looks. But this isn't an iPhone on your head. We can't compare this to any polished products anywhere. It's a cellphone in a briefcase.
'Would you want a wearable computer on your head' ?
- Answer will be no, generally.
'Would you like sunglasses that can do a little bit more than just being sunglasses?'
- Answer is now not as obvious.
I've used Glass for a few months now and I don't think it's a consumer product as it stands.
It WILL be, but it's not a consumer product now. Think certain sectors and use them 'for a purpose'.
I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
On the contrary, the argument has never been more relevant than in an era when increasingly pervasive surveillance would otherwise be taken for granted.
Once Pandora's box is open, it will be almost impossible to close it. Pandora's box isn't really full of cameras, though, it's full of all the recording and image processing and data mining that goes with them. You can't do those things without the ubiquitous cameras, but the cameras are usually the only part of the system you can see and do something about, so once the cameras are in you'll never be quite sure who is doing what on the other side of them.
> I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
That's a fair point but personally I still feel there are some important differences. CCTV footage is usually used (ostensibly) for security or logistical purposes (e.g. traffic management) and comparatively rarely ends up on YouTube or Facebook. Glass footage on the other hand is acquired by a private individual with less visible motives and no oversight. That's not to say that CCTV footage is never abused or personal footage usually is, but on balance I would expect more people to be concerned about being recorded by a random stranger than by a random shop.
Secondly, the 'almost covert' nature of Glass makes it feel to me inherently creepier - you can see if someone is pointing a phone or standalone video camera at you, but if someone looks your way wearing Glass, are they recording you? I expect many people (particularly women, given some of the websites out there) would feel nervous about that. It's easier to consent to being recorded when you know its happening, and therefore also easier to prevent it if you don't consent.
I expect that a person holding a phone in front of them everywhere they went as if filming would experience a similar level of hostility to that reported by some Glass users.
I had it explained to me like this by someone who I previously assumed was backwards when it comes to technology:
Do you remember junior high or high school, and how desperate you were to avoid doing a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. that could potentially embarrass you? Products like google glass, and smartphones for that matter, bring those feelings back for a lot of people; they know that all it takes is just one quick screw-up, and they're getting picked on, but on a scale that is mind blowing. Essentially, it's not that we're embarrassed by our actions, or that our actions are illegal, it's that we just don't want to be laughed at.
That's an example of strange unsolicited attention from a stranger is perceived as hostile. He could have been pointing a picture of the Virgin Mary at them and gotten a similar reaction.
