Glasshole

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/06/14/glasshole

by kposehn • 13 years ago

119 100 13 years ago

mjolk2• 13 years ago

I've been trying not to get too worked up over the whole NSA/PRISM issue, but the potential success Google Glass changes the magnitude of the issue.

By proxy, every Google Glass owner will be acting as a remote recording device for government agencies. Everyone in the line of site/hearing range of the device forfeits privacy.

cookiecaper2• 13 years ago

Everyone is already carrying a remote tracking and recording device called a cell phone, optionally including video (which may or may not be useful). Admittedly Glass gives a much better vantage point for videos, but that's the only added aspect.

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

Cellphones are in people's pockets or purses most of the time, and even when they are being used the camera is mostly pointing at the ground or the person's lap.

Google Glass will show The Watchers exactly what the person is looking at. Even when the person takes it off and puts it on, say, a table surface, it will be showing something, as opposed to a phone which either points downward or up towards the ceiling.

I could go on. The point is that "everyone is already carrying a remote tracking and recording device" is hugely different in terms of both the scope and depth of surveillance that said offers when compared to Google Glass.

atwebb• 13 years ago

Why are people discounting the importance of that vantage point? It's incredibly pertinent and a main issue.

Kylekramer3• 13 years ago

The companies implicated in PRISM already produce the software and/or hardware for the vast majority of computers and smartphones in the world. Seems like if you are convinced that PRISM is as far reaching and effective as being able to turn Glass in a remote recording device for the NSA, the magitude would hardly change much.

marshray3• 13 years ago

You don't see the difference between say, having a camera next to you on the seat of your car and driving the Google StreetView car everywhere you go?

molbioguy• 13 years ago

Glass makes it so much more convenient to record others. While you can do this with smartphones, the process is so much more obvious with those devices. Most people won't know if they're being recorded or not with Glass. And by putting the device close to your face, it's less likely someone will try to move it aside or block it.

It all comes back to privacy being a sense of control over what someone releases to the world about themselves. Glass helps take away that control (as does secret NSA data collection). People are uncomfortable when someone else controls the release or collection of their personal data (images, whereabouts, friends, etc).

ironchief• 13 years ago

He brings up a very good point that a lot the information humans pickup is from each other's faces. The nonverbal feedback facilitates turn-taking in conversation as well as emotional feedback.

Perhaps Glass causes visceral reactions because of the combination of its foreignness (unlike glasses) and proximity to the face.

gaius2• 13 years ago

Over and above the privacy issues, you can never have the undivided attention of someone wearing Glass. That's deeply off-putting. Imagine trying to have a conversation with someone as they listened to headphones and stared at their phone the whole time.

enanoretozon• 13 years ago

I'm guessing when it becomes commonplace it will be far easier to whip out my phone and IM people across the table.

apashee• 13 years ago

I think that's going a little too far. Already we've embedded ourselves in a world where many people break open their phone in the middle of a conversation. Yes, it's rude. But it's still a change that's happening in the world. However, Glass isn't always on, at least not right now. You have to manually turn it on, which means it'll be akin to taking out your phone.

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

I'm not sure why this is a problem - do you feel conversation with you would be boring enough that people would want to escape to Glass? If a conversation is interesting, it has my undivided attention regardless of what loud music, landing airplanes, or waving shop attendants are doing. If a conversation isn't interesting, I'm already looking around for other more interesting ways to get away from the conversation.

Glass is hardly the problem there - if the conversation is interesting, people will turn off any music being played and ignore whatever is happening on Glass.

mjn• 13 years ago

That was the reaction I had years ago (2004), when I was interviewing at Georgia Tech for PhD positions, and had a meeting with Thad Starner (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/).

He's a really smart guy, and friendly, but his heads-up display came across as very distracting to me, mostly because of how it interfered with "intuitive" reading of eye gaze. When he was looking vaguely in my direction it was difficult to tell when he was looking "through" the heads-up display and focusing on me, and when he was focusing instead on the HUD. It made the whole conversation feel quite surreal.

moskie• 13 years ago

That foreignness should go away with time. I'm sure plenty of people were offput by people wearing glasses when they were first introduced to society at large.

r00fus• 13 years ago

The fact that having glasses/ocular implants that embed electronics already have many negative connotations re-inforced by mainstream media [1] doesn't help acceptance of Glass either.

I know that my views on Glass (negative) would be a 180degree shift if it didn't have a camera mounted on it. I respect others' privacy and I feel pointing a camera is a form of "brandishing"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Picard_as_Locutus.jpg

Argorak• 13 years ago

Associated comic strip for the lazy: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/14

JDGM2• 13 years ago

I was amazed to see this on the front page, assuming it was a link to today's comic, which would possibly have been the first time I witnessed a non-xkcd submitted to HN. That would've been cool, it's a good one.

The fact that this is actually a link to the accompanying article from Tycho is great as his pieces are usually quite interesting but I miss out because they don't come up on the Penny Arcade website until a good few hours after the comic. It's infuriating actually, as the comic frequently makes me want to read what Tycho has to say but it's not there yet. I don't understand why they do that. Anyone?

teej• 13 years ago

The writing on Penny Arcade has always been insightful and funny. I think being great writers is what makes them great comic artists.

If you're interested in games news, I've found the Penny Arcade Report to be fantastic. It hasn't been around long, but I several articles from it have already hit the front page of HN. http://penny-arcade.com/report/

replicatorblog• 13 years ago

Totally agree — Penny Arcade Report is super impressive. They cover such a wide variety of stuff and have an incredibly broad range from Kickstarted board games to AAA console franchises.

DanHulton• 13 years ago

Gabe's writing has gotten much, much better of the years, though Tycho's has always been good.

But seriously, I remember early Gabe newsposts and they were just full of typos and spelling errors and I honestly lost a little respect for him. Then again, I was an arrogant little shite ten years ago, so don't read much into that.

Uhhrrr• 13 years ago

The Tycho essay is on the main URL and (almost?) always contains a link to the day's comic. So the essay can't come out ahead of time.

I speculate that their "use model" is that you click refresh on the main site on MWF until the new essay comes up, then click through to the comic. Of course if you use an RSS feed or click refresh on the comic page, it makes less sense.

JDGM2• 13 years ago

I think that's pretty much spot on.

What I would like to see is coordination between the two by delaying the release of the comic and/or Tycho submitting his piece sooner so they're released in unison.

This is going to sound extremely unreasonable but whenever I read the comic and click to the article only to see what Tycho wrote about the comic of two days ago, I find myself thinking "Gabe's done his part! This art didn't draw itself! Where's the accompanying essay then?!".

JD(GM) out.

♬ Like an angry English teacher getting in a strop at a student for not bringing his coursework to class on the day I made them all write in their planners weeks ago.

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit, I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.

BurritoAlPastor• 13 years ago

It's always been my understanding that he writes that way simply because he enjoys it, and he's perpetually incredulous that he can make a living doing so.

Zikes3• 13 years ago

I certainly enjoy reading it. I've always found his articles insightful and well-reasoned, and if I happen to learn a new word or two in the process then all the better.

Generally when I read something and judge it to be pretentious, it's because the author is using words that are out of his/her depth, in an attempt to impress the reader. When Jerry writes I get the impression he's choosing his words carefully and with equal intent to entertain and to inform.

derefr• 13 years ago

It has never occurred to me to call the way Jerry writes "pretentious." Most of the time I would call it "comedic" (specifically, containing great amounts of bathos)--he makes very creative, unexpected, and over-the-top use of the English language to convey relatively normal opinions on relatively boring subjects, in a way that makes me want to read his thoughts on things I couldn't otherwise care less about.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

That's pretty much the impression I've always taken. It doesn't seem like he is taking himself seriously when he speaks those words.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

It never occurred to me to call the person writing Jerry. I have always thought of the writing as Tycho's. I mean that in the same way I would say Hamlet said "To be or not to be..." rather than Shakespeare said.

halorhodopsin• 13 years ago

seriously. the guy just enjoys literature and words. anyone who writes a sentence with a structure like "this was always work that needed doing, and has value thereby" is not automatically pretentious...they are just probably a writer.

oinksoft• 13 years ago

I've always found the comic pretentious and unfunny. Probably because a character almost always is given a mouth-breathing look of stupidity in at least one panel. The joke of the comic has always seemed to be, "look at this thing I've seen people doing, wow that's idiotic, here's the flawed thinking that led to that."

This is only based on the Penny Arcade comics I've seen that have gone viral, so perhaps it is not representative.

Pelayo• 13 years ago

In this case, Mike (Gabe) has been using Glass for a couple of days (week?). He actually posted his thoughts on it and one of the issues was the rudeness in pointing a camera an mike at everyone.

wonderzombie• 13 years ago

The man loves words and writing and such. I don't think there's anything pretentious about it.

seanmcdirmid6• 13 years ago

I've noticed many criticisms here on hackernews of using artistic license in writing as coming off as pretentious or egotistical; it almost seems to be a bout of anti-intellectualism. I would personally love to be able to write at Jerry's level, he definitely has talent.

HCIdivision17• 13 years ago

Exactly. My high school rhetoric teacher would do similar things, writing (or lecturing) in a way that is clearly impractical but for the live of the language. I can't see it as anything other than thrilling with the language. He's paid to write, dammit, so he'll darn well write!

wisty• 13 years ago

He probably writes the way he speaks. Bad idea. People are generally fantastic at parsing speech, and terrible at parsing writing.

Or, as I'd say it:

Well, if I had to guess, I'd say he probably writes in a similar way to the way he speaks; or at least; the way he would like to speak if he had three minutes to think up every sentence he had to utter. This may not be such a good idea as it sounds, unless you have a term paper due, of course. Because human beings have been speaking for roughly the same time that we've been making jokes about funny shaped fruit, we have fantastic wiring in our noggins for translating the sounds we utter into thoughts, but simply don't have the same capacity to decode the same kind of syntax if it has been scratched on cave walls, or written on parchment, of displayed in glyphs on some kind of screen or whatever your medium of choice is for writing.

seanmcdirmid6• 13 years ago

Writing like you speak is actually an excellent idea! Mark Twain was one of the best authors of relatively recent history.

grimman• 13 years ago

He doesn't speak like that at all; you can find a ton of "behind the scenes" videos on PATV, and you'll see that these people are (portrayed to be) genuinely appreciative of their fans and where their comics have taken them and their associates. The way he writes does irk me though. As far as I'm concerned it definitely detracts from the message he's trying to convey.

leephillips• 13 years ago

Weirdly, I had no idea what he was talking about in the final paragraph, because I lack enough background information. But somehow I enjoyed reading it anyway, because of the last sentence. That was brilliant.

saraid216• 13 years ago

I dunno. His writing has always seemed extremely persona-driven: that is, he's still Tycho when he writes the news items. It's deliberately inflated with self-importance, to give the sense of a snobbish art critic in an area where that kind of persona is rare and a little absurd. I find it amusing.

marcosscriven• 13 years ago

I don't think the writing is pretentious, it's simply bad and awkward. People are commenting he just likes to use words, but there are ways of doing that, while at the same time crafting something that flows well.

alex_stoddard• 13 years ago

In Kim Stanley Robinson's 1993 sf novel "Red Mars" a member of the first Mars colonization mission also works for news agencies back on Earth and wears "camera glasses". I forget the exact arc of the subplot but as I recall they resign and refuse to wear the 'glasses' anymore because they were ostracized by the rest of the crew.

lotsofcows• 13 years ago

Snowcrash was 1992. People who are thoroughly wired are referred to disparagingly as "gargoyles".

aeontech• 13 years ago

Holy shit, you just made me realize Snow Crash is coming to reality (for certain parts of it) faster than expected :)

doktrin• 13 years ago

It will take a while before I am comfortable with others wearing Glass around me. The thought of speaking to someone wearing the device makes me a little uncomfortable. I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community, but there you have it.

This is a resistance that I'm sure is shared by many in the general public. It's something we all may get used to eventually, but I honestly predict a fairly grating and occasionally unpleasant transition period.

bentcorner2• 13 years ago

The thought of speaking to someone wearing the device makes me a little uncomfortable. I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community, but there you have it.

Not to me. It's the social equivalent of walking around holding your smartphone, recording everything. Sure, you might not actually be recording everything, but when you hold it up like that I have no idea if you are.

An audio-only version of glass may be more socially palatable.

Still though, it'll be interesting to see how this works when it is available for the common public. I personally feel that people wearing bluetooth headsets in public are sorta douchey-looking (just my personal impression), I wonder if that's going to be any different with Glass (I doubt it).

lostlogin• 13 years ago

Your behaviour doesn't change when someone points a camera at you? At least with a cell phone you get a few clues that someone might be recording and get a choice about whether to modify behaviour or not.

seanmcdirmid6• 13 years ago

It's not like CCTVs are pervasive already. Anyways, they'll eventually get Glass down to where it's unnoticeable, then the awkwardness will disappear even if...the problem still exists.

brk• 13 years ago

The average CCTV camera shot has no audio and very poor overall detail. And, unless you happen to stand in one perfect spot for a long time, anything they capture is a fleeting moment at best.

Glass is capturing full audio and video, in usable quality, of the person the wearer is interacting with.

bilbo0s• 13 years ago

Well... the problem won't go away... I think people will just get more paranoid.

Basically... society will just be a bit uneasy [around people wearing glass]. Then, the first divorce case, or "loss of employment because of mistimed comment about ... say ... hispanics ... while at a bar" case will happen. At which point most people are going to start being VERY careful about who they talk to and where.

joe_the_user• 13 years ago

Anyways, they'll eventually get Glass down to where it's unnoticeable

I doubt it. The awareness and general resistance to glass has so-far spread faster than glass itself. If a glass that looked exactly like ordinary glasses came out, there would be both a general complaint and general suspicion of anyone wearing ordinary glasses.

It's doubtful that they could make glass invisible without even more complaints and if glass wasn't invisible, it would be noticed because what people expands based on the focus of their attention.

dgallagher• 13 years ago

It's common to walk around naked in locker rooms at gyms and what-not. I make it a point to remove my sunglasses before entering just so others can see my eyes, otherwise you'll come off as creepy. I've never seen anyone try to snap a photo with their phone either (never a good idea near people in-shape).

Now with glass-like tech, it's more subtle. You'll not only have to remove them, carrying an "always-on" camera in your hand might not resonate well either; you'll have to encase them away from light entirely.

Essentially, I think people would want some sort of indication that it's truly disabled in scenarios where they would be uncomfortable with it around. A whole new world of etiquette is about to open.

The last major change we had was with cell phones. That continues to evolve, decades after availability. I wonder what paths glass-tech etiquette will take?

lmkg• 13 years ago

So I just remembered that I actually have some personal experience with this issue. My girlfriend is getting her PhD in computer vision, and one of her labmates was working on summarization algorithms (imagine a program that could take 6 hours of continuous footage, and spit out a 1-minute highlight reel). She volunteered to wear a camera for a day to gather data for him, and she asked me permission to do so while we were out & about during a weekend. I agreed (with conditions--blurred faces in the final paper), we took the footage, he published his paper, it was fine.

Like a year later, someone else who is working in a similar field reached out to her labmate to ask for the raw data. Thankfully, he asked us if we were ok with it, because I kind of wasn't. I had agreed to let one person that I kind of knew already to see footage of me. I was slightly uncomfortable with the idea of 6 hours of me conversing with my girlfriend at a brewery being passed around between who knows how many labs, and appearing in who knows how many papers, over a period of who knows how many years. Cuz I mean, once you lose control over who has access to that data, even just a tiny bit, that genie isn't going back into that bottle. Not that there was anything to care about, it was just a brewery and playing with some legos at home, but I didn't like the idea of becoming The Guy, and data sets have a way of becoming institutions in that field.

And it wasn't just me, either. We were in a semi-public space, there were other people in the background. I have no idea if they would be cool with being in an academic paper. Maybe they would be, but they never even knew they were being recorded, so it seemed kind of unfair to make that call for them. We eventually decided to not allow the data to be shared.

So then her labmate asked if he could just send over the audio data. To which our response was "why are we only finding out now that thing was recording audio?" That left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

So I don't know if I have a point really, I'm just sharing my experience with this. The big issue for me is loss of awareness and loss of control. I know who or what is seeing me, because I can see them back; I can be aware if someone is setting up a camera, and leave or hide my face or ask them what they're doing. I'm (approximately) aware of who can observe me, and who has or will have access to those observations in the future. The troubling aspect of Glass is that it introduces an asymmetry that I feel is to my disadvantage: if someone observes me with Glass, access to that observation is potentially unbounded. This feels to me like a loss of control, and that's why Glass makes me uncomfortable.

ntumlin• 13 years ago

Personally, I don't have a problem with people seeing footage of me in public. Well, not too much. I've always thought that since 1) the recording is legal (AFAIK) and 2) I'm okay with it, everyone else should be and if they aren't, too bad. I've come to realize that this is a Terrible Thought.

PRISM is (arguably) legal, and there are plenty of people that support it, yet I am completely against the program. This is probably just a me thing, but in case it isn't, just be aware that because you think being recorded in public is okay that everyone else is.

showerst• 13 years ago

The interesting thing about glass is how quickly it blurs the definition of 'public'. I know that anything I say out loud on a street corner is fair game, and (less explicitly) in a restaurant or bar, but what about a house party? At a friends' dinner table? While watering my back lawn in my gym shorts?

Right now the obviousness of (most) recording sets the social norm at "don't point a camera at someone in most situations without consent". When the norm changes to "Always have the camera on and pointing, but please use your judgement about when to record", that will have some serious effects.

marshray3• 13 years ago

The labmate recorded 6 hours of audio on you without your prior knowledge? That sort of thing can be downright illegal. That lab should have had some adult supervision.

This illustrates why we can't let just let researchers and enthusiasts run wild with new (and old) privacy-impacting technology. Like nuclear and biomedical research, we need an ongoing public discussion about boundaries.

mjolk2• 13 years ago

Biomedical and nuclear research potentially yields boons for the public good. Constantly recording your existence for the benefit of an online marketer does not.

dustingetz• 13 years ago

weird for our generation, but our kids will grow up with glass.

CoffeeDregs2• 13 years ago

There are things we grew up with which our kids will hate. Time sheets? Offices? Cash? Commercials? Driving a car? Vitamins? Shopping? Two spaces between sentences? "Closed circuit" cameras?

Perhaps our kids will grow up hating Glass.

CoffeeDregs2• 13 years ago

That's a very nice point and is one I had not considered. In hindsight, it's an obvious point, but the best points always are.

I'm curious about your point's effect on Glass: does it render Glass invalid or reduce its market in scope so that Glass is a press/media device? I suspect the latter.

But thinking further: what if, Science-Fiction-style, Glass were so small as to be invisible? Would we all act as if we were always being recorded? What would society be like?]

acchow2• 13 years ago

Glass is simply paving the way for the future forcing us to deal with the privacy and social issues now. Eventually we will have video recording devices smaller than a grain of rice. What then?

octatone2• 13 years ago

Invisibility cloaks.

sethrin2• 13 years ago

These devices will have very poor image quality. It's not like making small lenses is hard; the properties of light mean that anything usable as a camera will be visible to the naked eye. Cameras can be small, but they cannot be arbitrarily small. Your "What then?" will never happen.

hawkharris• 13 years ago

I wonder if the news about Google's participation in PRISM will influence the way we (HN members) think about Glass. It certainly makes me feel less comfortable with passively revealing more of life to Google.

rplacd• 13 years ago

Tangential to the actual post's content, but I'm a bit miffed at the "Microsoft is the victim of bad messaging" trope: what distinguishes "bad messaging" from the argument not made (deliberately or not) is, apparently, the existence of an argument deemed better - but that's never been any basis to determine the former. Talk about the potential of Microsoft's system (and we can do so independently of Microsoft) - but the act itself is nothing that deserves pity or accommodation. A policy of taking arguments at face value at the very least allows for consistency.

bquarant• 13 years ago

In the morning! Glasshole was used first by Adam Curry on the No Agenda Show, even before it was used by Leo Laporte on TWiT.

lsc• 13 years ago

see, this is the thing about glass; There's a whole lot of useful stuff you can do with a HUD that doesn't involve a camera, and wearing a HUD would be a hell of a lot more socially acceptable if people didn't assume they always came with cameras.

Or hell, just a 'the camera is on' indicator. a red light, or a bit of plastic you can slide over the lens or something. (I mean, clearly, both of these things can be faked, but there are a thousand other ways to conceal a camera on your person, if you are being deceitful. The important bit is to make a clear way of setting the social expectation that the camera is on/off.) Personally, I'd favor some kind of physical lens block, as it guarantees my privacy (during the times I physically block the camera) even if the firmware is compromised.

jessep• 13 years ago

I'm confused about the transition from Glass (Google product, no?) to discussion of Microsoft's messaging problems. Can someone explain the relationship?

lurkinggrue• 13 years ago

It's a gaming comic and Xbox is major in the conversation this week.

The only reason for the Glass diversion is Gabe got one this week as well and they are living with it.

AndrewKemendo2• 13 years ago

I think I am in the minority when I say I am looking forward to continuous backup of my day to day activities whether it be through sousveillance or from others.

I am not in the "if you don't have anything to hide crowd..." in the least and am certainly aware of the ability of those in power to abuse it. My take on it however is, I am going to just slough off the mores which I would have previously been concerned with privacy about.

Catch me swearing when I shouldn't have? Oh well. Maybe I'll be less inclined to do it next time. What if I whisper a dirty idea to my wife? Well, what's wrong with a happily married couple doing what they like after all?

After you have kids the idea of going to the bathroom in privacy slowly drifts out of the window - and why shouldn't it? It really doesn't make any ethical impact on me for someone to know if I am doing a biological process.

My hope is, all of this will make us much more honest people. You can't embarrass/blackmail me if I cannot be embarrassed/ashamed.

icebraining• 13 years ago

I think you and I are privileged to live in relatively open societies, and to fit in well enough such that the worst that can happen is to be embarrassed for things we've done wrong.

But what about people in less open societies, and who don't fit what society thinks should be the norm? For a gay man in a more conservative place, the "honesty policy" may imply great physical harm.

And even if you actually fit in to the stereotype of the Good Citizen, what about misunderstandings? What happens if a clip of a few seconds gets taken out of context of a conversation (even by accident), which makes you sound like you support some terrible thing, helpfully linked to your name by Google's algorithms?

AndrewKemendo2• 13 years ago

As I said in my post this is me being hopeful - I don't actually think it would work that way unfortunately. Ideally in your scenarios people would be able to release their own source data from their glass (or whatever) to provide context. The constant surveillance would be able to debunk all the stupid arguments against being gay, such as they lead deviant lives etc...; someone would be able to show a normal boring day coming home and having dinner with their partner and then falling asleep in the bathtub like everyone else.

The idea is that in a society that is basically completely honest and open no one will hold a "moral high ground" so it would basically be impossible for information asymmetry and thus natural variation would ensure that there is no "norm."

Again this is all hopeful, if doubtful.

methodin• 13 years ago

I'm still unsure exactly where the story transitioned into Microsoft...

thufry• 13 years ago

One day there will be a Google Glass that isn't detectable by the subject of the recording (tapped directly into the sensory system of the wearer). Then a lot of the enforcement mechanisms against "Glassholes" will become redundant.

Glasshole

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