The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: famousdayandyear on March 17, 2013, 02:31:37 am
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57574607-93/google-glass-the-opposition-grows/ (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57574607-93/google-glass-the-opposition-grows/)
Google Glass: The opposition grows
"Stop The Cyborgs" is a new site that attempts to bring a balanced trepidation to the unbalanced idea that we'll all be walking round with Google's outer brain strapped to our faces
by Chris Matyszczyk
March 15, 2013 12:21 PM PDT
The opposition will congregate in dark corners.
They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.
The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass?
It won't be easy. Once you've been cybernated, there's no turning back. Which is why the refuseniks are already meeting in shaded corners of the Web.
One site is called "Stop The Cyborgs." It claims to be "fighting the algorithmic future one bit at a time."
A sticker being offered on the "Stop The Cyborgs" Web site.
It's going to take a lot of bitty fighting, but the people behind this site -- they're naturally anonymous, in an attempt to stop Google spying on them -- say they're fighting Google Glass in particular.
They say that it will herald a world in which "privacy is impossible and corporate control total."
Some would say that, thanks to Googlies and other bright, deluded sparks, we're there already. The Lord and Master Zuckerberg explained to us a long time ago that he knows us better than we do and that we don't actually want privacy at all.
Still, the people behind this anti-cyborg movement claim that there's no way you'll ever know that someone wearing Google Glass is recording your every word and movement.
There's no way of even knowing if someone else is recording you through their glasses from somewhere in the cloud.
And how are we, whose egos are already more fragile than a porcelain potty, supposed to feel when we know that a glasses-wearer has one eye on us and another on our Klout score or teenage sexting pictures?
The site explains: "Gradually people will stop acting as autonomous individuals, when making decisions and interacting with others, and instead become mere sensor/effector nodes of a global network."
Well, yes. But isn't that the precise dream of those who want their engineering to finally prove that humanity is a deeply inferior species?
They are, of course, right. We aren't intelligent enough to see that "artificial intelligence" can't possibly be as much fun as the real intelligence that is creating it.
Still, those whose intelligent pleasures reside in online shopping will be overjoyed that there is a "Stop The Cyborgs" store.
There you can buy all sorts of goodies to protest your coming psychological annihilation.
There is hope for these clearly human anti-cyborgians, though.
Firstly, there's the very basic human sense of style that might reject Google's glasses as devilishly ugly.
There's an even greater hope: global warming might destroy us first.
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"Stop The Cyborgs" is a new site that attempts to bring a balanced trepidation to the unbalanced idea that we'll all be walking round with Google's outer brain strapped to our faces
Eh, a bit more miniaturization and you won't even know it's there. The goggles are just a bit too obvious.
Give em 5 years, or less...
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We'll see enough people around who think these things are cool. Remember when Bluetooth became popular and people were walking around with doo-hickeys stuck in their ears?
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The new Samsung phone sort of freaks me out.... just look at the screen and goes where you're looking :thud:
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Okay.....so I can see an application of the technology.
They can release criminals from jail and make them wear these glasses. Weld them to their skulls....I don't care.
Everything the person sees is recorded and/or analyzed on the spot....anything questionable, they get an electric shock.
jails will become obsolete.
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Okay.....so I can see an application of the technology.
They can release criminals from jail and make them wear these glasses. Weld them to their skulls....I don't care.
Everything the person sees is recorded and/or analyzed on the spot....anything questionable, they get an electric shock.
jails will become obsolete.
All depends on whom you define to be a "criminal" and the processes - or lack thereof - you use to turn individuals into "criminals." I'd take a long, hard look at the current criminal "justice" system (there's a misnomer if I've ever seen one) before thinking this such a hot idea. To put it simply, the cops do not need probable cause to punish you by humiliating you through the booking system - where you're processed like so much meat on the hoof - and imprisoning you for up to 24 hours with not-so-nice "friends" while you're awaiting your initial bail hearing, and, to boot, you get left with a nice permanent arrest record that the government will always know about, even if, technically speaking, it's been "sealed." Don't need probable cause you say? Certainly. What happens when a cop arrests you without probable cause? You get booked, locked up for up to 24 hours, and then released if there really wasn't any substance to the accusations the cop made against you. Why does this work? Anyone ever heard of a cop being disciplined for arresting people without probable cause and charging them with petty offenses and misdemeanors? Of course not - unless there are sticks being shoved up recta, there are no consequences for cops who screw with peoples' lives by arresting them without probable cause.
Then there are the prosecutors who, by and large, see themselves as paladins, as white knights crusading for justice but who, in reality, are such badly behaved lawyers that, were they working for a private firm and practicing in civil court, most would end up being repeatedly sanctioned - and disciplined - for the sort of conduct they routinely get away with as prosecutors.
I wouldn't give that sort of trash the sort of power this implies.