My reply (as Guitarface) to "United Airlines to Google Glass wearer: Take off high-tech specs"
Not everybody likes to have a camera stuck in their face, and nobody likes to have a camera stuck in their face all the time. The more people use Google Glass, the more time we will always spend with a camera stuck in our face, or trained upon us whenever wearers glance our way. Now, you won't know whether it's being used as a camera at that moment, since it has other functions and may also just be sitting there, stored idly upon the wearer's nose for the moment until wanted again. But still, someone's camera will be potentially on you in every public moment, not for security purposes, not because you're friends, but maybe just because someone is a photobug, or a voyeur, or even actually spying on you for whatever reason. I'm sure the vast majority of Google Glass users will be as polite, well-intentioned and respectful as the general population has ever been, but given the fair number of people in that population who aren't terribly polite, well-intentioned and respectful, is it hard to imagine that this phenomenon of wearable cameras - albeit they are more than cameras - may become, well, rather creepy? Come to think of it, "more than cameras" makes it a little creepier. It looks like folks can already look you up using face recognition via a Glass app called "Name Tag". Hmm, cute, wonder where she lives...
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we all have cameras in our pockets, to record anything from precious moments to wrongdoing by rogue police. But I truly feel that Glass has the potential take us a step too far towards a voyeuristic society where privacy has ceased to exist for all intents and purposes. This may be unavoidable; it may even have overall benefits with regards to law and order, and become less painful as new generations are born into this milieu. Nevertheless, if Google Glass and similar hardware become ubiquitous, it's going to be an uncomfortable transition, and we should think long and hard about how it will affect us all.
