Will Google Glass Make Us Better People? Or Just Creepy?

You have to hand it to Google.

Yes, Google Glass is one nifty technology, but wearing glasses with a little camera attached seems to reek of geek, the kind of gadget that would appeal most to men and women who, as young boys and girls, wanted so much to believe in X-ray glasses.

Yet twice now, Google Glass has managed to crash one of America’s biggest glamor parties—New York’s Fashion Week. Last year, all of the models in designer Diane Von Furstenberg’s show strutted down the runway accessorized by Google. And, a few weeks ago, at this year’s event, anyone who was anyone—top models, fashion editors, reality show judges—was walking around shooting pictures and videos with their clever camera glasses.

Still, if Google Glass is to go mainstream, it needs to move beyond the air kiss crowd and geek buzz. That part of the plan starts tomorrow in Durham, North Carolina, the first stop in what Google says will be a national roadshow. With Google Glass expected to hit the market by early 2014, it’s time to start letting the general public see what all the chatter’s about.

The camera never blinks

So, it’s also time to begin taking a closer look at what it might mean to have a whole lot of people walking around with computers/cameras attached to their heads.

There’s obviously the matter of privacy. Google Glass wearers will have the ability to shoot a steady stream of photos and videos as they go about their daily lives. A group of U.S. congressmen raised the issue to Google earlier this year, as have privacy commissioners from Canada, the European Union, Australia, Israel, Mexico, Switzerland and other countries.

Google’s response is that the camera will not be that surreptitious since it will be voice-activated and a light on the screen will show that it’s on. Google also insists that it won’t allow facial recognition software on Google Glass—critics have raised concerns about someone being able to use facial recognition to track down the identity of a person they’ve captured in photos or videos on the street or in a bar.

Others are worried about so much visual data being captured every day, particularly if Google Glass hits it big. The video and images belong to the owner of the glasses, but who else could get access to them? Google has tried to assuage some of those fears by pointing out that all the files on the device will be able to be deleted remotely in the event that it’s lost or stolen.

Thanks for sharing

Then there’s this. In August, Google was awarded a patent to allow for the use of something known as “pay-per-gaze” advertising. In its application, the company noted that “a head-mounted tracking device”—in other words, Google Glass—could follow where the person wearing it was gazing, and be able to send images of what they saw to a server. Then, any billboards or other real-world ads the person had seen would be identified and Google could charge the advertiser. As noted in the New York Times’ Bits blog, the fee could be adapted based on how long the ad actually held the person’s gaze.

Here’s how Google proposed the idea in its patent: “Pay-per-gaze advertising need not be limited to online advertisements, but rather can be extended to conventional advertisement media including billboards, magazines, newspapers and other forms of conventional print media.”

Since it became public, Google has downplayed the patent—first filed in 2011—saying it has no plans to incorporate the eye-tracking capability into Google Glass any time soon. “We hold patents on a variety of ideas,” the company responded in a statement. “Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patents.”

There are other ways advertising could be integrated into the Google Glass experience. Digital ads could pop up in a person’s glasses based on what they may be looking at. Say you’re walking down the street and suddenly an ad for the restaurant down on the corner shows up on your display screen. That could get real old real fast—but it’s not that improbable. Or maybe you’d see virtual ads—for which advertisers pay Google—which would replace real-world ads that appear in your line of vision.

Instant feedback

No doubt, though, Google Glass will provide us with plenty of ethical dilemmas. When, for instance, will you be justified in telling someone to please remove their camera glasses? And will there be places and situations where glasses in the filming position are universally seen as bad form—say, at dinner parties, or stops at public bathrooms or in the midst of messy breakups?

But there’s another aspect of Google Glass—or most wearable tech, for that matter—that’s particularly intriguing. It has to do with the power of real-time feedback to change behavior. Studies have shown that nothing is more effective at getting people to slow down their cars than those digital signs that tell you how fast you’re going. It’s feedback to which you can immediately respond.

So, will a steady stream of data about our personal health and exercise make us take our bad habits a lot more seriously? Sure, you can forget the occasional crack from your partner about your weight gain. But a smart watch reminding you all day, every day? What about prompts from your smart glasses that give you cues when you start spending money recklessly? Or flagging you on behavior patterns that haven’t turned out so well for you in the past? Can all these devices make us better people?

Sean Madden, writing for Gigaom, offered this take: “This is social engineering in its most literal sense, made possible by technology, with all of the promise and paranoia that phrase implies.”

Wear it well

Here are other recent developments on the wearable tech front:

• Remember when all a watch needed to do was tick: Samsung has jumped into the wearable tech business with the release of its Galaxy Gear smart watch, although some critics have suggested that it’s just not smart enough.
• If teeth could talk: Researchers at National Taiwan University have designed a sensor that when attached to a tooth can track everything your mouth does during a typical day—how much you chew, how much you talk, how much you drink, even how much you cough.
• How about when you need more deodorant?: A Canadian company is developing a machine-washable T-shirt that can track and analyze your movement, breathing and heart activity.
• Don’t let sleeping dogs lie: Why shouldn’t dogs have their own wearable tech? Whistle is a monitoring device that tells you how much exercise your dog is getting while you’re at work. Or more likely, how much he’s not getting.

Video bonus: Here’s a Google video showing how Glass can keep you from ever getting lost again.

Video bonus bonus: With luck, advertising on Google Glass will never get as bad as it plays out on this video parody.

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Randy Rieland | | READ MORE

Randy Rieland is a digital media strategist and contributing writer in innovations for Smithsonian.com.