Speaker 1: Get in touch with technologies with text Stuff from howstuffooks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Strickland, and I am one of
Speaker 1: the two hosts of this show. And my name is
Speaker 1: Lauren Volkelbaum. I am the second of the empirical two
Speaker 1: hosts of this show. That's right, it's a precise number, exactly.
Speaker 1: We aren't. We aren't firm on all the details all
Speaker 1: the time, but this much we know. There are two
Speaker 1: hosts and we are here. Three there shall not be.
Speaker 1: Three is one too many. Four is right out right out.
Speaker 1: So today we wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: an interesting concern that was brought to our attention. So
Speaker 1: Google Glass. You know what Google glass is. You've heard
Speaker 1: of Google glass, right, yeah, sure, sure. It's the little
Speaker 1: glasses with a Google connectivity that tell you all of
Speaker 1: your email and buddy stuff and et cetera, the weather.
Speaker 1: You can have all kinds of augmented reality experiences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You can figure out how to get around
Speaker 1: town by using a turn by turn directions, all without
Speaker 1: having to look at a cell phone. You know, it
Speaker 1: pops up in front of your eyeball, so you're you're
Speaker 1: only distracted literally all the time, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to be you don't have to turn away in order
Speaker 1: to be distracted. Right, Well, there's certainly some concern about
Speaker 1: distraction there, and and I should give credit where credit
Speaker 1: is due. Patrick Kelly posted on our Facebook page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an article that was called the Google Glass feature no
Speaker 1: one is talking about from Creative Good And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what we wanted to chat about, is some of
Speaker 1: the concerns people have had about Google Glass. So it's
Speaker 1: a technology that is in its infancy right now. The article,
Speaker 1: by the way, was by Mark Hurst. The technology is
Speaker 1: still very young, so we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: firsthand experience with us. In fact, neither Lauren nor I
Speaker 1: have had the chance to try one of these. No, no,
Speaker 1: I think they're currently going for what fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and only too. Is it technically an alpha or is
Speaker 1: it still a beta? Ten? It's it's tech it's a
Speaker 1: developer beta, Okay. The Google has a yearly event called
Speaker 1: the Io Event, and at the IO Event they usually
Speaker 1: announced new products as well as hold very intense workshops
Speaker 1: with developers to explain how to develop for the various
Speaker 1: Google platforms and what those Google platforms can do for
Speaker 1: the developers. So, if you are a developer with a
Speaker 1: big company that has a giant website and your company
Speaker 1: is wondering if there's anything that Google does that would
Speaker 1: make their website more powerful for the consumer, you send
Speaker 1: the developer to the IO event to really understand this stuff.
Speaker 1: Right well, Google also takes this as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: kind of introduce new toys, push a couple of things
Speaker 1: here and there shit understandable. They've unveiled things like the
Speaker 1: Nexus tablets. They've unveiled, you know, various Android devices. They
Speaker 1: showed off the Nexus Q, which will one of those
Speaker 1: things that did not take off so well, not so much.
Speaker 1: And they've launched products that were software products that got
Speaker 1: a lot of excitement early on and then maybe didn't
Speaker 1: work out or maybe they still are working, like Google
Speaker 1: Plus versus Google Wave, which did not work out so great.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they've talked about is Google Glass.
Speaker 1: They had a spectacular demo. Yeah. Yeah, If you guys
Speaker 1: have not seen the video, I'm not sure if you're
Speaker 1: on the internet at all right now, but if you haven't,
Speaker 1: we'll link it. It's gorgeous. Yeah. So, yeah, Sarah gay
Speaker 1: Brenn really kind of blew away the crowd. He interrupted
Speaker 1: the presentation that was going on, the keynote that was
Speaker 1: going on at that time, to show off an incredible
Speaker 1: series of stunts that people wearing Google Glass were performing
Speaker 1: so that you could see what it would look like
Speaker 1: from that person's perspective. Because one of the other things
Speaker 1: that Google Glass has is an integrated camera, right, and
Speaker 1: that camera can allow you to take video as if
Speaker 1: you were looking essentially out from the of the person
Speaker 1: who is wearing the glasses. So it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: even one step closer to stepping into the skin of
Speaker 1: another person, right and taking that barrier of the camera away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The video also demonstrated the voice control option that's that's
Speaker 1: going to come with glass, which you know, you can
Speaker 1: also control it hypothetically through head gesticulation by nodding yeah,
Speaker 1: or by a touchpad on the side of the side
Speaker 1: of the glass, right, there's a capacitance touch screen type
Speaker 1: well touchpad, you're right, touch pad not touch screen that
Speaker 1: allows you to do controls. Yes. From the most recent
Speaker 1: videos that Google's released, it looks like primarily you'll be
Speaker 1: using voice commands, so you'd say okay, Glass, and then
Speaker 1: you would give it, give it the command like okay, Glass,
Speaker 1: direct me to the nearest Starbucks, and then boop, the
Speaker 1: little directions come up. And and also we should point
Speaker 1: out the glass is not pulling information from the Internet
Speaker 1: all by itself. It actually needs a link to a
Speaker 1: smartphone device in order to get the data it needs
Speaker 1: to operate, so you're you're really pairing it with like
Speaker 1: an Android device for example. You might use the Bluetooth
Speaker 1: in both the glass and the phone to make this
Speaker 1: networked connection, so the phone is almost working like a
Speaker 1: modem in a way. All right, sure, and the phone
Speaker 1: would be I don't know, I've read something about maybe
Speaker 1: Wi Fi connection to glass, but I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: of course everything is well, and of course things that
Speaker 1: aren't incorporated right now may be incorporated by the time
Speaker 1: there's a consumer model. Absolutely, by the time consumer model
Speaker 1: comes out, we might find out that they've somehow incorporated
Speaker 1: a cellular antenna in there, or an LTE antenna so
Speaker 1: that you can connect to wider networks and not have
Speaker 1: to pair it with Wi Fi. Yeah, pair with the phone.
Speaker 1: So anyway, one of the concerns that that's come up
Speaker 1: from this amazing technology is that, well, if you're using
Speaker 1: this to walk around and look at the world through
Speaker 1: a digital overlay, like if you were to glance at
Speaker 1: a building and use Google Glass to learn what is
Speaker 1: in that building, like you know, local Wikipedia page on it,
Speaker 1: and learn the history of the building, Learn what company
Speaker 1: is currently in that building, learn you know. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: see a restaurant and you pull the menu up in
Speaker 1: front of you so that you don't have to like
Speaker 1: it's across the street, and you're like, is it worth
Speaker 1: crossing the street to go look in that window? Let
Speaker 1: me pull up the menu. Oh yeah, sloppy Joe sounds good. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and cross the street. Then and
Speaker 1: then you get run down because you're not paying attention. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that well, that is a danger. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: always the danger that you're but the idea with Google Glasses,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be able to to really concentrate on
Speaker 1: your environment with as little distraction as possible. Knowing humans
Speaker 1: as I do, I expect that a lot of us
Speaker 1: are going to be looking at the screen more frequently
Speaker 1: than Google necessarily intends. But that might be just a
Speaker 1: behavioral thing that will have to work out anyway. So
Speaker 1: it's giving you this information about the world around you,
Speaker 1: whether it's pulling that information out via pairing with your
Speaker 1: smartphone or pulling it from a network directly. The concern
Speaker 1: is it's eaving a digital path of where you've been
Speaker 1: right all the time. Every time it pulls something up
Speaker 1: for you, it makes it a little log, you know,
Speaker 1: and then someone else can go back in, you know,
Speaker 1: be it Google or the government, or etcat, or a
Speaker 1: suspicious spouse or a potential stalker. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of concerns like it could be. It could
Speaker 1: be something as simple as a friend of yours suddenly
Speaker 1: discovering that perhaps you were out shopping for a birthday
Speaker 1: present because they just happened. They just looked at your
Speaker 1: location data, not with any you know, malevolent intent. But
Speaker 1: then they're like, oh, oh he's going why would he
Speaker 1: ever go to there? Oh wait a minute, I remember
Speaker 1: last time I was there. I was like, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this thing. Oh yeah, Or like you're watching you see
Speaker 1: that a bunch of your friends have all visited a
Speaker 1: restaurant that you yourself really loved, and like Oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't know. They all like that I should go there
Speaker 1: for my birthday tomorrow. Wait a minute, maybe they're scouting
Speaker 1: it out, you know. So there's lots of innocent ways
Speaker 1: that this could ruin people's good time. But then there's
Speaker 1: also the more scary ways, like could the government end
Speaker 1: up if you were to fall under suspicion for some
Speaker 1: sort of crime, whether you committed it or not, could
Speaker 1: the government or a law enforcement official go and use
Speaker 1: some sort of digital trace work to see all the
Speaker 1: places you've been. And let's say that you are innocent. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say, Lauren, let's say we're using a hypthelical situation
Speaker 1: where you are the victim here. Okay, I've been wrongfully
Speaker 1: accused of You've been wrongfully accused of. Let's say shoplifting. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a nice innocent one. I like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean not that shoplifting is in terrible. Kids don't shoplift,
Speaker 1: but yeah, don't shoplift kids either. No, No, that's a
Speaker 1: different word. That's kidnapping. That's much worse. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: much worse. Okay, So then you have a kid, and
Speaker 1: then what are you going to do with that? Thing true. Parents,
Speaker 1: you can write to Lauren Vogelbaum. So Lauren has been
Speaker 1: placed under suspicion of shoplifting, and so the law enforcement
Speaker 1: has has ended up getting whatever they needed to get
Speaker 1: in order to get the digital log of Lauren's activities.
Speaker 1: And they see that Lauren has not gone to the
Speaker 1: store where she was suspected of being a shoplifter, so
Speaker 1: she's innocent of that. But in the process they see
Speaker 1: that she's been visiting a certain area which is known
Speaker 1: for something else that's really bad. Let's say it's an
Speaker 1: area that's a known drug lab. Oh no, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: been going to this drug lab a lot for the
Speaker 1: last few weeks. Well it's clearly doing it for tech
Speaker 1: stuff research, but anyway, that would be that, So there's
Speaker 1: that concern, and so it may be that you it
Speaker 1: could be that Lauren is again completely innocent. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: something else she's been going to that's adjacent to a
Speaker 1: place that is a known criminal center. But now they've
Speaker 1: suddenly got an even greater intensity upon her and there's
Speaker 1: even more of a of a they're encroaching even more
Speaker 1: upon her privacy. Or maybe she did do something that
Speaker 1: was a little underhanded, whether it was something really terrible
Speaker 1: or just a little awful. You know, your spectrum of
Speaker 1: terrible could be you know, it could be something that
Speaker 1: was you know, really not that harmful, or it could
Speaker 1: be something really bad. Then suddenly they can go after her.
Speaker 1: So the thing that people are concerned about here is
Speaker 1: that it is a privacy issue that it could end
Speaker 1: up making law enforcement companies other types of organizations treat
Speaker 1: you as if you had done something wrong, even if
Speaker 1: you never had, treat you as though you were guilty
Speaker 1: all the time, and use that sort of as an
Speaker 1: excuse to further invade your privacy. Right. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: there's also the fact one of you know, was why
Speaker 1: would Google care about where you've been? It's because Google, remember,
Speaker 1: at its heart, is an advertising company, right. The services
Speaker 1: that they provide are really so that they can also
Speaker 1: provide targeted advertising to you. Yeah, and the more they
Speaker 1: know about you, the more targeted that advertising can be. Correct. Now,
Speaker 1: targeted advertising is a two way street, Okay. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, it means that you have to in order
Speaker 1: for the ads to be relevant to you, you have
Speaker 1: to have shared information about yourself in some way, whether
Speaker 1: it was knowingly or not. You have to reveal information
Speaker 1: about yourself for those ads to be targeted. But the
Speaker 1: other side that street is the ads you get are
Speaker 1: more likely to be really relevant to you. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. For example, in a world where I get
Speaker 1: fewer advertisements for the NFL, I'm like, well, great, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a waste of everyone's time if they're sending me
Speaker 1: things like that. By the way, the same thing holds
Speaker 1: true for me. Fewer ads for the NFL would because,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, they're not effective coming to me.
Speaker 1: It's just negatorily. Yeah, I will say the NHL used
Speaker 1: to be before we lost our team anyway, tangent, tangent, right, right,
Speaker 1: bring it back. But so, yeah, these targeted ads could
Speaker 1: be a positive thing depending upon how you use ads.
Speaker 1: If you are someone who actually says, well, you know, ads,
Speaker 1: I use ads to help me discover products that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't see otherwise, or to land a deal for something
Speaker 1: that I'm actually really looking for. Like, if you're in
Speaker 1: the market for something in particular, then an ad could
Speaker 1: be very useful to you. I can agree, yeah, or
Speaker 1: you might see it as intrusive. I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: been really struggling with this the past couple of days
Speaker 1: when we decided to do this piece about whether or
Speaker 1: not I actually have a problem with the government being
Speaker 1: able to check out people like where people have been.
Speaker 1: It's tough. I mean, we should stress we're here in
Speaker 1: the United States. We're used to a certain at least
Speaker 1: a certain illusion of freedom, of freedom and privacy. You
Speaker 1: know that depending upon your point of view, it extends
Speaker 1: to a certain circle, you know, like some people think
Speaker 1: that it's a circle that's very, very tiny. Indeed at
Speaker 1: these days, and others are saying, no, that's really too
Speaker 1: pessimistic and cynical. It's much larger than that. But there
Speaker 1: are people in other nations. I mean, the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: for example, has closed circuit television cameras everywhere every where
Speaker 1: they are. People are used to being recorded continually. I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's not that we're not being recorded more or
Speaker 1: less continually here, but you know, by by more or
Speaker 1: less private devices, right, it's not it's not something like
Speaker 1: you you don't see security camera set up on every
Speaker 1: street corner in the United States the way you would
Speaker 1: in only cities in the UK, only at many intersections. Right. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I learned from the documentary series Sherlock
Speaker 1: that they are all controlled by microft homes. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: I learned that they're controlled by Torchwood from the from
Speaker 1: the documentary series Torchwood, right, which was a spin off
Speaker 1: of the Doctor Who documentary. Anyway, in the United States, we, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't really tend to like that idea of anyone
Speaker 1: tracking us. And I'm not saying that people in other
Speaker 1: countries love that idea, but in the United States in particular,
Speaker 1: there's a big resistance to that. It's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of runs antithetical to what we think of as our
Speaker 1: individual freedoms freedoms, right, So, so there's definitely that this
Speaker 1: idea of uh, I don't want to give up my privacy,
Speaker 1: even if it's not for something nefarious. Right. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you see these trends in the United
Speaker 1: States of people using things like Facebook and for Square
Speaker 1: to voluntarily give up massive amounts of information. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As of January twenty thirteen, and where we're recording this
Speaker 1: in March of twenty thirteen, by the way, thirty million
Speaker 1: people worldwide have made over three billion check ins on
Speaker 1: four square alone, right, And that's voluntarily giving up your
Speaker 1: location to people on purpose. Yeah. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's if it's your choice, then that's
Speaker 1: one thing. If it's something that's happening in the background,
Speaker 1: then that suddenly seems not so cool, all right, And
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that's going to be the
Speaker 1: tipping point for a lot of people. If they can
Speaker 1: get something out of this, then they're going to go, yeah,
Speaker 1: well okay, you know, you know. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the other concerns is that if people are
Speaker 1: taking video all the time on Google Glass and that
Speaker 1: maybe you're not even aware of when people are taking
Speaker 1: video on Google gas us that there is going to
Speaker 1: become this database of visual information about everybody available all
Speaker 1: the time, and that through things like facial recognition software,
Speaker 1: people will be able to tag your location even your speech. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to talk more about that, but
Speaker 1: before we get into that discussion, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: moment to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're back now, now, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you were bringing up something really interesting, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we should say this is really the centerpiece of mark
Speaker 1: Hurst's article, the Google Glass feature no one is talking about.
Speaker 1: He does address this idea of giving up your privacy
Speaker 1: and the whole voluntary versus involuntary thing. But he says
Speaker 1: that perhaps what's even more worrisome is the fact that
Speaker 1: Google Glass is also a video camera and that you
Speaker 1: can be recording at any time, and that he worries
Speaker 1: that there might not be any indication that the camera
Speaker 1: is recording. Right Sure, well, you know I think that
Speaker 1: right now there's a an led or something slashes when
Speaker 1: it's recording exactly. But you know, it's the same way
Speaker 1: that I know lots of people who have electrical tape
Speaker 1: over the webcam on their laptop. They might just cover
Speaker 1: up the little light so that you don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: that it's recording. Also, there's there's the concern that perhaps
Speaker 1: a future version of this would either not have the
Speaker 1: light or would actually be constantly or that Tracy Google
Speaker 1: would be recording all the time. Tell you yeah, And
Speaker 1: that Google wants to open this up to developers. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why they had the developer beta, which in which
Speaker 1: every single pair of these things was fifteen hundred dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't expect that to be the end consumer price.
Speaker 1: Once this becomes a consumer product, I would imagine it's
Speaker 1: going to be significantly less than that. Otherwise, I don't
Speaker 1: think they're going to have much of a market right now,
Speaker 1: especially when you take a look at these things. They're
Speaker 1: a little you know, they're still a little bit clunky.
Speaker 1: They're still a little clunky. They've been partnering with some
Speaker 1: eyeglass designers, so you know that the Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the finalized product is going to be sleeker and
Speaker 1: very much sleeker. Yeah, and it'll and again it'll probably
Speaker 1: bess expensive. Dig the Jordie Visor kind of And also,
Speaker 1: in the interest of full disclosure, I completely intend on
Speaker 1: getting a pair of these, I really do. I mean
Speaker 1: I I am aware of these concerns and I understand
Speaker 1: them and I don't disagree with them. At the same time,
Speaker 1: I am incredibly excited by this technology. But as Hurst
Speaker 1: points out, as you pointed out Lauren, having a access
Speaker 1: to a video camera all the time that's mounted ready
Speaker 1: to go to shoot at a moment's notice, all you
Speaker 1: have to say is okay, glass start recording, or tap
Speaker 1: a button on the side or not your head a
Speaker 1: certain way or whatever. Once it's going like, you can't
Speaker 1: be certain that you know you're not being filmed at
Speaker 1: any particular time. I filmed is obviously the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but we're going to use it because that's the vernacular,
Speaker 1: the colloquial term. So if you walk into a room
Speaker 1: and you see that someone's wearing google glass, if you
Speaker 1: can't see that light, if the light's not visible, or
Speaker 1: if they've covered it up somehow, or if it's just
Speaker 1: not even part of that particular form factor, you can't
Speaker 1: really be sure you're not being captured on video. Oh right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I would argue that the same is true these
Speaker 1: days with smartphones that you know, if anyone is sitting
Speaker 1: in a restaurant with a smartphone out you can, or
Speaker 1: even not out, you know, it could be recording audio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. You cannot be sure, And there certainly there
Speaker 1: are times where I was holding up a phone in
Speaker 1: order to get a signal, and then I realized that
Speaker 1: the way I'm holding this phone, it looks like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to take a photo of that dude sitting three
Speaker 1: three aisles down from the airport where I am, and
Speaker 1: he hasn't noticed yet, which is probably good for both
Speaker 1: me and him. So I am going to stop doing
Speaker 1: that now. But yeah, that's it's part of our reality already.
Speaker 1: It's just that to make that even more integrated into
Speaker 1: our reality, more prevalent and more integrated. And again, like
Speaker 1: you were saying, with the facial recognition and all that,
Speaker 1: these are things that Google Glass could easily incorporate, whether
Speaker 1: it's a third party app or it's something that's natively
Speaker 1: designed for the actual Google Glass experience, because you know Google,
Speaker 1: Google's got a history also of saying, oh, these guys
Speaker 1: had a great idea, let's let's go to them, will
Speaker 1: buy the company, and we'll incorporate that directly into the product.
Speaker 1: So it's no longer an app that you add on,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a native feature, right. So if that
Speaker 1: native feature involves things like, hey, I shot this great
Speaker 1: video we had karaoke. It was fantastic. I recorded it.
Speaker 1: It automatically tags all my friends because they're already connected
Speaker 1: to my Google accounts. So so now you know exactly
Speaker 1: who's in there. All of them can can search it
Speaker 1: and they can watch it. It's entertaining. That sounds awesome,
Speaker 1: But if it's one of those things where hey, I
Speaker 1: was at this place when this terrible catastrophe occurred and
Speaker 1: I decided to capture video of it. That video might
Speaker 1: be might be useful, but it might also mean that
Speaker 1: certain people's faces are being tagged and those people like
Speaker 1: it could end up being a real mess for things
Speaker 1: like first responders. It could be the law enforcement of officials.
Speaker 1: Like you know, in some cases, you're thinking like, well,
Speaker 1: this is good because it's going to give me a
Speaker 1: record of what's going on. In other cases, you're thinking like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, what would happen terribly tragic situation occurs
Speaker 1: someone someone or multiple people die as a result of
Speaker 1: this horrible hypothetical tragedy. Okay, someone who is there has
Speaker 1: Google Glass. They're recording it and because of the cloud
Speaker 1: based nature of some immediately uploaded it's uploaded people. It's
Speaker 1: people are tagged, like including people who have died. And
Speaker 1: that's how you find it out that one of your
Speaker 1: loved ones has perished because they've been tagged in a
Speaker 1: video and it pops up on some sort of Google
Speaker 1: alert or something. Yeah. Yeah, And that's that's one of
Speaker 1: those concerns, is that. And it sounds it comes far
Speaker 1: fetched right now, you know, especially since I'm less familiar
Speaker 1: with Google Plus. But I know that on Facebook, you
Speaker 1: can opt out of their entire entire facial recognition system, sure,
Speaker 1: and tell it to never do that, and it will
Speaker 1: just never form the particular a lot of rhythm for you,
Speaker 1: right right right, And in most cases that's the way
Speaker 1: it works as well, like Google with Google Plus, if
Speaker 1: someone tags me in a photo, it gives me the
Speaker 1: option of either accepting the tag or denying it. So
Speaker 1: it's the same sort of thing. It's just one of
Speaker 1: those questions of if this ends up being like a
Speaker 1: third party app that gets added on so that there's
Speaker 1: a particular website where videos will get hosted then and
Speaker 1: it's not YouTube and it's not something like that, and
Speaker 1: this person who's wearing the glasses happens to be part
Speaker 1: of that, then just because you know, YouTube follows this rule,
Speaker 1: or Facebook follows this rule, Google Plus follows this rule,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that these third parties are necessarily going to
Speaker 1: follow the rule. So here the interesting part of the
Speaker 1: question is no longer the privacy of the individual who's
Speaker 1: wearing the glasses. It's the privacy of everyone that person
Speaker 1: comes into contact with, because they could potentially be caught
Speaker 1: on camera right right, And you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It raises a lot of a lot of interesting thoughts
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, you know, if you're squeamish
Speaker 1: about getting tagged and stuff, it's like, well, don't do
Speaker 1: stuff that you don't want people to know that you've done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a that's one of those arguments that's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weak argument, right, It's a very weak argument.
Speaker 1: And also, you know there's you get a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit in nineteen eighty four. Yeah, at that
Speaker 1: point where where if you assume that you're being watched
Speaker 1: at any given moment, and therefore you have to live
Speaker 1: as though, right you are being watched, Like the only
Speaker 1: reason to behave a certain way is because you'll get
Speaker 1: in trouble if you do not that the more you
Speaker 1: pursue that, the more totalitarian it gets, the more Orwellian, Yes, right, right.
Speaker 1: So p COO talked a lot about that in the
Speaker 1: seventies with about panopticons and stuff like that, and that's
Speaker 1: actually what some of this, some of these fears about
Speaker 1: Google Glass really reminded me of. And I looked up
Speaker 1: some of the original quotes from Jeremy Bentham, who's the
Speaker 1: guy who created theopon pedopticon, of course, being a prison model.
Speaker 1: This was back in seventeen eighty seven that he came
Speaker 1: up with, wherein you can have a single guard tower
Speaker 1: in the middle watching a ring of prisoner cells all
Speaker 1: the way around it, and it's set up so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whether there's a guard in that tower
Speaker 1: or not at a certain point, because the perception is
Speaker 1: that there is someone there is someone there, and that
Speaker 1: they are watching you. And he said that this is
Speaker 1: a this is a new mode of obtaining power of
Speaker 1: mind over mind, and a quantity hitherto without example, and
Speaker 1: that to a degree equally without example, secured by whoever
Speaker 1: chooses to have it. So so yeah, there you've got
Speaker 1: that just spread out through an entire culture because instead
Speaker 1: of it being a guard tower, it's the dude wearing
Speaker 1: the funky glasses across the street, and all the dudes
Speaker 1: wearing the funky glass right because over the street, because
Speaker 1: you know, right now, it's going to be a very
Speaker 1: few people who have this because they're developers or folks
Speaker 1: who had fifteen hundred dollars to burn. But otherwise, no,
Speaker 1: you didn't, you didn't get that opportunity. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you're likely to run into this on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: unless you happen to be in the I guess San
Speaker 1: Francisco are where you might run into them a little
Speaker 1: more frequently. But once this gets rolled out into the
Speaker 1: consumer model, assuming that it does, and I see no
Speaker 1: reason to assume otherwise, then we're going to see it
Speaker 1: start to filter out there. Now. I think that knowing
Speaker 1: about these concerns means a couple of things. It means
Speaker 1: one that the people who are working on apps, the
Speaker 1: people who are working on the products itself or themselves,
Speaker 1: they need to take these into consideration and make sure
Speaker 1: that they acknowledge the concerns right and hopefully build in
Speaker 1: stuff that alleviates some of those concerns. I mean that
Speaker 1: I doubt that all none the concerns are never going
Speaker 1: to completely go away by the very nature of the product. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially I also wanted to put in in this
Speaker 1: day and age, you know, traditionally, federal law and the
Speaker 1: Wiretap Act dictated that it was legal actually to record
Speaker 1: people without their knowledge in most states. That the law
Speaker 1: was a little bit sticky and varied here and there.
Speaker 1: But back in and a case went to the second
Speaker 1: US Circuit Court of Appeals in which a woman was
Speaker 1: on her deathbed and did not have a will. She
Speaker 1: she died actually without creating a will. Her son, as
Speaker 1: it turned out, had recorded a conversation among his mother
Speaker 1: and a bunch of their family members right before she
Speaker 1: passed about what would happen to her estate, and he
Speaker 1: wound up using this in court to prove his case
Speaker 1: about what he wanted to happen. And someone else said, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: you can't use that. You didn't tell us that we
Speaker 1: were being recorded. That's illegal, And the court said, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Yeah, I mean, I mean, basically they said
Speaker 1: that as long as you're not planning on using a
Speaker 1: recording for illegal purposes, it's no longer illegal to make
Speaker 1: a recording your back or something. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a sticky situation, is tricky, and of course those laws
Speaker 1: are going to vary depending upon what country you're in.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, the sheriff from state to state. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious to see what this kind of technology
Speaker 1: is going to do to laws like that. In the future,
Speaker 1: We're gonna definitely see some legislation that'll be maybe not
Speaker 1: directly tied to Google glass, but at least to the
Speaker 1: culture of having these cameras everywhere all the time. It's
Speaker 1: amazing that more of it hasn't happened already, considering the
Speaker 1: fact that, I mean, you know, citizen journalism has taken
Speaker 1: off like crazy over the last several years once smartphones
Speaker 1: really became a thing and the cameras and cell phones
Speaker 1: got good enough to capture pretty high quality, in some
Speaker 1: cases extremely high quality video. So yeah, it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how that develops. I would hope that perhaps
Speaker 1: the people who purchase the Google Glass product also keep
Speaker 1: in mind the concerns of people around them, And I
Speaker 1: think that it may be one of those things that,
Speaker 1: as a cultural thing or a social thing, we adopt
Speaker 1: a way that's polite in that we can say, hey,
Speaker 1: would you mind not wearing that while we're here because
Speaker 1: I find it uncomfortable. And if there's some way to
Speaker 1: do that in a way that you know, does not
Speaker 1: upset the person who's wearing them or the person who's
Speaker 1: making the request, then that's awesome. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: if it's an event where it's like, but this is
Speaker 1: a party where everyone's having fun. I was kind of
Speaker 1: hoping to capture that that's the whole reason why I
Speaker 1: brought them. Then you can end up having the conversation
Speaker 1: and decide, you know, who's being the unreasonable one, and
Speaker 1: if you're both being perfectly reasonable, then you get to
Speaker 1: split the party directly down the middle and no one
Speaker 1: crosses the line. And the guy who doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be on camera, I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. I don't know what do you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was reading an Nadget article and Joshua Fullinger, I
Speaker 1: believe is how you say it. I'm really apologized to
Speaker 1: this fine gentle sir if I have just butchered his name.
Speaker 1: But he said it isn't a privacy issue really or
Speaker 1: over that, it's a matter of trust. And I thought
Speaker 1: that that was a good summation. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: And now keep in mind also that a lot of
Speaker 1: the concerns are more like, well, sure, you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm if I'm having lunch with Lauren, I trust Lauren.
Speaker 1: I don't think Lauren's going it's not her best interest
Speaker 1: to make me look bad. I've tied up in too
Speaker 1: much of her stuff. But no, I trust her not
Speaker 1: to do anything that would end up making me look
Speaker 1: bad or making us look bad, making the show look bad.
Speaker 1: I trust her completely, but when it would come to
Speaker 1: what about like if she were wearing the Google Glass
Speaker 1: and recording a conversation just because it was kind of
Speaker 1: fun and silly, but then something in the background's going on,
Speaker 1: Like there's where the concern comes in. Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: trust Lauren, but the dude two tables behind me who's
Speaker 1: meeting a woman who is not his wife at lunch
Speaker 1: may not trust Lauren. And yeah, and Google Google is
Speaker 1: not necessarily terrific at a blurring out faces, even in
Speaker 1: street view, which is relatively small compared to what Google
Speaker 1: Glass could become. Yeah, So obviously this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that's going to require a lot of thought
Speaker 1: on all parties. And I'm sure that mark Hurst's article
Speaker 1: is probably not the only one that has addressed this,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure many of our listeners probably have their
Speaker 1: own opinions about this subject. And you know, where do
Speaker 1: you fall on the side of the promise of this
Speaker 1: technology versus the way it might compromise your privacy or
Speaker 1: the people around you? Like, what do you think about it?
Speaker 1: Do you think that it's it's a worthy trade off.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's no trade off at all, or
Speaker 1: do you think that maybe this is a technology that
Speaker 1: is better as a concept but should not become a
Speaker 1: physical product. I'm curious to hear what you think. I
Speaker 1: think it'd be great to hear from you, So why
Speaker 1: don't you send us an email and if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, throw that
Speaker 1: in there too. Remember we've got episode five hundred right
Speaker 1: around the corner, so that's going to be a blast.
Speaker 1: Send us an email. Our address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or drop us a message on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter. You can find our handle. It is tech
Speaker 1: stuff HSW and Lauren and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really send. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit house stuffworks dot com.