Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Google Glass Menagerie

What a cast of characters we have in this play...

Google must educate and inform, Google is negligent in its Glass campaign, these are two of Germany's favorite admonitions about Google's new toy.

The folks offering these admonitions are, well, out of focus.

We were just a little taken aback by the Spiegel Man & Machine commentator's expert role and decided to talk to OPI (Old Programmer from Ireland). An edited version of OPI's comment follows.

Mr. Lobo is a PR and communications person, you must consider this. He is a writer who does words very well, not technology. You need people like him to explain the basics to other people who don't even understand those basics, and he is young. Well, just under 40 may not be that young, but when I was his age... He has previously done a fake apology for his perceived role in popularizing the word shitstorm in Germany, he is an entertainer. 

His big argument about augmented reality is that the German translation on Wikipedia is clumsy. You can make that very same claim for 99% of  everything computer related ever translated into German. It's not all that clumsy but as a wordsmith, that's what he does. There are some posts on your blog that use the same linguistic devices, although your blog covers much more ground. The other argument that Google Glass is so intrusive makes slightly more sense. But there are devices out there right now that are more intrusive, so the public awareness is rather increased by Google Glass. Wait for the wristwatch with a camera and apps or an even smaller version of glasses to use the big word "intrusive". Movie theaters, night clubs, and casinos are already banning Google Glass -- other writers mention this, but not Mr. Lobo.
He is is own brand, and he does it well. Don't expect a type of yoghurt to be anything but a yoghurt. Maybe he's going to be a very good expert in five or ten years, but in the meantime, he is a vanilla yoghurt with a red stripe. If you want to help prevent negative developments, work on ways to blind the cameras, as they do with simple infrared LEDs for infrared cameras. Be on the freedom side of this arms race, do not spend time looking at pundits with an ego problem.

What we took away from the old man's comments is that the technology to invest into is jammers and camera blinding floodlights for casinos.





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