[oinksoft]

It's awful. For ages, we've worried about The Government mounting cameras everywhere until the only private space was one's own home, and away from windows at that. 1984 famously envisioned a world where this surveillance extended to the domicile, but even then it was stationary and had blind spots.

Seems that in the near future, there will be little need for any of this, and there will be no coercion; rather, most of us will vie for the most powerful, feature-loaded head-mounted camera.

That's not to say that such an invention can or will only be used for evil. But there's no denying that this is huge progress for anybody dreaming of global surveillance or something like it.

[randallsquared]

Most of the evil that was thought to come from universal recording was because of the centralized nature of the recording. Widespread public feeds do not have the same inhibiting effect on desirable behavior, but might well have that inhibiting effect on undesirable behavior (where global society increasingly defines what "undesirable" means). Universal sousveillance is the best of both worlds! David Brin called this one early.

[tjoff]

Just like you really don't have any control over anything related to your smartphone today you won't have control over your glasses...

The only difference is that google will be the central hub, not your government. And rest assured that the government will have access to it as well. So...

[dman]

Being a dissident becomes harder with every passing day.

[dataminer]

Getting your ideas out is getting much easier.

[throa8923489]

Reminds me of this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk by moxie. We thought we would get facism, instead we got social democracy.

We will be able to deal with this, though, using appropriate laws. Europe will certainly go down that route, the US will probably follow. For example, using the camera to take pictures or videos that are stored or shared (vs. just processed by some augmented reality algorithms) could enable a small lamp on the frame of the glasses. Just like a video recorder, but without the ability to (easily!) turn it off.

[randallsquared]

> We will be able to deal with this, though, using appropriate laws.

Ah, yes, in the same way that we've dealt with music piracy through law.

More seriously, people are going to have to get over the feeling that recording an event with human memory is obviously acceptable while recording an event with higher-fidelity devices is obviously not. Especially given that recordings can be faked, there is no dividing line between these. If you don't want people to remember something, don't let them know in the first place. Trying to regulate people's memory, whether internal or external, seems like a terrible idea.

[ryusage]

> Especially given that recordings can be faked, there is no dividing line between these.

How many of the people you know have ever created a video that seems completely true but is actually doctored? I'm a software developer, reasonably comfortable with technology, but I wouldn't know how, and I'm not even sure if I know anyone I could ask to do it. Certainly not without a fair amount of expense. Contrast that with verbal accounts of "internal memory": even a three year old is perfectly capable of lying, about pretty much anything.

So, if you tell or show someone something privately, you at least have the fallback of denying it if they go and share it against your wishes. If they record it, then in almost all cases people will take it as fact and there's nothing you can do. Not only that, but then they can actually show other people rather than just telling them. For many things, that's a much bigger deal.

[thedufer]

> using the camera to take pictures or videos that are stored or shared could enable a small lamp on the frame of the glasses

> you can see a light in the prism when the device is recording

This appears to already be true of Glass, although recognition of what that light means won't be widespread until the devices are.

[isaacwaller]

I disagree that the technology is currently dangerous as very few people would opt to allow the government to view their video feed. It is as you say - something right out of 1984 - and most people would recognize that and not give permission.

Unless the video is uploaded without the user's knowledge, I think we do not have to worry about government usage of these cameras.

[yusefnapora]

They wouldn't need to give permission to the government. "Get Glass today with 1TB free cloud storage. Access your precious memories from your phone, tablet or television!" Once it's in Google's cloud it's just a subpoena away.

[tjoff]

Opt to allow?! What planet are you from?

[yakiv]

It's like Facebook.

[dev1n]

And how wonderful that will be.