[bobz]

There are some pretty serious potential health consequences for the improper use of such a device.

In this case, I actually don't blame Google for keeping things locked down a bit until those are better understood.

The best I would hope for is for them to provide some amount of support for custom OEMs... but allowing people to do whatever they want on the device without some real barriers / safeguards would expose them to enormous liability.

[emidln]

There are some pretty serious potential health risks for the improper use of your laptop and mobile phone too. Each can easily start a fire. Your laptop's keyboard is likely damaging your wrists. Small text, dimly lit screens, and hours upon hours of constant use are hurting your eyes.

Maybe we should take away root access to your computer while installing software that forces you to take a break every few hours? Maybe require some APIs that lock you out of your Google account during that time period so you don't cheat with another device (like your cell phone).

[pjbrunet]

"I worry that Google and certain other companies are neglecting some important lessons. Their design decisions could make it hard for many folks to use these systems. Worse, poorly configured products might even damage some people’s eyesight and set the movement back years.

My concern comes from direct experience. The very first wearable computer system I put together showed me real-time video on a helmet-mounted display. The camera was situated close to one eye, but it didn’t have quite the same viewpoint. The slight misalignment seemed unimportant at the time, but it produced some ___strange and unpleasant results. And those troubling effects persisted long after I took the gear off.___" http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/steve-mann-my-au...

[saurik]

(FWIW, that specific set of issues was not related to having a monitor in his peripheral vision, but replacing his eye with the output of a camera that had a slightly different perspective, something that Glass does not attempt.)

[CatMtKing]

That specific issue, but this one is relevant to how Glass is designed:

"Using lenses in this way forces one eye to remain focused at some set distance [the screen] while the focus of the other eye shifts according to whatever the wearer is looking at, near or far. Doing this leads to severe eyestrain, which again can be harmful, especially to children."

His solution is to not use a lens, but a pinhole:

"My pinhole aremac is the reverse of a pinhole camera: It ensures that you see a sharp image through the display, no matter how you focus your eyes. This aremac is more complicated than a barrier with a pinhole, though. It requires a laser light source and a spatial light modulator, similar to what’s found inside many digital projectors. With it, you can focus both eyes normally while using one eye to look through the mediated-vision system, thus avoiding eyestrain."

[Evbn]

With a modern BIOS, your kernel can't start a fire.