[angersock]

How awful.

What exactly is the purpose of being here if all you are doing is somewhat stochastically deciding between a few sterile choices presented to you by a computer? Why bother interacting with people who's life experience is basically just ads and the most agreeable-seeming things they elected to participate in from their preferred social network?

How utterly fucking boring.

It's enough to make me want to live in a cabin in the woods with nothing but a 28.8 and some old Irix box to keep me and my dogs company. >:(

[Blahah]

What? That's the opposite of what I take from the story (although the author was clearly intending it as dystopian). The Glass in the story is not removing options, it's adding them. It's just layering information over the real world to provide a deeper, not shallower, experience. Why do people feel that the boundaries of their limited un-enhanced experience are somehow desirable?

[angersock]

It's layering information which may or may not be correct, and given people's natural laziness of decision it only increases the odds of filter bubbling--that is not a deeper experience.

All you are doing is being empowered to ignore things which don't match your advertising profile most closely, being empowered to ignore things outside your comfort zone (in 10 years, I'm sure this will be popular with the yuppies in SF who would like to even more easily ignore the homeless refugees of gentrification).

A basic part of the human experience--of being a complete person--is learning how to interact with other people who may or may not be easy to get along with, and exploring new things and perspectives on life. Nowhere in this vignette is there a suggestion that the Glass will help you learn to interact with other people (because it is set to minimize the presentation of those you aren't predisposed to get along with) or encounter new things (that aren't carefully cultivated by the big data engines).

Let's not even go into the privacy concerns here (because clearly nobody gives a chrome-plated fuck about that anymore), or the unfortunate, darker sides to this.

[Blahah]

Well, all the information we ever use may or not be correct. We use it nevertheless and accept a certain false positive rate. It probably does increase filter bubbling, but that is generally something people accept. One can expose oneself to different viewpoints quite readily, and that's a personal choice people can make.

I think that statement about getting along with difficult people being a basic part of the human experience doesn't have to be true. It just happens to be part of the human experience now. And in any case, while the story didn't offer any glimpse of Glass helping you to encounter new things or learn to interact with other people, there's no reason why it couldn't.

[AndrewKemendo]

>What exactly is the purpose of being here if all you are doing is somewhat stochastically deciding between a few sterile choices presented to you by a computer?

As though you aren't stochastically deciding between a few sterile choices presented to you by your chain of previous deterministic actions

[swombat]

I think that's why the author calls it a dystopia.