There have already been a large number of reported incidents of confrontation and even assault between wearers of Google Glass and members of the public not using a wearable device. Sadly I think this is a vision of the future outside of the geek bubble the early adopters of Google Glass inhabit. And to be honest, I’m not in the slightest bit surprised. What passes for acceptable behaviour in a relatively narrow community of tech evangelists on the West Coast of the US is not the same as what passes for acceptability in general public life. There are millions of people for whom smartphones are a bit of a stretch and the notion that you could just wander around public spaces, surreptitiously taking camera and video footage of other people seems wildly optimistic.
There are so many privacy concerns raised by wearable tech that companies like Google haven’t even come close to addressing. Once, and if, these products become broadly available, I can’t see how we avoid hundreds if not thousands of public disorder and minor assault incidents every day. These would be triggered by Glass owners giving people in their vicinity a reason to think they were being recorded or watched without permission.
I don’t think I’m being a Luddite, I’m enough of a geek myself, nor overly pessimistic about how the general public is likely to view wearers of Glass technology. Until last month, I was awaiting some kind of announcement from Apple in this field so I could extend my iPhone and iPad ecosystem. So far the jury seems out on the Apple Watch but at least no one wearing the watch is likely to create a lot of concern (unless they walk around like David Beckham in a TAG Heuer advert!) But the Glass conflicts between tech evangelists and a suspicious public seem to be a blindingly obvious consequence of allowing people to record their surroundings almost invisibly. In the future, it won’t just be the Travis Bickle’s asking ‘Are you looking at me?’, it will be everyone.
We may share vast amounts of personal information online through social media and other platforms. But there is a vast difference between voluntarily uploading a video, or agreeing via informed consent to Facebook and Google using our content for promotional purposes, and being secretly filmed or recorded at all times by people whose motivation for doing so is completely unknown. I find that scenario quite appalling if I am honest. In my opinion, Glass and others similar to it will fail or be regulated out of viable existence unless these concerns are addressed.