Life Via The Google Glass
We have serious doubts on Google Inc. To us it seems one of the most ‘evil’ tech companies out there. The company that started from a garage back in 1998 and also boasts of an informal motto ‘Don’t Be Evil’, is pacing with each passing second to know more about you. By accessing your whereabouts and formal documentation work, the company is a rising threat for those who like to have a little bit of privacy in today’s ‘Social World’.
The Sacred G Glass!
The Google Glass, if successful, it will be the first major breakthrough of technological advancements that the human race has seen which will inch us close to the concept of ‘Singularity’. The glass will also be a step closer toward the surreal dream of ubiquitous computing, which stresses on the concept of having uninterrupted access to the Internet at all times and at any given place, that said without interrupting the tasks at hand.
Essentially, Google Glass is a camera, display, touchpad, battery and microphone built into spectacle frames so that you can perch a display in your field of vision, film, take pictures, search and translate on the go.
The speculated marvel uses technology that places relevant data a user is searching for in front of their eyes, aided by a prism screen. According to Google the display is "the equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away".
The embedded camera simply records your first person perspective, allowing you to take snaps or footage of what you are actually seeing – all on the fly. How you control the data is at your disposal – with a microphone and touchpad on one arm of the frame, you can select what you want to do with a brief gesture or by talking to the device, and Google Glass will interpret your commands.
Life Logging
With ubiquitous computing comes uninterrupted real time access to the internet, which in turn keeps you virtually clinging to the worldly events. With Facebook terming your daily events in a stacked up notion called ‘Timeline’, your daily, monthly and yearly activities got decked up in one horizontal beam, essentially making it your digital autobiography of sorts. With the G Glass, there is bound to be similar stacking up of events, moments, clicks and checks in which will get decked up in the virtual cloud. Google will like to term this ‘Life Logging’ – the ability to compile a detailed audio visual record of one’s daily life.
The Hazard: Much more like ‘Timeline’, ‘Life Logging’ will keep a track of your daily movements and activities, albeit with visual and audio recording. This could mean, that Google will have straight up access to your private lives, your psychographics and other intimate information – which Google, if it into the real red horn devil, can trade off for various informations, or even blackmail you against your own interests.
The Good
Intuitive
Unobtrusive Display
Multiple Uses
The Bad
Tied to external data source
Expensive
Will function smoothly with constant updates
The Ugly
Looks funny
Impractical for eyeglass
Potential for privacy violation (Nobody will get to know you are taking their picture)
Google Glass Specifications?
As per the rumors the Google Glass will sport a mooted 640 x 360 display with a 5 mega pixel built-in camera, that can film at 720p. Battery life will be at par with your standard smartphones i.e. although that's with the usual "typical use" caveat, which probably excludes a lot of video surfing or recording. The internal storage is packed up with 16 GB flash memory with only 12 GB accessible for user storage.
The device will sync to your Google Drive in the cloud. Bluetooth and WiFi will be built in, but no GPS chip - so the Glass will probably work best alongside an Android phone (read Evil Tech Company), although you can pair with any Bluetooth enabled phone.
The frame will come with replaceable and adjustable nose pads, and is expected to be both lightweight and extremely robust. It will also have a touchpad along one arm. The sound will be produced through bone conduction transfer - vibrating your skull to transmit to your ears. There is a Micro USB cable and charger for the dev versions, and all of the above specs are expected to be replicated in the consumer versions when they arrive.
Lastly, Google Glass will come in five colours: Charcoal (Black), Tangerine (Orange), Shale (Grey), Cotton (White) and Sky (Blue).
The Dishonest Gadget Gets Quashed
Months before it is unveiled before the humans, the glass has already managed to raise questions against its privacy infiltrations and other hazards. The glass has already managed to get banned from the following places:
Cinemas: Nobody wants to get spied sitting on the corner seats with their partners or while dozing off in a ridiculed movie
Bars: We are sure, we do not want to give more justification to this point as bars are the only place where people indulge the most in drinking and mingling
Casino: Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner! We could have our own rags to riches story, only if we were allowed with this glass inside a casino
Driving: Imagine that you are pulling your new beemer around the corner and spot a gorgeous woman, who literally manages to pull your breath away, and you want to capture her best smile as to go find her on Facebook. And voila, you just rammed your new car, earned three tickets from the police, can’t claim anything from insurance as you want the hefty no claim bonus and so on. Such is life, sigh!
Hospitals: Hospitals house all kinds of sensitive patient data, thus a breach would definitely disrupt the normal functioning of a medical center.
Restaurants: You would definitely not want to be spied upon while hogging incessantly, or would you?
Concert Venues: These venues are the biggest avenues for drug trafficking, which makes concert organisers ban these glasses as they don’t want troubles from the Narcotics Dept.
Banks and ATMs: Needless to point out but the device could help potential thieves snap photos of your bank card
Parks: Parks departments across the USA are just itching for the chance to call a ban on Google Glass, as they find walking around with these glasses on the most invasive of all extracurricular activities.
UAE has strictly banned any products that can be used to take pictures or videos of any without consent of the other party and a Google Glass user can easily bypass that requirement and can record everything they see, resulting in a serious invasion of privacy.
Legendary Las Vegas Casino, Caesar's Palace, has confirmed patrons will be forbidden from wearing the innovative headgear inside its walls.
The 5 Point Cafe, a Seattle dive bar, banned Glass in a very successful publicity stunt that was reported globally. Apart from the publicity, the bar owner,
West Virginia legislators tried to make it illegal to use Glass while driving, similar to their passage of a texting law. During the next session most likely they will get to a law about wearing Google Glass while driving.
5 Things That Make Google Evil
Every time you do a search on Google.com it directly relates the typed keywords against your email accounts. That could be well above trespassing your privacy line.
Every Gmail account holder, by default, is a valid member of Google’s social flop show Google Plus. Though it is one of the fastest growing social networks, yet we are sure that at least your parents would give it a miss unlike Facebook.
If you have an Android phone, you are probably contracted in without even a choice to leave – which means Google has direct access to your whereabouts as well, thanks to the GPS.
As opposed to their 2005 peak, Google’s web searches are more ambiguous and rather paid for, which means you are more likely to visit a paid for, non authentic content.
If rumors are to be believed then Google Street View cars surreptitiously collecting private internet communications — including emails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, and postings on websites and social networks.
From the June 2013 issue of FHM India.
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