I miss being a spectacle

I’ve been living without Google Glass for a week now and I miss it.

Could I continue to live without Glass? Sure, but I also don’t want to and thankfully I won’t have to. The replacement process is well underway and a new unit is en route to my home. I’m told it will arrive in just a few days, so that’s good news. Working with Google on this problem has been a mixture of ups and downs, but mostly a positive experience overall. Once I actually have my new Glass and am up and running correctly again, I’ll do a post about the replacement process.

In the meantime, here are some thoughts on why I miss being a fully equipped Google Glass Explorer:

There’s no easier way to…

I’ve been keeping a list of things I would have normally done on Glass because they are just easier than on my phone, not that it’s all that difficult to begin with. But text messages/Google Hangouts, turn-by-turn navigation, taking pictures, checking the weather, keeping up with flight info while traveling and Google searches are just simpler and faster on Glass. They also are available to me hands-free and heads-up. In the case of messaging and navigation, that is incredibly important while driving. (I don’t text and drive, which means I am pulling over more during my travels to check text messages if my phone starts going off a lot, which has been known to happen.)

Also, when you own a Jeep Wrangler and like to drive without a top and doors, having a quick way to double-check the weather while driving around through a heads-up device is faster and safer than if you have to use your phone.

I admit I’m a distracted walker…

I find myself looking down a lot more, and that means looking away from my surroundings. That makes me a “distracted walker,” and also means I’m missing out on what’s going on around me. Sure, I could put my phone down and walk somewhere before seeking out information. But so could you, and how many of you really do that? It’s just not realistic anymore. When I have Glass on, I am looking through the information I need, not at it.

I’m really an introvert…

People who meet me in real life often think I’m an outspoken, nutty person who can be loud and is not afraid of interacting with anyone. I also do a lot of presentations, some to large audiences, which freaks some people out but gives me an adrenalin rush. But I’d rather talk to a room full of 100 strangers than talk face-to-face with one or two of them. That’s because even though I’m outgoing and can project well in front of a crowd, I’m really an introvert who is terrible at small talk and will often retreat into my phone or some other device to avoid talking to people.

Here I am with some MSU Spartan football players. They wanted to meet me because I was wearing Glass.

But if you are a Google Glass Explorer, you cannot be a shrinking violet. People will stare, people will talk about you and people will talk to you. And, honestly, I do sort of miss the interactions driven by Google Glass. If nothing else, it gives me a nearly endless supply of content to feed any small-talk conversation. And it’s a great catalyst for someone you’ve never met to strike up a conversation, which often means they get to learn about Google Glass and I get to learn about some aspects of their life I never knew I would be interested in until I heard about it. Cell phones and social media are, in many ways, making us less social. Google Glass is restoring interaction among people, not just feeding interaction between machines.

I’m finally OK with giving up my privacy…

I am still a very private person in many ways, often fueled by my current job, which opens me up to vulgar personal attacks from time to time. And while many ridiculous tech articles would have you believe that Google Glass is the end of privacy as we know it, they actually have it all backwards. Google Glass isn’t a threat to your privacy unless you are wearing Google Glass.

As I mentioned above, being a Glass Explorer means being willing and able to have conversations with complete strangers. There is no such thing as a personal space barrier when people decide they want to learn about Glass. They are going to talk to you whether you want to or have time to or not. I have to admit, there have been a few outings where I have left Glass at home because I simply didn’t want to be an ambassador that day. Those moments are few and far between, probably because I’m finally OK with being a Google Glass Explorer first and a private person who values his “me time” second.

And that’s not all…

I’m certain there are many more ways not having Glass has impacted my life, but I made a point of only jotting down the things that I kept bumping into regularly. Other Explorers may have a completely different list of what they missed when they had to wait for a Glass replacement, which is a more common occurrence than it should be but I suppose that comes with being a beta tester.

So I am anxiously awaiting my new Glass to arrive. I just hope it doesn’t show up when I’m not home to sign for it!

Advertisement

Facebook has never violated my privacy as much as Phonebook

The world is awash in the hysterical gnashing of teeth this morning as the BBC reports that a man apparently wasted time compiling a database of the “private information” of 100 million Facebook users and then posted it online. The news media is all over this in the “We don’t really know what happened but it sounds scary so let’s make it the lead” method of modern journalism.

But all this guy really did was gather data that was already available publicly to anyone looking for it! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again and again: if you don’t want something about your life published online, then do not publish it there! The guy says he deliberately did not mine for data that contained home addresses or phone numbers. Like that’s a big deal anyway. Has anyone ever heard of a little thing called the phonebook?

How come we’ve never seen this story:

Millions of Home Addresses and Phone Numbers Published for the World to See

By Ima Reporter

A high-ranking source at AT&T has confirmed that millions of home addresses and phone numbers have been published and distributed across the country. There are reportedly thousands of versions of something being referred to as “Phonebook.” The information contained within each Phonebook is apparently limited to a geographic region. It appears customers of AT&T were required to provide this information when they signed up for service. Customers were then told their data would be published unless they paid AT&T a fee to keep it private.

Congressional hearings are expected to be be called within the next few days and executives from AT&T are expected to answer some tough questions about invasion of privacy for their customers.

“Many of these folks needed a phone only for emergencies but now they have had to deal with calls from people they don’t even know trying to sell them products and services. It’s a travesty and we cannot let this continue,” said Congressman Eineed Votes.

###

(Photo courtesy of Let Ideas Compete’s Flickr photostream.)