Google Glass: we'll all need etiquette lessons - What happens when we can all record everything, asks Matt
Warman
By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor3:31PM BST 24
Apr 2013
Do you mind if I record you reading this article? Would
you mind if I record you every time you read an article? The chances are, if
you’re reading this on screen, I could quite easily. It’s likely there’s a
webcam in your PC or laptop or mobile phone that could track what you’re doing,
and maybe in due course I could change the adverts depending on how high your
eyebrows arch. Digital etiquette, however, makes such invasive technology
impossible. Hackers, however, do it all the time.
That vision of constant surveillance is the one raised by
Google Glass, nonetheless. The wearable computer that Google hopes we will all
be wearing like glasses comprises a tiny camera, a microphone and a screen. Our
every sight will be augmented with extra information, and everything recorded.
It’s likely, of course, that regulators will want a word
with Google before this device goes on general sale, and it’s unlikely that
Google would try to justify recording everything itself. But some fearful bars
have already banned customers from wearing Glass, before they’re even out. As
Google’s Eric Schmidt put it, “We'll have to develop some new social etiquette.
It's obviously not appropriate to wear these glasses in
situations where recording is not correct.” And indeed you have this problem
already with phones. Companies like Google have a very important responsibility
to keep your information safe but you have a responsibility as well which is to
understand what you're doing, how you're doing it, and behave appropriately and
also keep everything up to date.”
Schmidt glosses over more substantial issues with that
word “etiquette”, but he’s clearly also correct: when is the right time to
record information, or to learn more about a person you can see? It would be
disconcerting to pluck from the air, mid conversation, a nugget from an interlocutor’s
LinkedIn profile.
There are practical concerns, too: Google Glass during a
pub quiz would be cheating. Google Glass at your local swimming pool would be
somewhere between impertinent and illegal. But what about at work, where some
might think that such technology keeps employees on their best behaviour? Or
out on the street where maps might help? Let's not even consider a public
toilet.
In truth, we are already under surveillance a lot more
than we notice, by CCTV, by people casually recording things on their mobiles
anyway, by software used in the workplace that logs when you’re at your
computer. But none of these is quite the same: when should we take our Glasses
off?
For now, there are two things to consider: Britons are
often too polite to ask anyone to stop doing something anyway. When did you
last sit on a bus and hear a request for an iPod to be turned down because it’s
deafening half the back row?
But actually, and more important, Glass is an
unimaginable future: it uses a technology that will only become more discrete,
invisible almost. And it exists currently in the rarefied atmosphere of Silicon
Valley. Like mobile phones, it’s likely that it will, eventually, become
ubiquitous. As things stand, businesses, couples, friends, clubs, shops and
pubs would all probably not be comfortable with that. Our attitude to
personalised constant surveillance will emerge on the hoof – at a gallop.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10015697/Google-Glass-well-all-need-etiquette-lessons.html'
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