Thursday, April 5, 2012

Finally, social media for your face!

I used to be really psyched about our inevitable evolution into cyborgs, but this kind of killed it for me. They're called Google glasses or something and they're easily the stupidest invention ever. Here, Google released a video, which you should totally watch. It's a grim foreshadowing of things to come!
"Your biological and technological distinctiveness shall be added 
to our own. You will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
-From the Google Project Glass press release

No, for real, my friend's cousin
who lives in California has one.
Fortunately, it's not so much a demonstration of the real thing, but a proof-of-concept. Which is kind of weird because it means they're sort of advertising something that hasn't been invented yet. It would be like saying Back to the Future 2 was a proof-of-concept for hoverboards. Anyway, from what I can tell the Google glasses are sort of like a smart-phone for your face. You control the interface verbally or with eye movements, but I'm not sure how you do the latter without looking like you're having a seizure.


It's just like Facebook, except you
have to start all over again. Enjoy!
The video highlights the social aspect of the glasses, probably because there's nothing like strapping a computer to your head to make you feel less like a human being. And I get that. Like almost everyone else on the planet I use the Facebook. It's alright. It's a convenient way to keep in touch with, and say Happy Birthday to, people I don't really like enough to call on the phone. But that said, I don't think I want to be on it all the time and I sure as hell don't want to be on Google's knock-off Facebook, Google+.


If I ever met this hipster-douche in real
life, I'd smack him in the ironic mustache.
Also, there's something really creepy about how hyper-dependent the dude in the video is. I mean, he can't get through his day without the glasses chirping in his ears all the time. "The subway's closed? Oh shit, better go back to my lonely one-bedroom and wait for death. What's that, glasses? I can just walk the two blocks? Wow, thanks disembodied voice!" And then when he gets to the bookstore, he can't be bothered to browse around but instead asks his robo-butler to guide him to the Ukulele section. God, I hate this guy. I've never met him and we don't even see him in the video, but I hate him.

Of course you could also try not
playing the ukulele for your girlfriend.
Just a thought.
I don't usually jump to the defense of warm-squishy humans over the cold and efficient forward march of technological progress, but the Google-brand future presented in this video makes me yearn for the days of rotary telephones and polio. Imagine you're the guy from the video and you dropped your precious Google glasses. How would you know when to meet Paul at the Strand? Or how to serenade your girlfriend with your new-found ukulele skills? You wouldn't, that's how. You'd just be trapped helpless in your gorgeous $2000 a month New York apartment, cut off from the hive mind, paralyzed with Google withdrawal.

Withdrawal symptoms may include headache, nausea and recurring night-terrors
about those terrible things you did while jacked into the machine.

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