David McElroy

Google’s new Project Glass is going to be a very polarizing thing — if the actual product ever goes on sale. Some people are going to be thrilled to experience “augmented reality” through a pair of high-tech glasses, but some of us are already at the limits of information overload and don’t want our reality any more augmented.

If you haven’t yet seen Google’s promotional video for its new glasses, take a look at the bottom of this article. Instant reactions to it have been very mixed. Many in the geek world are salivating and ready to line up to buy them. Others are listening to experts in the field say that what Google is promising isn’t really possible. Still others wonder if they’re just plain dorky or if they’re likely to create problems. (This short parody of Google’s video paints what might be a realistic picture.) The Washington Post had a good wrap-up of other reactions.

I can tell you that I don’t want the things. I’m no Luddite. In fact, I love technology and keep up with it religiously. But augmented reality delivered through wearable glasses is something I not only don’t want, but it’s something I’ll do everything I can to stay away from. I already have information overload in my life. The last thing I need is to have more graphical information intruding into my thoughts as I walk through life.

The idea behind the glasses sounds logical. They’re supposed to be sort of like an assistant popping up useful information in front of your eyes when you need it. If you’re meeting someone, it can tell you how far away he is. If your subway station is closed, you can get a map showing how to walk somewhere else. If someone sends you a text message, it pops up and you can reply. If you see something you want a picture of, you tell the glasses to take a picture and where to share the picture (on a Google service, of course). You get the idea.

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Almost any time when governments have financial problems, many people think the obvious answer is to “tax the rich.” They believe that if government would just get those nasty rich people to pay “their fair share,” there would be plenty of money to let governments continue their spendthrift ways. It’s not true and it wouldn’t be fair to try.

I’ve been thinking about this because of a recent episode of public radio’s “This American Life” called “What Kind of Country.” (Hit the link to listen. It’s worth hearing, even though they’re coming from a position with some very mistaken assumptions, in my view.) The episode is about the continuing debate between people who want lower taxes and smaller government and people who want higher taxes and bigger government. It tries to take a look at why both sides of the mainstream want what they want.

A recurring theme in such debates is the issue of whether higher taxes is the way out of government budget woes. Some people say they would be happy to pay higher taxes in exchange for better police protection or better services of whatever kind they happen to want. But there are two issues with that. First, those people are typically happy to say they would favor higher taxes because the taxes would fall most heavily on people other than themselves. (Those with lower incomes almost always think taxes should be higher on high-income people, for instance.) Second, people who know that a tax would hit them say that they don’t trust government to get it right. Even if they’re willing to pay more, they don’t trust the people in power to spend the money wisely.

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Police in a Chicago suburb are crediting two teen-age girls with helping them arrest a man who is clearly a danger to public safety. This criminal had the audacity to offer a ride to a couple of teen-age girls who were walking home in a snowstorm with no coats.

That’s right. The “stranger danger” worry warts have scared children so much that even a reasonable offer is suspicious, so the teens called police and reported his tag number. What’s even crazier is that police and media are treating the girls as though they did the right thing and that the Good Samaritan was the troublemaker. Take a look at the lede on this story about the incident from a Chicago television station:

Two 13-year-old suburban girls are being credited with helping police catch a man who offered them a ride home.

Think about that for a second. These girls are being “credited” with helping police “catch” a man who … did what? … offered them a ride home.

There is no allegation that Rodney Peterson did anything other than offer a ride. There’s no allegation that he had any bad intent. He didn’t try to entice them into a car. He simply asked how far they had to walk and if they needed a ride. One of the girls said, “We’re OK,” and waved him on, so he left. And that — in the insane world where we live — is “disturbing the peace.”

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