Google’s new glasses: Geeky dream or just more information overload?

By David McElroy · April 6, 2012

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.

When I’m walking around through life, I don’t want a computer deciding when to interrupt my field of vision to tell me something else. I already have access to all of the information and services that this new thing is supposed to provide, but it stays in my pocket. It comes out when I want to see it, but it stays safely tucked away when I’m not interested or when I’m busy doing other things. I decide when I want it. The Google concept seems to be very, very intrusive to me.

And that’s the core of why I react so strongly against this. It’s intrusive and it doesn’t give me access to anything I don’t already have access to.

We’re said to live in the Information Age, but I frequently wonder if we’re not floating in so much context-less information that it’s not doing us any good. This flood of information isn’t helping us to understand people, ideas or ourselves. It’s not giving us new insight about the world.

As much as I love technology, I’m feeling uneasy when I realize how this information technology is rewiring our brains and robbing many of us of the insight that makes life worthwhile. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the hardware and software that are making themselves so much a part of our lives, but I fear that some very smart people see the trees very well, but they don’t have much conception that a forest is even there.

I don’t want to give up my technology. Anybody who’s been around me much knows that I’m constantly connected to the online world through my MacBook Air, my iPhone and my iPad. So I don’t want us to give up technology or connectedness. I guess I just feel that it’s already intrusive enough — and maybe it’s time to stop and spend some time disconnecting a bit. Maybe we need more insight and a bit less new information.

If you want augmented reality, be my guest. It’s not a direction I intend to go. I strongly suspect it will end up being a geek fantasy that never delivers on the promises of its promoters. Even if it does, though, I don’t want it.

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I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

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