Why do you think the technology will stay at a certain point for “generations?” Surely with the advancing pace of technology, the situation will get much worse (or much better) far more quickly than that.

It’s not suspicious to want privacy – but it is suspicious to want to violate someones’ privacy.

Talk therapy uses personal dialog to find the various times when we could be thinking and responding instead of simply reacting emotionally based on old inefficient decisions made in childhood and still used.

Most of these and normal behavior is unconscious in nature because we are experts at it and the behavior is automated, and very quick. These characteristics make the behavior unconscious, or pre-conscious. Slowing the behavior so it can be analyzed and possibly replaced with conscious thinking can improve a persons effectiveness with current thinking rather than old automated reactions.

Our world models are made up of beliefs. Updating them can improve life experiences. Many of them do not correspond to existence. All change begins with awareness.

The google glasses would be a boon for this situation.

Personal Electronic Surveillance Stopping Thingy (PESST)
“Worn around the neck like a pendant, PESST creates an invisible, harmless electromagnetic field around the user. The signal is weak enough to safely use one’s personal devices, yet it effectively disrupts, blocks, or de-focuses any kind of visual or auditory surveillance in the public sphere.”

Actually I have no idea what I’m talking about, but that sounds about right.

In realityland, a device that disrupts facial recognition software, whilst incurring great cost to one’s dignity (they’re goggles, basically), is being developed in Japan. Covered here: Japanese Technology from the Future Friday – http://goo.gl/hdyhu

-Reno at Anthrobotic.com

“…It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak — ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”

Yep. I know plenty of people who have literally never switched off their smartphones and feel extremely uncomfortable if the smartphone is even out of their grasp. I doubt most people would switch this off once it was turned on.

Of course, as I said, there is another side to all this, and the full story hasn’t been written yet….as Gaopitmize said, and I said for that matter, people are going to have really no choice but to assume other people have them on as time goes on, and live like that…and I feel, for many many people, it’s going to make things very uncomfortable.

In general, it comes from a dislike of the social media world that we are increasingly living in, which puts alot of pressure on the people who simply don’t like it….I personally don’t own a Facebook, or have any interest right now to do so, though I defended such things in the past. I said before that I feel we are moving away from authoritarian governments with this tech, away from Big Brother scenarios…but could one argue that, in a sense, we the people are making one ourselves? One where everyone and everything is outsourced to the Internet for all to see, and we have to live like that? Is that really the world we want to live in?

I suppose what I’m talking about is Privacy and civil rights now…for all the good that could come from tech like this, as I’ve tried to explain before, it still raises alot of questions for people in the first world anyway….I mean, take the image at the top of the page for instance…would you really want that to be you? That some random stranger could look up your personal information just like that, summarily? I personally don’t have a Facebook or any kind of social media account….but if the information aggregated comes from, say, Google….then a random stranger could probably easily create a pretty good profile of me from all the information I’ve searched, things I’ve looked at etc…and now this perfect stranger essentially “knows” me, and could even judge me….this person I’ve never even met!

Now, someone could say that I’m being ridiculous; that our world is inherently a social media world, the Internet is one giant social network, that anybody could look up information like that at any time and so on…while all of this essentially true, their is a practicality to this that merits the things I’m saying. I no longer have to take time to find out everything I ‘need’ to know about someone – Google automatically does the research for me and brings it up the moment I spot the person.

I’ve gone into some of the reasons why AR glasses and the increasing social-networking world we live in is, more then not, a good thing….so what does that say for the rest? the downsides? That they are things simply to rationalize away? “necessary evils”? Perhaps they ARE, in fact…but even so, I feel it takes time to really reflect and sink in just what we are saying, and what kind of world we are moving toward….I’m not trying to say, nor ever was, that we’re heading toward a perfect world, nor ever really did even with further ideas on the future….but the point is, for all the excitement, we need to dig deeper past face-value to really understand in our minds just where we are headed.

One thing that I often hear lamented, especially by people older then me, is that America has become a land of overreactors….gone are the days where a kid can be free to go out on his own and play, and be trusted to come home for supper safe and sound….we live in a day of “helicopter moms”, where kids could have all sorts of tracking devices on them, where elementary school kids even have cellphones for goodness sake (though I imagine that’s mostly just a generational thing, since I got my first cellphone very late compared to my peers)….

AR glasses, I fear, will only exacerbate this environment…..this fearful environment where everyone needs to outsource essentially everything they do – where they must record everyone and everything they do…..where Trust will only be further and further diminish because it’s been rendered obsolete – I have to know where and what my kids are doing at all times, I have to know who this person is to know if they are “worthy” of me (Oh, he looked up this-and-that on Google? So not interested!), I have to have my collection of internet acquaintances whom I never actually meet because I trust them vastly more then I trust the people around me.

Silly? Arbitrary? Ridiculous? Perhaps….but it’s something worth thinking about, I feel; I feel we already live in a time, increasingly, where if you aren’t in the forefront…if you don’t have a dozen social media accounts and aren’t outsourcing everything and so on…you’re a nobody, you’re an alien…as times go by, maybe even a stupid conservative Luddite. I’m not sure any of those labels really deserve merit….I’ve personally made a big defense of Facebook on this website, despite not having one, nor do I think you deserve to be called a Luddite simply because you aren’t crazy for the “always on, everything online” direction we’re moving toward. Maybe I’m not as happy as I could be, but that’s for me to decide….It all makes me think to Kurzweil’s 2099 chapter in “Spiritual Machines”…..how Molly, circa 2099, is “ready to do anything and be anything you want or need” (at least to Kurzweil 1999′s eyes)…..and yet she loves the idea of genuinely having 15 minutes of privacy. For all her power and capability, she lacks a simplicity and freedom (ironically) that simply will never happen for her, because she always is watching over someone and the same for her.

Is that really what we want for ourselves? To live in a world where we are more empowered and capable, and in doing so, we rationalize away some of the simplest joys we could have? Bill Mckibbon said that we must ‘use these technological powers with great discretion. Past a certain point, we’re losing some ineffable quality that gives life meaning.’. Kurzweil responded that their is no reason to rationalize and celebrate our limitations…..and he’s right, but that still merits deeper thinking and reflection on just what world we are exactly building for ourselves….and if it’s actually what we’ve cracked it up to be.

I’m curious what others have to say on all this.

In the movie Wall Street the abuse of fiduciary trust is referred to as moral hazard. I like the term and it’s applicable to this article. The supervision of google glass needs to be supervised. Who will watch the watchmen? How does one ensure that it’s not abused? Oh it’s a sticky wicket. I think I’ll stay a MOSH, though I’ll choose to augment certain things.

Hurst mentions contact lenses which everyone following this issue has thought about years ago. Eventually it will be taken past the point of contacts. This is going to happen. Since we can say it IS going to happen, it has ALREADY happened in a sliding time reference sense. We just haven’t caught up to the moment yet. Since it has already happened, this IS the human condition. We are now in an embryonic or foetal stage.

Hurst may as well get his head ’round this idea. I don’t see how you could stop it. Don’t see why you’d want to. The music and film industry as well as governments are going to be completely powerless against this. They would have to suppress technological research itself in every single country that was capable of it. Not going to happen.

Personally, I am with Davd Brin- it would be better that we lose some personal privacy but gain the ability to record every single moment of a politician or policeman’s activities and hold them accountable for ‘gaps in the feed’. As for stalkers, killers etc, some bright bulb will simply have to sit down and invent software that tracks those who are tracking you.

And you definitely wouldn’t want to commit a crime if there was anyone about. News coverage will be revolutionized. Big screen actors will be supplanted by skilled ‘live performers’- imagine what David Blaine could do in a world that was a constant flux of ‘real’ and ‘overlaid’.

He is correct on one item- we probably do need to discuss the issue. Although I doubt any amount of discussion will stop Google Glass (or similar product) or keep people from using it this way.

It’s where we’ve always been headed.