The argument I took away from this article isn't that we should be afraid that Google is working on some all seeing eye that could be used for evil, but that Glass represents a large step in the erosion of our privacy.
Bit by bit for years we've been uploading our personal information into the public domain. If I tell Facebook I'm a married man who is in to prostitutes and Graph Search exposes it to the world[1], I've erroded my own privacy unwittingly.
If I walk out of a brothel and someone catches me with their Google Glass, now they've eroded my privacy. At first it seems like a small step, no one has Google Glass, what are the odds of me being exposed? But time marches on and technology becomes ubiquitous (especially technology as legitimately useful as Glass). New technology comes along and builds on top of the old and it wears away at our privacy, a little at a time.
I'm sure the married men on Facebook who put they are in to prostitutes did it under the pretence that it would just be shown to whoever they are friends with. Suddenly Graph Search comes along and they're exposed. Apply the same model to Google Glass, and you end up with something like what the author is talking about.
Comments
The argument I took away from this article isn't that we should be afraid that Google is working on some all seeing eye that could be used for evil, but that Glass represents a large step in the erosion of our privacy.
Bit by bit for years we've been uploading our personal information into the public domain. If I tell Facebook I'm a married man who is in to prostitutes and Graph Search exposes it to the world[1], I've erroded my own privacy unwittingly.
If I walk out of a brothel and someone catches me with their Google Glass, now they've eroded my privacy. At first it seems like a small step, no one has Google Glass, what are the odds of me being exposed? But time marches on and technology becomes ubiquitous (especially technology as legitimately useful as Glass). New technology comes along and builds on top of the old and it wears away at our privacy, a little at a time.
I'm sure the married men on Facebook who put they are in to prostitutes did it under the pretence that it would just be shown to whoever they are friends with. Suddenly Graph Search comes along and they're exposed. Apply the same model to Google Glass, and you end up with something like what the author is talking about.
[1] http://actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com/