There’s no doubt about it, I’m a bit of a technophobe. I didn’t get a mobile phone until this century. I resisted sending text messages until I was pretty much forced to by peer pressure. I don’t even have an iPod.
Geordie wasn't really that smart. It was the glasses.
But I’m also a science fiction nut and fascinated by the same technology I fear to use. We all have our strange little dichotomies. I know one guy who will literally not kill a fly because, you know, they’ve got a right to live, too – yet he loves boxing. Another friend of mine fasts for a week or so once a year to clean out his system, but he continues to smoke cigarettes the whole time. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said.
So, I was pretty impressed when I saw this video today. Glasses with all sorts of smart stuff built right in. You can be walking down the street and it will recommend the nearest hot dog stand, for instance. Give you a weather report. It’s a clock. It’s a phone. It’s awesome.
It will probably be years before I ever actually get this product, if ever. I would be terribly distracted, reading everybody’s facebook updates, and get hit by a bus. You know it’s going to happen to somebody and I don’t want it to be me.
Also, as I said, I don’t even own an iPod yet. One thing at a time.
There’s one thing I’d like to say about iPods, while I’m on the subject. I spend a couple hours each working day on Prague’s public transportation system, mostly on the Metro. I see people all around me with wires in their ears and know they are inhabiting a different universe of sensory input than I am, than anybody else is. In being connected, they are being disconnected.
They are listening to music, music of their own choice, presumably music which inspires them or makes them happy, because that’s why people listen to music. So, why do they all look so fucking miserable?
I suspect it will be the same with the glasses. Merely having all the information in the world right in front of your eyes is not going to be enough to make you happy if you are not happy already.
And that’s a damned shame. Because what the world really needs is something to make people happy.
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