The Advantages and Disadvantages of Google Glass

Pooling, Privacy, Policies, and Power: Google Glass

Google Glass is a new technology that will supposedly be finished next year. They are glasses you can wear that essentially record everything that you see. The glasses transmit this data to Google, which then shows the wearer relevant ads according to what is around them. Additionally, the glasses take pictures in five second intervals. These photos are the property of Google (Keen 2013).

Andrew Keen, a British-American author and internet entrepreneur, is strongly opposed to this technology. He states that one major issue is that, for this product as well as others, Google has not widely announced its recent changes in privacy settings that allow Google to pool our data for the sake of advertising. Additionally, Google does not offer an option in their policy for users to opt out of Google pooling the user’s information (Keen 2013).

I share Keen’s concerns and feel that Google Glass and Google’s new policies are a radical change in our already strongly technological society. Just as Keen says, I too am concerned that this is another big step towards the world of Big Brother becoming a reality. I feel that privacy is decreasing dramatically in the digital world. It already shocks me when I am on Facebook and ads pop up that are incredibly relevant and specific to me, such as ads for my work. My entire internet history is somehow being compiled to find out what I am interested or involved in, and my Facebook profile tries to suggest products for me to buy based off this information. The same is true for Youtube. I don’t have a Youtube account, but whenever I even open the website, it automatically recommends songs and videos for me based on genres of music or types of videos I commonly view. I cannot imagine how much power Google would gain over their users if Google Glass shared everything that users saw with Google.

David Lyons explains this form of power very well: “In modern societies people are increasingly watched, and their activities documented and classified with a view to creating populations that conform to social norms. The knowledge of what happens is thus intrinsically bound up with power” (Lyons 1994: 26). In the case of Google, they are watching people through the eyes of those very same people who choose to purchase and wear Google Glass. Everything that the user – and therefore Google also – sees, Google documents and uses in their pool of information and data. Google is “creating populations that conform to social norms;” they are probing to see what the average person is like; they are finding social norms. And then Google uses their knowledge of this information for their own profit, literally, by customizing their advertising, which in turn targets the very suppliers of Google’s data in the first place.

This sharing of information with Google and advertising companies is comparable to government surveillance and making our world “legible.” “State simplifications such as maps, censuses, cadastral lists, and standard units of measurement represent techniques for grasping a large and complex reality; in order for officials to be able to comprehend aspects of the ensemble, that complex reality must be reduced to schematic categories. The only way to accomplish this is to reduce an infinite array of detail to a set of categories that will facilitate summary descriptions, comparisons, and aggregation” (Scott 1998: 77). In other words, the state wants to make our society legible by reducing the people to statistics and numbers and categories. The same goes for Google with their new Glass concept. They are pooling user’s data to find common themes and target specific groups with certain advertising.

The old saying “seeing is believing” can be modified to “seeing is controlling.” Ancient Athenian slaves often lived with their masters and were the primary witnesses in court cases, because they were in the closest proximity and saw the majority of their masters’ actions (Locke 111). A similar case is the story of Harriette Wilson, a nineteenth-century courtesan, or prostitute for the wealthy, who slept with “several hundred of the most important members of the British aristocracy, and blackmailed almost all of them, including the Prince of Wales, the Lord Chancellor, and four future prime ministers.” She published her diary, which was blackmail that included the names of everyone she slept with who didn’t pay her an exclusion fee (Locke 2010: 114). Just imagine the power available to anyone who read this information – Wilson’s lovers’ positions could be threatened, or their marriages, as everyone found out about their actions. Similarly, in modern America, political candidates must be extremely cautious of everything they say and do in public, because it is immediately released as common knowledge, and anyone who finds it out through technology has the power and ability to vote against the candidate.

How does this all relate to Google Glass? Well, imagine the power Google may obtain if they receive pictures of everything Glass users see. What if Google threatens to blackmail a cheating spouse? Or assists a student in cheating in school? Hopefully Google wouldn’t go so far as to cross these ethical boundaries, but if it generates large amounts of profit, it may be a tempting idea. At the very least, it is a fact that Glass will reduce the amount of personal privacy. In some situations this may be good – perhaps Google will be able to assist in tracking criminals. Regardless of the outcome, it is obvious that Google will be diminishing personal privacy if their policy does not change.