A friend outside of DIYD passed on a link to a thought-provoking post by Michael Sacasas. His observations are around people and Google Glass. However as I read this remarkable writing I thought of parallels to the fast-growing topic of civilian drones. How they make us feel, those of us who make or buy. How others feel when they are aware of a drone near them in the sky, on the ground, on the water. How they feel when they read, watch, or hear anything about drones in civilian life. When this blog post rolls off the home page, you can find it cataloged under 'UAS for other applications'.
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
A very interesting read John, thank you for referring it.
The populace doth complain too much, me thinks. ;)
I think Glass is not much more than a repackaged cell phone with internet. Even more so I think the public - I choose that word specifically - loses interest a person, place, thing, or event quickly. It is not power over people but, probably more the thinking a Glass wearer has power over others, like someone operating a flying camera is implied to have, that is the real threat.
We trade the 'Red Scare' for the 'Tech Scare'. I can see the quote changing from '...two hundred and five members of the Communist Party...' to '...two hundred and five operators of drones...'.
I am sure that someone has posited the idea that the elderly could benefit from Glass. Who would argue over the grandmother/grandfather that is lost and confused, wearing Glass and streaming images to their caretaker? 'Ah. There is where the old girl/guy is.'
Maybe this will be a return of the veiled hat? "Veil Tech - VT" (another Starwalt phrase) would be net connected, go reflective (or ultrabright flooding the camera) when it detects Glass operators or at the command of the wearer. They then would be able to report a Glass wearer location to a database and other VT users would all go reflective...if they had the group app of course.
-=Doug
This is a great read.
There are many parallels between the emergence of drones and other empowering technologies, as well as the reactions they provoke in people.
Reading Michael's article reminded me of a quote by Dr Reece Clothier in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Enquiry into drones and the regulation of air safety and privacy - "We need to step away from this idea that it is a specific piece of technology or a specific device and say, ‘Let’s protect the interests of ’ … Google Glass is a much more invasive technology that every person is going to be wearing in the next five years. So whether it is drones, Google Glass or the fact that I can collect metadata on your Facebook account and marry that up with your LinkedIn and actually track your movements, it is your personal information … it is an issue much broader than unmanned aircraft."