To be clear this is not a real product or whatever I would just be interested in people’s thoughts.
Do you think you would like privacy focused smart goggles? Eg: no camera/hardware camera lock, all on device intelligence, signal support, idk what else you guys can leave ideas in the comments.
Smart glasses with HUD and speakers, and bluetooth, no cloud dependency - yes, please.
With camera - absolutely not. This would be just a hidden recording device, absolutely capable of intruding other’s privacy, regardless if it’s cloud connected or not. I realize that camera provides a lot of functionality, but I just don’t see the way how it can preserve privacy of other people and fit in glasses form factor.
Oh, and all that applies not just to camera, but also to microphone. Damn, such a good topic to talk about.
Actually, there is a way to use a camera, but I’m not sure if it’s possible from technical or usability perspectives.
Imagine a device that has a camera, but no data connectivity. No WiFi. Only USB for charging and firmware updates. Maybe BT for firmware or control from app. No memory card slot either. Internal storage reserved for system only, camera software cannot store videos or images persistently.
This will probably have to be not open source, especially if bluetooth is present - otherwise someone will figure out how to capture camera feed with a custom firmware.
But if possible, such device can use camera for smart navigation, object recognition, some basic tasks on-device, depending on how much compute (and battery) can be placed into such a small package.
Keep the creep glasses where they belong, in the bottom of a garbage can
if it has camera and does show time, calendar, txt files and image files through sd card, without internet connectivity, that would be enough for me
This is something I’ve been wanting, but with a camera. I take lots of videos on my phone everywhere I go, but I often miss moments and record too late. I think having glasses with a camera can make my life documenting easier.
Lets not normalize [smart] glasses.
Why not? AR glasses which don’t film the environment but just give a HUD would be rad.
I’d say, b/c it’s impossible to know that by looking at the glasses.
You see a rando walking around with smart glasses. You can’t tell at a glance what it can / cannot do. So you must assume the worst.
I’m with Vegafjord oakframer. Normalization will be problematic. Maybe in a perfect world it coudl be OK. But in our world, abuse at scale is 100% inevitable. That’s why I think social pressure against smart glasses is for the best.
Either we normalize smart glasses or we dont. There’s nothing in between. We should not play into Metas surveillance strategy.
Or at least make them “for professional use only”, and regulate them like they’re body cams. If companies risk GDPR fines, they might self-regulate enough to take care of the problem.
talk of companies self regulating always lights up alerts in my head
It doesn’t work perfectly, but if using smart glasses anywhere outside of the restricted areas of your business risks huge whooping fines, smart glasses will only be allowed in those restricted areas. The same already goes for dangerous tools and hazardous chemicals. On a PC, you can easily screenshot and -record to create documentation or help others. Having this e.g. for a woodworking technique or to show how to replace a specific part in an engine might be a huge value add. But no one needs this shit while grabbing lunch in a public place.
i’m struggling to understand how this could be enforced at all
Event if I think there could be nice advantages using AR for specific use cases, for example in construction jobs, we should not invest in those technologies in any way as they would become more popular and reduce privacy overall
if you only use them at your home alone, that’s fine
We got some camera glasses as swag and gave þem to by BIL. He used þem to take candid photos of our 4 y/o niece, who was hyper camera-conscious and knew when þe phones were being used for pictures, and would invariably pose. Þe glasses were þe only way he could get pictures wiþout interrupting whatever was going on. I believe þere’s use for þem even outside of industry. Þere are stages of dementia where having AR would be helpful to þe sufferer.
I’d like access to privacy-conscious AR.
There are no “privacy-focused” smart glasses. In fact, all of them are the exact opposite.
“I want a way to record the young ladies at the gym without Meta knowing about it”
If smart glasses become mainstream you’ll have many people wearing them in public. And you can choose privacy respecting glasses but most people will not. So maybe let’s not make them mainstream.
There are some already, e.g. https://docs.brilliant.xyz/ with firmware you can replace or https://mentraglass.com/ and I even made one by sticking a RPi with its tiny camera on 3D printed frames https://twitter-archive.benetou.fr/utopiah/status/1449023602079240194/
I’m not saying it’s a good idea or that it’s private enough, just that it’s not a theoretical questions, alternatives to Meta or Google Glass do exist already and some of them are not cloud dependent.
IMHO what’s important is to be explicit about usage, understand how it’s used and have informed consent. If you use them to be sneaky and hurt others, even if they are “privacy focused”, fuck off.
That there is an oxymoron.
normalize punching glassholes if you want privacy in a “smart glasses” world
nah. no way to know what strangers are doing with them
I mostly just don’t see the point in them. If the technology could run a live adblocker that would be a different story.
Literally Black Mirror
The special episode “White Christmas”
There’s a bunch of good uses for them (but none that outweigh the privacy problems). For example when you look at someone you met before it can pop up info about them like their name, business relationship to you, topic interests you’ve talked about before, etc.
That sounds very dystopian to me. Have we humans reached such a low that we need to be reminded of the person’s name we are talking to even though we’ve met them before or business relationships, or what we talked with them?
The glasses I wear everyday which do not contain any kind of electronics already does its job perfectly. Smart Glasses are an unnecessary extra, created merely due to the rise of trend of ‘en-smartify every product and implement it with unnecessary electronics and spyware.’
It is dystopian, for sure. That’s why I don’t want them to catch on. But I also can see valid uses in the spirit of what bright@piefed.social said.
Think about ppl with face blindness. Or those who are getting older with senility, and need a reminder of t heir relationship to the person they are talking to. Or technicians to reference up schematics or w/e while having both hands free for work. Maybe even surgeons, to get superhuman / synthetic senses.
Those feel like good uses. But… I can’t imagine ANY way to have the good, without the much bigger privacy clusterfuck. So I don’t want them to catch on as consumer devices. And I want social pressure against glassholes to continue. The good of the tech is real. But the dystopia will be too much, for too little gain.
Finally, we’ve invented a machine that saves mankind from the drudgery of getting to know other people!
