Photograph © Riley Brandt/University of Calgary A Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, Thomas P. Keenan is a frequent contributor to CBC Radio and Television. He writes a men's health column for the Postmedia newspaper chain and is National Technology Correspondent for Business Edge News Magazine. At the University of Calgary, he is Professor of Environmental Design and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science.

Image Creep

I saw Google Glass before it was even a twinkle in Eric Schmidt's eye.

As a technology writer and reviewer, I was sent demo versions of all sorts of products, including some that never made it to market. In the mid 1980s, a package arrived with one of the first heads up television displays aimed at the consumer market. It was set of glasses with a tiny monitor and a prism that allowed you to watch TV while still participating in normal life.

The device, now consigned to the tech dustbin, did give me one moment of profound technocreepiness. I was testing it one night in my university office, using it to watch Sixty Minutes. The cleaning lady came in to empty the trash. I will never forget what happened next. I saw a chimera—an elderly lady's body with Mike Wallace's head grafted on top. I screamed. She screamed. It seemed like a dumb way to watch TV, so I sent the thing back and wrote a lukewarm review: it was also extremely uncomfortable to wear.

The introduction of Google Glass has brought this type of technology literally to the public's eye. All of sudden, people are walking around with a device that enhances their ability to grab information out of the ether. Google Glass wearers can potentially recognize your face as they shake your hand, and then casually glance upwards to retrieve your kid's names and birthdays.

But what really alarms many is that Google Glass can also secretly take a picture, or record a video, and immediately upload it to the Internet, just by the wink of an eye or the raising of an eyebrow. Google Glass does have a light to indicate when it is taking a photo or recording video. People promptly found ways to subvert it.

Chris Barrett, one of earliest users of Google Glass, said he was having trouble using the device in bright sunlight. So he designed a clip-on sunshade, a piece of plastic that can be run off on a 3D printer. He has even made the code for it freely available online. In addition to blocking the sun, Barrett’s creation happens to cover that pesky light that tells others you are recording them.

Barrett loves wearing his high tech eyewear in places it is not supposed to go. He has reportedly filmed inside an Atlantic City casino and, in a stroke of luck, apparently became the first person to record an arrest with Google Glass. This little documentary was quickly posted to YouTube.

Dozens of innocent bystanders, some of them children, appear in that video, and many are facing the camera. Coupled with massive facial image databanks, and advances in facial recognition software, they could probably be identified. A bizarre new social rule is emerging: if you are really trying to protect your privacy, you should stay away from arrests, car accidents, riots, and landmarks — anything that people are likely to photograph. Perhaps you should not go out at all.

The camera function of Google Glass and similar devices is really a giant social experiment to re-define where photography is acceptable and what behaviors will get you called a creepy “glasshole,” a cheeky term that even Google has started using. Even in a public place, where photos are generally fair game, people have reported being very disturbed by strangers taking their photos; especially pictures of their children.

….Internet Rule 34 (“If it exists, there’s porn of it”) strikes here with vengeance. Soon after Google Glass became available, the “first Google Glass porn” appeared online at the adult app store mikandi.com. Their inaugural offering features a cameo appearance by Ron Jeremy, holder of the Guinness Book of World Records title for “Most Appearances in Adult Films.” Now a senior citizen, he keeps all his clothes on in this short piece of point-of-view pornography. A censored version is available on YouTube.

There seem to be no limits to human stupidity when it comes to posting inappropriate images online. People have distributed photos of themselves in an unbuttoned airline stewardess uniform (Ellen Simonetti, the “Queen of the Sky” blogger who flew for Delta airlines) and taking a bath in the sink at Burger King (Timothy Tackett). Both were fired from their jobs, though they went on to other careers, propelled no doubt by the notoriety from their online misadventures.

Simonetti and Tackett are consenting adults, but things are quite different when children are involved. Often they seem either unaware of, or unconcerned about the risks of releasing questionable comments and images into the Wild West of cyberspace. In a CNN report called “The secret life of my sixth grader,” a mother creeps herself out by spying on the texts and Instagram photos of her eleven-year old son, who, she notes, “has never let on that he is remotely interested in girls.” The content of his messages and photographs soon convinces her otherwise. “Maybe it’s the digital photo-filters,” she muses, “but the girls seem sexy beyond their years.”

Photograph © Riley Brandt/University of Calgary A Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, Thomas P. Keenan is a frequent contributor to CBC Radio and Television. He writes a men's health column for the Postmedia newspaper chain and is National Technology Correspondent for Business Edge News Magazine. At the University of Calgary, he is Professor of Environmental Design and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science.

Image Creep

I saw Google Glass before it was even a twinkle in Eric Schmidt's eye.

As a technology writer and reviewer, I was sent demo versions of all sorts of products, including some that never made it to market. In the mid 1980s, a package arrived with one of the first heads up television displays aimed at the consumer market. It was set of glasses with a tiny monitor and a prism that allowed you to watch TV while still participating in normal life.

The device, now consigned to the tech dustbin, did give me one moment of profound technocreepiness. I was testing it one night in my university office, using it to watch Sixty Minutes. The cleaning lady came in to empty the trash. I will never forget what happened next. I saw a chimera—an elderly lady's body with Mike Wallace's head grafted on top. I screamed. She screamed. It seemed like a dumb way to watch TV, so I sent the thing back and wrote a lukewarm review: it was also extremely uncomfortable to wear.

The introduction of Google Glass has brought this type of technology literally to the public's eye. All of sudden, people are walking around with a device that enhances their ability to grab information out of the ether. Google Glass wearers can potentially recognize your face as they shake your hand, and then casually glance upwards to retrieve your kid's names and birthdays.

But what really alarms many is that Google Glass can also secretly take a picture, or record a video, and immediately upload it to the Internet, just by the wink of an eye or the raising of an eyebrow. Google Glass does have a light to indicate when it is taking a photo or recording video. People promptly found ways to subvert it.

Chris Barrett, one of earliest users of Google Glass, said he was having trouble using the device in bright sunlight. So he designed a clip-on sunshade, a piece of plastic that can be run off on a 3D printer. He has even made the code for it freely available online. In addition to blocking the sun, Barrett’s creation happens to cover that pesky light that tells others you are recording them.

Barrett loves wearing his high tech eyewear in places it is not supposed to go. He has reportedly filmed inside an Atlantic City casino and, in a stroke of luck, apparently became the first person to record an arrest with Google Glass. This little documentary was quickly posted to YouTube.

Dozens of innocent bystanders, some of them children, appear in that video, and many are facing the camera. Coupled with massive facial image databanks, and advances in facial recognition software, they could probably be identified. A bizarre new social rule is emerging: if you are really trying to protect your privacy, you should stay away from arrests, car accidents, riots, and landmarks — anything that people are likely to photograph. Perhaps you should not go out at all.

The camera function of Google Glass and similar devices is really a giant social experiment to re-define where photography is acceptable and what behaviors will get you called a creepy “glasshole,” a cheeky term that even Google has started using. Even in a public place, where photos are generally fair game, people have reported being very disturbed by strangers taking their photos; especially pictures of their children.

….Internet Rule 34 (“If it exists, there’s porn of it”) strikes here with vengeance. Soon after Google Glass became available, the “first Google Glass porn” appeared online at the adult app store mikandi.com. Their inaugural offering features a cameo appearance by Ron Jeremy, holder of the Guinness Book of World Records title for “Most Appearances in Adult Films.” Now a senior citizen, he keeps all his clothes on in this short piece of point-of-view pornography. A censored version is available on YouTube.

There seem to be no limits to human stupidity when it comes to posting inappropriate images online. People have distributed photos of themselves in an unbuttoned airline stewardess uniform (Ellen Simonetti, the “Queen of the Sky” blogger who flew for Delta airlines) and taking a bath in the sink at Burger King (Timothy Tackett). Both were fired from their jobs, though they went on to other careers, propelled no doubt by the notoriety from their online misadventures.

Simonetti and Tackett are consenting adults, but things are quite different when children are involved. Often they seem either unaware of, or unconcerned about the risks of releasing questionable comments and images into the Wild West of cyberspace. In a CNN report called “The secret life of my sixth grader,” a mother creeps herself out by spying on the texts and Instagram photos of her eleven-year old son, who, she notes, “has never let on that he is remotely interested in girls.” The content of his messages and photographs soon convinces her otherwise. “Maybe it’s the digital photo-filters,” she muses, “but the girls seem sexy beyond their years.”