I’ve been looking at smart glasses again. Doing so forces me into an existential conversation about privacy, freedom, etc. Nowadays everything has a camera and or mic. Everything can listen to you. Some things can see you. Consider the beach cam phenomena. We spend a good deal of time in San Diego and there are beach cams everywhere pointed towards the shore. It isn’t obtrusive like, say, London, but there is that constant sense of knowing you are being observed. I plan to tackle that in the next novel (with hints about the state of observation in this novel). We are going to the beach in Spain and there are cameras there as well. I can sit in my home and see how the wind is blowing and how the waves look lapping against the shore. Now can people see me seeing? Can people see me out there? All of these questions point to a level of global connectivity that says we are all linked and observed…
But who controls that data?
The best smart glasses (outside of the submersive apple gear that I won’t wear) are a product of meta. Moreover, the data includes video and audio and I have no way of knowing what is being shared with the company itself. This makes me feel strange inside, but it also is entirely the digital future I expected. I went into this smart glasses search because I fell in love with the overpriced apple system as a result of falling in love with the clunkier Meta Oculus center. The Ray-bans are not exactly an evolution of this (no visual AR) but they are pointing down the road of where things are going.
So, more and more we will be recorded. More and more we will lose the ability to remain private and off the grid. How do I feel about it? Well, we have all been trained to love the camera. We take pictures of ourselves and store them in the cloud or hand them to others to develop. Where is the privacy in any of that. It feels like I’ve been conditioned for exactly what is coming. Therefore accepting it is the likely response.
As a writer I do have a way to protest. I will be doing exactly that in this and the following text. Who knows, maybe that protest will become my practice.
Some Thoughts:
- I am 117 comments into the 600+ on the novel I need to work through. I found a good one!
- Some of them are very useful in terms of helping me clarify information and write better passages/dialogue.
- I was thinking last night that I might want to take a turn at screenplay writing again. Feels like a moment to be had.