Back in January, I wrote a post about empathy and technology. I pondered the possibility of technology like Google Glass and Oculus Rift to open up our experiences of the Other through shared perception. In April, Nicholas posted about the all-around failure of Google Glass to be, well, cool. Not particularly revolutionary and kind douchey when push comes to shove. Glassholes were born. Guys on the subway being creepsters. Concerns over the safety of driving while Googled. Most users behaved badly–doing all those things one would expect of tech geeks with 1500 bucks to spend on a computer for their face.
Molly Crabapple on rhizome.org wrote a compelling piece about the corporate and male gaze of Google Glass. We cannot forget the corporate gaze that follows and tracks our movements in the guise of the “smart. ” She writes, “Glass and the sleeker wearables that will follow are the next step down the path started by smartphones: they are private, trackable, monetizable distraction engines that you need never take off.”
Ms. Crabapple sketched and made art while others watched through livestream, but she felt intuitively that they watched only. What made “art art” wasn’t present.
Can we expect that seeing what others see through Glass will give us insight into what they are “really” seeing or experiencing? Will technology allow allow us to see through another’s eyes in a spiritual way, for lack of a better term? Or will Google Glass, and other future and more sophisticated products, be technological navel gazing and vapid self-obsession?
Glass is not the revolution it could have been, certainly, dear readers, but I remain ever hopeful that the future will transform into everything we dreamed of as VHS kiddies. Little Gen Xers dreaming of flying skateboards, TVs for our wrists, and weekend trips to the moon. We did get iPods. I may have to back off on my hopes for empathy and focus on something else.
With this I present another kind of wearable tech: 3D printed fabric. The BB.suit by Dutch designer Borre Akkersdijk is truly wearable, not just carry-able. There is still serious R and D to be done, but fabric of the future could be walking web access, GPS ready, and Bluetooth compatible. Your suit as a walking URL. User experience would differ with every wearer.
Alas, the prototype was quite unattractive. An ill-fitting ecru onesie. But in lieu of my iPod implanted into my arm I’ll take a wearable playlist for floating through urban space.
No hoverboard, but you can get Marty’s shoes. Thanks Nike!
Installing (Social) Order 
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when people get all worked up about the scifi future rise of the machines I tell them that the current machine age (combined with global weirding) is likely to do in what we know of nation-states and their capitalist parasites so there isn’t going to be the kind of support/infrastructure left to foster super-AI-networks, yeah i got paywalled but would like to read the review if you get a chance, thanks
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Favorite book quote: ““If we go on as we are, we will probably enter into a period of hyper-unemployment, and the attendant political and social chaos”
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We should devote some serious time to that book sometime soon. Here is a review of it: http://www.jspes.org/pdfs/winter2013/JSPES38-4bookreviews.pdf if you can’t open it, just write me and I’ll send a copy.
The original text of Lanier’s latest book is generally about the hollowing-out of the entire job market as digital work/digitization simply obliterates so much of the “work” (i.e., non-thinking labor or paper shuffling) and now more of the middle-class white-collar work. There is a section about education going on-line that is nice too. Worth the reading the review if not the entire book.
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http://www.cbc.ca/spark/blog/2014/04/27/why-is-wearable-tech-so-ugly/
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http://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html
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have you read Lanier’s new book?
http://www.jaronlanier.com/futurewebresources.html
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Pomo cyborg by Pfizer; who would have guessed psychiatric theory was more Pomo than Lyotard, Foucault, and Baudrillard put together!? (Not even bothering to include Haraway)
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heh, yeah more than trading on placebo effects…
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http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shoshanna-zuboff-dark-google-12916679.html?printPagedArticle=true
Dark Google
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Prozac is a technology, most definitely. A chemical assemblage.
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What’s more integrated than Prozac?
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can they help me to see thru my own eyes in a spiritual way? I did get to try some virt-goggles that where supposed to give me a sense of being paranoid-schizophrenic (in a grocery store) but was more like a flashback to tequila minus the aftertaste…
Not sure how enhanced life seems to be by most of these tech-toys to date and wonder if it would take something more integrated/cyborg to make a more substantial difference?
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