I, for One, Welcome Our Google Glass-Wearing Cyborg Overlords

You may have noticed the Google Glass backlash is well underway. Once we were thrilled by the promise of the eye-level connected screen and camera technology; once we poked satirical fun at it. But no more. Now, it seems, we've reached the stage of being threatened by it.

One dive bar in Seattle banned customers from wearing Glass; given that no consumers and few developers have their hands on the tech yet, and Google HQ is 700 miles to the south, this was a little like your local doctor's office banning human cloning. Still, the bar got plenty of media attention; no doubt other establishments have taken note.

An online campaign called "Stop the Cyborgs" is offering Google Glass ban signs for free download, as well as stickers and T-shirts. And of course the snarky commentariat is out in force, declaring that anyone who would dare wear the device to be a "glasshole" or worse.

All in all, it's an uncomfortable time to proclaim what Eddie Izzard dubbed "technojoy" about the prospect of a whole new category of gadget.

Heaven forbid that here, in the 2010s, jetpack-less and flying car-free, we might actually gain an item of personal gear that looks the teensiest bit futuristic.

But fear not, fellow cyborg-lovers. This fear of a Glass planet is not really anything new. It's an impulse that crops up throughout history, a storm that is just as likely to blow itself out as its predecessors — only much faster.

We've Been Here Before

There's no need to reach back to the ultraviolent Luddites to explain what's going on here. Nobody is proposing that we smash all headsets or that Glass is the work of the devil. No, this is more akin to the puzzlement, laughter and reactionary response to any new style that stands out in public, from long hair and bell bottoms to the wearing of a Sony Walkman.

Strange as it seems now, it was once a courageous act to wear headphones in public. First came the single earpiece for AM radios, then the stereo headset. Both helped drown out the loud tut-tutting from observers who saw them as unnecessary sense augmentation.

Owning a PC in the early 1980s meant you ran the risk of being dubbed a computer yourself, as dumb as that sounds. I remember using one of the first color Apple laptops, the Powerbook 5300, in a Manhattan cafe in 1996; over at the next table, a group of hipsters started derisively humming the theme from Mission Impossible, in which the then-futuristic laptop featured.

Want to bet how many of them are using Macbooks in cafes today?

In 2003, I boarded a Lufthansa flight with an iPod — which so befuddled the stewardess with its lack of an on-off switch that she had to take it to the cockpit and confer with the captain. These days, the only noticeable thing about an iPod is how outmoded it is.

And if you're still not convinced that Glass or something like it will one day be the norm, consider the most obnoxious addition to daily life in the last two decades: the cellphone.

If we can get used to people walking down the street raising their voices into a handheld device, or a small glob of plastic in their ears, we will certainly get used to people wearing glasses with a strange little attachment on one side.

When it comes to the invasiveness of technology, Glass is far less cyborg-like than a Bluetooth-enabled device you stick in your ear canal — and we passed the point where that blended into everyday life about a decade ago.

Smile, You're On Google Glass

So what about the main complaint of the Stop the Cyborgs campaign: Glass' ability to record video?

Again, we've been here before. Video-recording smartphones were enormously controversial in the early 2000s. Privacy advocates would wring their hands about how tiny and unobtrusive the cameras were, and how you couldn't tell if they were recording or not. There wasn't even a red light! For a while, major clubs and music venues would demand you turn them in at the door.

Then they became ubiquitous. Once we all had them, suddenly, nobody cared.

What can you do with Google Glass, privacy-wise, that you can't do with a smartphone? Record someone without their knowledge? Okay, let's say you're some evil privacy-invading creep standing at a bus stop, and you want to record the person next to you just for the hell of it. You don't need to be so obvious as to hold the phone in your hand. Hit record and put the device in your breast pocket, stuffed with a handkerchief so the camera pokes out the top. Keep your torso towards your target, but look away. Spy mission complete.

Now imagine doing the same thing with Google Glass. Immediately, you're faced with one major problem: you have to maintain constant eye contact with your target. Creep alert! And you can't issue the voice command to start recording, so you'll have to do some pretty obvious swiping of the side-mounted touchpad. You may want to move your eyes to the side, but the lure of that screen hovering in your vision will be too strong.

All in all, you're going to have more tells than a shifty Vegas gambler.

Ultimately, as with the camera-bearing devices we all carry in our pockets, it's all about trust. Trust that the majority of society is basically decent. Trust that you and everyone around you is watching out for each other, and that millions of years of evolution have given us an instinct for suspicious behavior that no amount of technology can mask.

Besides, here's one thing we've learned thus far from a smartphone-filled society: it's much more interesting to enter our own private world than to invade the privacy of each others'.

Image courtesy Google