Occam's Razor

Google Glass, its internet-friendly eyeware, has been making news lately. It’s the creepy device that looks sort of like glasses (for one eye) that some nerds with close ties to Google are wearing that keeps them continuously connected to the Internet. It projects information from the Internet onto the inside of the glass so they can both walk around and see internet content at the same time. It also offers voice recognition capabilities so you can interact with the Internet. The truly creepy thing is that Google Glass can also record what you see in real-time, both audio and visual.

It used to be that if you used a camera its use was overt. A camera is pretty hard to hide. With Google Glass, it couId be on all the time but because it is like wearing glasses, we may not react to it like a camera. Yes, it could be recording everything it sees and hears, and perhaps storing it to your Google cloud permanently, and possibly the NSA’s cloud as well. The City of London, where there are cameras on every street corner and most places in between, might actually want people to use Google Glass: it could be one more tool at their disposal to keep an eye on crime. Here in the United States, the whole thing sounds ultra-Big-Brotherish, kind of like the NSA on steroids. It’s not that the NSA is necessarily able to tap into Google Glass content, at least not yet. Give them time and who knows? Whether or not the NSA can tap into Google Glass feeds, the whole idea is creepy at best and repugnant at worst. I don’t like the idea of anyone having a constant video stream from Google Glass in their cloud. I am imaging its use by perverts, voyeurs, estranged lovers and criminals, among others.

Google Glass strikes me as a tool that will make our already disappearing privacy shrink even further, maybe to the point where it can no longer be found, or is simply meaningless. I don’t want dozens of people recording me walking down the street! Moreover, their eyeware is also not in the least bit cute although they are working with eyeware manufacturers to sex them up. When people wear Google Glass, I think of the Borg, the evil villains, cyborgs really, half men, half machine, introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s one thing to become part of the collective. It’s another thing to become part of it so unconsciously. It’s an Orwellian sort of technology. We’re not that good at getting rid of technology that has some uses once it is commercially available. So I am putting my hopes in the power of shame. I am hoping we will reflexively tell people sporting Google Glass: “Your eyeware is creepy. I wish you would never wear it or use it. And it upsets me that you would use it at all, knowing that it can continuously record what you are seeing!” Shame might work, or be powerful enough where it is used so rarely that it has no appreciable impact. Its true impact happens when its use becomes commonplace and accepted.

Google though racks up enormous profits, so I am not too surprised that they have a research arm looking into technologies like this. A lot of their technologies do not get out beyond the labs. That may well be the case with Google Glass. On the other hand, sometimes you can see a technology that they are working on and think, “I got to have that! Can I have it now?”

I want a Google Car.

A Google Car is completely cool and extremely useful. The Google Car, right now a dozen or so specially configured Toyota Priuses, an Audi TT and some Lexus RX450h, are driverless cars. You leave the driving to the car and it delivers you to your destination safely. Right now it is being tested in Las Vegas. The state of Nevada has actually issued a license, to a car, not a person, for its use within Nevada. With its computers, internet access and sensors, it takes you where you need to go in complete safety. Granted, there are not a whole lot of Google Cars working today, and they can be categorized as experimental. But right now they have an accident rate that would delight insurance actuaries everywhere: zero. That’s right; at least so far Google Car has proven to be completely flawless, if you measure it by its ability to cause an accident. With its radars it is always aware of traffic around you, not to mention curbs, speed bumps, potholes, traffic congestion and how to mitigate it. With reflexes far better and more accurate that the best trained racing driver, it can keep you safe getting you from Point A to Point B. Can it avoid every accident? Possibly not as it has been involved in some accidents caused when in manual mode or when it was hit by other cars. It is possible that some crazy driver will come out of left field so quickly that it cannot react quickly enough, and the driver will hit you. But (knock on wood, recalling issues with Boeing’s 787 fleet) so far at least it has not caused any accidents.

Senior citizens in particular should be rooting for Google Car, and demanding the right to buy one as soon as possible. For eventually senior citizens loose cognitive and muscular controls as they age, and this often means they lose the ability to drive safely, and the loss of freedom that comes from a loss of mobility. Yet to stay alive, they must meet with lots of physicians and need a way to get there. Maybe they can take a bus, but it’s a hassle. Maybe they can take a taxi, but it’s expensive. Get in a Google Car, and by using Google’s voice recognition system it will deliver them safely to their doctor. Safely means getting them into the parking lot and into a parking space all by itself. That’s cool technology; it’s mind-boggling stuff when you think about it.

Actuarial statistics don’t lie: if some accident is going to kill you, it is almost surely going to be when you are moving in a car. That’s because human beings drive cars, and we are obviously not perfect creatures. The only amazing thing about humans driving cars is that there are not more accidents. But, particularly if we reach the point where all vehicular driving is automated, death or injury from auto accidents may become a thing of the past, something that simply doesn’t happen except in very rare cases, like an unexpected and sudden bridge collapse.

There is another more selfish reason why I want a Google Car. I don’t like to drive. I drive out of necessity but I don’t enjoy it. I never have. It requires sustained concentration. It requires constantly juggling lots of real-time inputs by my already overtaxed brain which, even while I am driving is also sifting with lots of stuff, including issues at work, various erotic fantasies that have no chance of actualization, issues in computer science which for some reason my brain prioritizes, and my desire to have a constant source of chocolate. I’d much rather leave the driving to Google Car and concentrate on this other stuff. Or maybe I’d prefer to lie down in the back seat (in a special restraint just in case of accident) and sleep. It will be a better use of my time than the tedium of driving.

So Google, give Glass the heave ho and focus on Car instead. It’s not just what we want, but don’t know it yet, but it’s what we need. And it will save millions of lives. I’ll be first in line to buy one.