4 ms·

I agree with everything you said. What it comes down to, however, is your last sentence. Who decides what is and what isn't "respecting the reasonable wishes of

by csallen 13y ago

I agree with everything you said. What it comes down to, however, is your last sentence. Who decides what is and what isn't "respecting the reasonable wishes of others"? Who decides what constitutes "good manners"? What's reasonable in one decade may be unreasonable the next. The bad manners of the last generation are common place acts today. That's the nature of change. And it doesn't happen by itself: it happens because there are people actively pushing against the boundaries set by the status quo. Of course not everyone will agree with this. For every boundary-pusher, I'd expect there to be at least 10 or 20 people who have to be dragged along kicking and screaming about how in their day, it was considered rude to [wage war with guns|fornicate|use phones in public|wear a recording device]. At what point do we dismiss these people as mere curmudgeons, holding onto the past for the sake of the past, and at what point do we take them seriously and put on the brakes? I'm sure a thoroughly enlightened answer would have many complexities... but I'd say it's generally safe to let society itself decide. Just because the boundaries are being pushed doesn't mean society has to follow. If tiny wearable computers and recording devices aren't useful enough to be worth the affronts to privacy and intimacy (and fashion, in the case of Glass), then none of this stuff will last. The thing is, the answer to how all of this will end is blindingly obvious. Assuming technology continues to improve, then CLEARLY people will find it useful to turn themselves into walking computers/phones/cameras. Yes, society as we know it will change as a result, but it's been doing that since the dawn of time.

Silhouette 13y ago
The thing is, the answer to how all of this will end is blindingly obvious. Assuming technology continues to improve, then CLEARLY people will find it useful to turn themselves into walking computers/phones/cameras. Yes, society as we know it will change as a result, but it's been doing that since the dawn of time. Sorry, but I still don't buy the inevitability argument here. You are considering only the potential upsides of new technology. If there weren't potential downsides with serious adverse consequences as well, there wouldn't be so many of us who are concerned about things like the erosion of privacy. The difficulty with this particular issue is that it is hard to predict exactly what the adverse effects might be, because we've never had the technology to surveil and record the general population on this scale before, but by the time we know, it may be too late to do anything about it if the answer is a very bad one. Sure, society might eventually evolve to forgive youthful indiscretions while conducting job interviews, and to avoid insurance-based systems where the insurers have a clear interest in not dealing with anyone who is actually likely to make a claim, and to understand that the former pop star who's been on the BBC News home page in recent days because he has the same legal name as another musician who just got sent down for decades for committing some very nasty crimes is not the same person even if his picture was shown alongside the relevant headline by Google. However, right now, none of those things is even close to true, and having privacy that allows people to segment their lives and share different parts with different other people is how we deal with that problem. Even if we do eventually reach that level of maturity as a society, which is far from certain in itself, it will surely take several generations to get there. So no, I don't think the outcome here is blindingly obvious at all. People might find it useful to have permanent recordings of their own lives and anything they encounter in it, but this cuts both ways, and they might find the disadvantages of having anyone else being able to just look them up far outweighed the benefits of being able to (legally and socially acceptably) use always-on, covert recording devices themselves.

by csallen 13y ago

Silhouette 13y ago

The thing is, the answer to how all of this will end is blindingly obvious. Assuming technology continues to improve, then CLEARLY people will find it useful to turn themselves into walking computers/phones/cameras. Yes, society as we know it will change as a result, but it's been doing that since the dawn of time. Sorry, but I still don't buy the inevitability argument here. You are considering only the potential upsides of new technology. If there weren't potential downsides with serious adverse consequences as well, there wouldn't be so many of us who are concerned about things like the erosion of privacy. The difficulty with this particular issue is that it is hard to predict exactly what the adverse effects might be, because we've never had the technology to surveil and record the general population on this scale before, but by the time we know, it may be too late to do anything about it if the answer is a very bad one. Sure, society might eventually evolve to forgive youthful indiscretions while conducting job interviews, and to avoid insurance-based systems where the insurers have a clear interest in not dealing with anyone who is actually likely to make a claim, and to understand that the former pop star who's been on the BBC News home page in recent days because he has the same legal name as another musician who just got sent down for decades for committing some very nasty crimes is not the same person even if his picture was shown alongside the relevant headline by Google. However, right now, none of those things is even close to true, and having privacy that allows people to segment their lives and share different parts with different other people is how we deal with that problem. Even if we do eventually reach that level of maturity as a society, which is far from certain in itself, it will surely take several generations to get there. So no, I don't think the outcome here is blindingly obvious at all. People might find it useful to have permanent recordings of their own lives and anything they encounter in it, but this cuts both ways, and they might find the disadvantages of having anyone else being able to just look them up far outweighed the benefits of being able to (legally and socially acceptably) use always-on, covert recording devices themselves.