Don't Be A Glasshole...

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/05/feast-east-village-google-glass.html

Google Glass Users Gang Up on East Village Restaurant by Posting Really Mean Reviews
5/23/14 at 1:40 PM

Feast, which opened last March on Third Avenue with a large-format, nose-to-tail menu concept, has been plugging away with an exhaustive amount of greenmarket vegetables and various cuts of whole-roasted animals ever since. It's a small operation, but people tend to like the place. After management asked a Google Glass-wearing customer to remove the device one fateful brunch a few weeks back, however, the restaurant was hit with thirteen retaliatory one-star reviews posted in rapid succession, which of course now come up among the first results anytime someone looks up the business online.

Management tells EV Grieve it all started with a Glass-wearing customer who came in for brunch. After an earlier incident with a different patron, Feast had gotten "several comments about privacy" from customers, upon which the Glass-wearing customer consented to removing his glasses. When they approached the second Google Glass-wearing customer to remove her hardware before tucking into brunch, however, she said no, left the restaurant, then filed a short report on the situation on — of course — Google Plus, which quickly elicited several pointers on Glass etiquette in public spaces like dining rooms and private ones like restaurant bathrooms, as well as a bunch of angry comments. ("Of course I'll remove my Glass. And check please.")

This all went down less than two months after a Google Glass wearer who was attacked at a San Francisco bar boldly declared she was the victim of a "hate crime," so the Silcon Valley-esque equivalent of the old Charlton Heston-ism about how you can only get his gun when you pry it from his cold and dead hands was also in full effect, and it clearly spilled over to Feast's reviews. Here's some what the Glass contingent is saying about the restaurant they've never visited:


"They discriminate against people who are into new technology. Do not eat here."


"Ignorant bigots and hateful. Perhaps being illegally discriminate too. The food is irrelevant as the service is less than poor."


"Do not go here. They are very biased towards new technology. They allow patrons to use mobile phones to take photos or videos of other patrons. And they ask patrons to leave without fully understanding what a product does."


"Troglodytes with poor attitudes."

So, serious and somewhat hilarious stuff. But interestingly, the restaurant is clearly unhappy about the recent turn of events, but its proprietors seem to realize they may not have much of a choice on the matter, given the ineluctable nature of things like starred, online reviews, and, of course, Google itself. "It's not a policy set in stone, so it could very well change," a manager says.

[simms3]

Hmmm, New Yorkers appreciate people who wear Google Glass and defend them?  There is no larger a concentration of Google Glass wearers than in SF/Silicon Valley, and most people seem to hate them around here.

Not only is there definitely an implied etiquette that should come with the territory of Glass, but there is a time NOT to wear it either.  The lady in SF was a news reporter who focuses on Tech news.  She wore Glass to a Lower Haight dive bar on a Friday or Saturday night.  She used her job title as a pulpit and chose, by far, the wrong venue and the wrong time.  If she were a guy, I would have been highly amused at watching her (his) ass get kicked.

Glass should not be thought of any differently from a video recorder.  Everyone's phone has a recorder, but very rarely do you see anyone whip it out to record stuff, and when it happens it is usually obvious and people do seem to know when, and when not to, record.  Many parties nowadays prohibit phones altogether and security frisks and collects at the door.  Social media and public surveillance has gotten out of hand.

[BridgeTroll]

So far most of the publicized "issues" with these devices seem to revolve around restaurants and pubs.  Social media being the force for good or evil... one bad review... true or not can cause problems...

[ChriswUfGator]

I dunno, seems to me the restaurant has a right to deny service based on their opinion of etiquette as much as the weird glass people have a right to post a negative review based on their opinion of etiquette. Are we supposed to feel bad for the restaurant? Live by the sword...

(That said, I hate google glass, not because of the device, but because of the users. It is filling the same market niche as a BMW and sweater tied around your shoulders did in 1985. Innately irritating.)

[BridgeTroll]

I dunno, seems to me the restaurant has a right to deny service based on their opinion of etiquette as much as the weird glass people have a right to post a negative review based on their opinion of etiquette. Are we supposed to feel bad for the restaurant? Live by the sword...

(That said, I hate google glass, not because of the device, but because of the users. It is filling the same market niche as a BMW and sweater tied around your shoulders did in 1985. Innately irritating.)

OK... I really do not have an opinion one way or the other... just commenting on where there seems to be a conflict... or at least a publicized conflict.  Technology and public use of mini computers (phone/glass/tablet) is challenging what were common public behaviors...

[Rob68]

I dont mind the glasses I guess. For some reason I have forgone the idea have any privacy once I step out of my front door. Our world is wired. We have allowed this to happen so we have to deal with it.

[BridgeTroll]

I would agree that the notion of privacy... in public... is no longer really possible.  Human interaction in public has also changed due to the technology.  The bar/ restaurant vibe is much different now than it was just a few years ago.  There are as many interactions with devices as there are with the actual people you may be sitting with or near.  I am not classifying this change as good or bad... but it is definitely a change.

[tyrsblade]

The glasses are subpar as technological instruments go. I've owned since they only "gave" them out on twitter, mine was purchased as part of a development project  I was on. Glass is  difficult to use, it has horrid battery life, and makes a person look goofy. Too develop for their a pia.

This fad shall pass.

[BridgeTroll]

The glasses are subpar as technological instruments go. I've owned since they only "gave" them out on twitter, mine was purchased as part of a development project  I was on. Glass is  difficult to use, it has horrid battery life, and makes a person look goofy. Too develop for their a pia.

This fad shall pass.

I doubt it will pass.  Consider the current models as prototypes in a real world test environment.  No doubt the technology will get better... as will the fashion...

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/find-and-ban-glassholes-with-this-artists-google-glass-detector/

Cut Off Glassholes' Wi-Fi With This Google Glass Detector
By Andy Greenberg  6.03.14  |  2:55 pm 

Not a fan of Google Glass's ability to turn ordinary humans into invisibly recording surveillance cyborgs? Now you can create your own "glasshole-free zone."

Berlin artist Julian Oliver has written a simple program called Glasshole.sh that detects any Glass device attempting to connect to a Wi-Fi network based on a unique character string that he says he's found in the MAC addresses of Google's augmented reality headsets. Install Oliver's program on a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone mini-computer and plug it into a USB network antenna, and the gadget becomes a Google Glass detector, sniffing the local network for signs of Glass users. When it detects Glass, it uses the program Aircrack-NG to impersonate the network and send a "deauthorization" command, cutting the headset's Wi-Fi connection. It can also emit a beep to signal the Glass-wearer's presence to anyone nearby.

"To say 'I don't want to be filmed' at a restaurant, at a party, or playing with your kids is perfectly OK. But how do you do that when you don't even know if a device is recording?" Oliver tells WIRED. "This steps up the game. It's taking a jammer-like approach."

Oliver came up with the program after hearing that a fellow artist friend was disturbed by guests who showed up to his art exhibit wearing Glass. The device, after all, offered no way for the artist to know if the Glass-wearing visitors were photographing, recording, or even live-streaming his work.

Oliver's program is still a mostly-unproven demonstration, though the 40-year-old New Zealand native has successfully tested it by booting Glass off his own studio's network. More importantly, it shows how the uneasiness with Glass' social implications could play out as the device hits the mainstream. Bars in San Francisco and Seattle have already banned Glass-wearers. In January, a Glass-headed movie-goer was suspected of piracy and questioned by Homeland Security agents after wearing the device in a theater. And the inventor of a Glass-like augmented reality setup claimed to have been violently thrown out of a Paris McDonald's in 2012 based on the restaurant's no-recording policy.

A program like Glasshole.sh could make those sorts of no-Glass policies more technically enforceable, though it may have to be adapted as Glass MAC addresses shift in future versions. And Oliver argues that a Glass-booting device is legal so long as the Glasshole.sh user is the owner of the network. He sees it as no different from cell phone jammers, which have been adopted in many schools, libraries, and government buildings.

Oliver warns, though, that the same Glass-ejecting technique could be used more aggressively: He plans to create another version of Glasshole.sh in the near future that's designed to be a kind of roving Glass-disconnector, capable of knocking Glass off any network or even severing its link to the user's phone. "That moves it from a territorial statement to 'you can all go to hell.' It's a very different position, politically," he says. For that version, Oliver says he plans to warn users that the program may be more legally ill-advised, and is only to be used "in extreme circumstances."

As a long-time Berlin resident, Oliver says he sees Glass as a replay of the events surrounding Google Streetview in Germany, where private citizens protested Google's uninvited photography of their homes and places of work. He sees Glass as another case of Google violating privacy norms and asking questions later.

"These are cameras, highly surreptitious in nature, with network backup function and no external indication of recording," says Oliver. "To focus on the device is to dance past a heritage of heartfelt protest against the unconsented video documentation of our public places and spaces."