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How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind 154

An anonymous reader writes "An article at CNET discusses Google's ever-expanding role in search, and where it's heading over the next several years. The author argues it's becoming less of a discrete tool and more an integrated extension of our own minds. He rattles off a list of pie-in-the-sky functions Google could perform, which would have sounded ridiculous a decade ago. But in 2012.. not so much. Quoting: 'Think of Google diagnosing your daughter's illness early based on where she's been, how alert she is, and her skin's temperature, then driving your car to school to bring her home while you're at work. Or Google translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you're riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme. Google, in essence, becomes a part of you. Imagine Google playing a customized audio commentary based on what you look at while on a tourist trip and then sharing photo highlights with your friends as you go. Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you're no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.'"
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How Google Is Becoming an Extension of Your Mind

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  • by arth1 ( 260657 )

    How many times a day does the average man think about sex again?
    When looking at women, wearing Google glasses?

    • When looking at women who are wearing Google glasses? Or is the looker wearing the glasses and looking at women?
    • Re:Ehrm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcgrew ( 92797 ) * on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @09:43AM (#40673689) Homepage Journal

      A computer (and google) are like a shovel. A shovel is an extension to your hand, Google is an extension of your mind.

      It's a tool. We've had tools for thousands of years.

      • Re:Ehrm (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Atryn ( 528846 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:27AM (#40674915) Homepage

        A computer (and google) are like a shovel. A shovel is an extension to your hand, Google is an extension of your mind.

        It's a tool. We've had tools for thousands of years.

        That's a terrible analogy. Using the shovel does not impact the next person who uses "the" shovel or "a" shovel.

        It would make more sense to say that we are becoming an extension of Google's mind than the other way around. Everything you do with Google has the potential to influence Google's perception of the world, access to information (not just data because we ADD relevant context) and value to other users.

        If the shovel told you where to dig based on what it had learned from the thousands of other people who had recently dug using it, that would be a closer analogy.

        • Re:Ehrm (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:34AM (#40675011)

          And, like people who rely on Google directions, you shove that spade through a gas line and go up in a ball of fire.

          Don't rely on tools to think for you.

        • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          Google is a tool for communication. It's no different than the inventions of writing, the printing press, the telephone, photography, recorded sound, movies, radio, and TV. It enhanses our ability to think and communicate, just as a shovel enhanses our ability to dig.

      • Re:Ehrm (Score:4, Funny)

        by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:58AM (#40675345)

        And both are known to move a lot of shit.

    • Re:Ehrm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ciderbrew ( 1860166 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @11:05AM (#40674691)
      That does raise the point of what those things record.
      You're in a park and a some mother lets a toddler run around naked in the fountain.Your going past and on hearing the child have fun and laughing it catches your attention and you turn and look - takes a few seconds for you to find the source and BAM! ... ... You've record the naked child and it's live uploaded to the cloud. So you're a distributor of that content too.
      When I'm in the park and have my own kid with me, I never know where to look when other people do let there kid run around naked. Men in the west have been made mental by the media with worry of accusations of being a peado.
    • by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Will it offer a high-power computing option, to enhance the picture, allowing you to see what's computed to be under her clothes? Or is the X-ray specs from the back of decades of comics still out of reach?

                      mark

      • by arth1 ( 260657 )

        Will it offer a high-power computing option, to enhance the picture, allowing you to see what's computed to be under her clothes? Or is the X-ray specs from the back of decades of comics still out of reach?

        More likely you'll be able to purchase access to what web sites she visits and what she has purchased.

        So... This blonde lass bought pink toilet covers and pregnancy tests three weeks ago, posts on cat forums, and has been googling "maternity and stds".
        While the one over there bought a high performance air filter for a straight six and three dozen flavoured condoms, posts on X10 project sites, and has searched for "amicable divorce".
        Hmmm...

        Seems sensible to me!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's a nice thought, but I don't agree. Particularly when he says he can't read long articles. I'm the opposite, when I'm procrastinating on the web and Slashdot/Reddit/Hackernews throws up an interesting article I'll read it to the end. Often it'll be a very long piece, but if I get interested, I'll keep reading. I can still read long books, but I've always struggled with boring texts even before the internet. Unless I'm hooked within the first two or three chapters, which is about as far as I can for

      • by Phrogman ( 80473 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @09:20AM (#40673417)

        However, the *quality* of the information returned from a search is often questionable. So many of the "facts" presented on the web are really biased opinion these days and usually presented in a rather shallow format it seems.
        Good highly detailed information is still mostly found in books I think. I don't see much replacing it on the internet except as shallow treatments of a subject.
        You can get the summary of relevant information really quickly, get the gist of a subject effectively, but to get really good detailed knowledge of some specific subject - thats why I have a library at home and the public library or university library available elsewhere in the city (granted the data there is often dated by contrast).

    • by azalin ( 67640 )
      Not exactly stupid. Humans are just very lazy and while having a lot of knowledge does have it's pros it used to take a lot of work. This time is no longer invested to the same degree, because it seems no longer necessary. This is not entirely a good thing, but also quite understandable. On the other hand many great inventions originated from the concept of using the least amount effort necessary to get work done.
    • by SAN66 ( 998917 )

      The answer is always no.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines [wikipedia.org]

    • by eieken ( 635333 )
      I actually did a report for school based on the premise that Google is in-fact, making us forget things. Here it is: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3E3Q9cUhtU2RUZSOG5EemdzeGs [google.com]
  • by Sqreater ( 895148 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:22AM (#40672249)
    In time, we will come to love Colossus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel) [wikipedia.org]
  • by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:22AM (#40672253)

    Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.

    The least of which would be facial recognition and connections to people's public information - a nightmare for privacy/anonymity.

    On the less evil side, analytical tools for first responders - air sniffer that scans for various substances and then can issue warnings tend alerts, echo-location type devices that will help map out a disaster site and pinpoint where human type noises are coming from. Real-time traffic re-routing to get people out of the way, etc. and so on.

    The next 25 years are going to be fascinating in the evolution of gadgetry.

    • Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.

      The least of which would be facial recognition and connections to people's public information - a nightmare for privacy/anonymity.

      If Google does it, the system will only identify people who have opted in for facial recognition. This is exactly how it's been implemented on Google+, and it seems like the ideal balance between utility and privacy.

      On the less evil side, analytical tools for first responders - air sniffer that scans for various substances and then can issue warnings tend alerts, echo-location type devices that will help map out a disaster site and pinpoint where human type noises are coming from. Real-time traffic re-routing to get people out of the way, etc. and so on.

      The next 25 years are going to be fascinating in the evolution of gadgetry.

      Indeed they are. The combination of distributed sensors, always-on data links and massive centralized processing power is going to change our world in dramatic ways. It can clearly be used for great good or great evil... it's going to be on all of us to keep a careful watch on the trends and

      • by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @10:07AM (#40673953)

        Google might only do it for people who opt in, but I could easily see Facebook going the other way, given how they behave, or other groups finding ways to use it.

        Right now, with google image search/search by image you can do some interesting things - the tech will only get better, and I can quite easily imagine that by the time this kind of thing really takes off it will only be easier to have software on these things that is home grown and doesn't give a whit about privacy options people picked.

        I've long been one who feels that privacy, as we usually mean it, is dead, and has been replaced to some extent by anonymity. I live in Chicago and am probably on hundreds of video cameras every day - some for the police, some private - but nobody really cares enough to dig through that footage and figure ut what I'm up to. But eventually, when cameras are even more ubiquitous and are even more tied into networks, and we have even better tools for searching, I can really easily imagine a scenario where it's possible for anyone to put together an idea of where one has been and what one has done without much effort.

        The nightmare scenario with these would be enabled in part because when you are in physical proximity to a person you could watch them, get the system to give you whatever information there is available about them (and information it thinks might be theirs, with an estimate of the match) and basically make stalking trivial and safe for the stalker. Or you could have a system to search through the sea of imagery out there looking for someone who doesn't want to be found by you (say a domestic abuse survivor being sought by her abuser...)

        I think there will be solutions to problems, but it would require a cultural shift to valuing privacy more and to putting more protectins in place for citizens rather than the current system we seem to have where companies are basically allowed to own the digital you in exchange for your using their services. It will be interesting times for sure.

    • by Atryn ( 528846 )

      Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.

      Read Daemon [amazon.com] and Freedom [amazon.com] by Daniel Suarez for some of the best use of this technology I have seen in recent fiction. Noting, of course, that Google was credited on the project (along with others)...

      This page [thedaemon.com] also discusses the technology used in the books.

      This page [longnow.org] and this page [rklau.com] are examples of the sort of dia

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:25AM (#40672271) Journal
    When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks. Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills. The with ever acclerating speed GPS killed our map reading abilities and PDAs and smartphones eroded our memory by taking over address lists and phone numbers. I could see eventually being connected to all the stored information of mankind all the time, and being able to store individual experiences cheaply will allow us to outsource most of our brain functions. But brain is not a factory where the released capacity will be put to some other use. Brain and muscle atrophy without usage. What we don't use, we lose, we don't redeploy.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:29AM (#40672301)

      Indeed, proof of this is the fact that ever since man stopped hunting dinosaurs, civilisation has been on a steep decline!

    • by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:33AM (#40672343)
      Except for people still need to use critical thinking, really the only truly useful brain function. The problem is schools don't teach it, schools focus on teaching just the "facts" which are pretty much worthless since even today any fact you might want to know is just a Google query away.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:37AM (#40672373)

      Nonsense. The brain has a huge degree of plasticity. If you have a stroke, fresh neural pathways will form and route around the damage. If you don't learn how to read an analog clock, the neurons will be used for something else instead. The idea that not being able to read a map is a form of brain damage is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read on here.

      It's analogous to developer frameworks (bear with me). Because developers can leverage stuff other devs have built, it frees them up to concentrate on higher order functions. THAT is what GPS, google search etc does for us. You should applaud it, it's what we've been doing the entire time we've been on this planet - building and building and building on layers of others knowledge and technology.

      • The idea that not being able to read a map is a form of brain damage is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read on here.

        It can be. There are various different types of brain damage which will screw with the interpretation of visual data. A fairly common one is when there's a problem in the hemispheres communicating, it can lead to a situation where a person can easily draw an object they're looking at, but can't recognise it as, say, a wine glass. Or where they can look at a building and recogn

    • by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:50AM (#40672519)

      "Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills."

      Really? Perhaps you're simply aware that most people don't do math very well and having calculators around has made this more visible. People who are math inclined often do the numbers faster than it takes to even reach for a calculator never mind punch in the digits. Most people were never like that. Astonished me when I found out.

      • As someone almost like that, if it's likely I can do it quicker in my head, the calculator is just time used confirming the answer, just cause someone is using a calculator don't assume they aren't doing arithmetic too.
    • When was the last time you read a sundial or navigated by the position of the stars - both a mostly lost art.

      • That would be before stars faded into the city glare.
      • Navigating without electronic aids is still taught as a basic part of maritime training, in bushcraft and military training too.

        I think the article is a bit heavy on the hyperbole, Google and the entire internet is a tool that can be used just like any tool. I've internalised it as much as I've internalised my keyboard or toaster.

        • I've internalised it as much as I've internalised my keyboard or toaster.

          I haven't RTFA of course but in my experience it's a little different for more complex tasks. I find I remember where to find things, and/or how to find things, instead of remembering things. Typing or toasting bread are lower level tasks than that.

          It's like not memorising phone numbers, I store them in my phone instead of in my head. I used to know people's numbers off by heart, now I don't ever bother learning them except for one or two key people. I don't feel the loss of this, I still have the abili

      • Actually, I've read sundials fairly regularly - If I have a compass but not a watch, or vice versa, knowing how to read a sundial allows you to approximately determine either the direction you're travelling or time of day based on the shadow of any convenient tree. I would have made use of stellar navigation just last night if there had been less light pollution - I'd gotten slightly lost, and was basing my turns on my estimates of which direction I was facing. Had I seen either of the Dippers, I'd have bee

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      > When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks.

      Good riddance. The method was an artifact of an archaic technology. Our way of denoting time is also archaic and at some point in the future, might also be considered for revision, in order to harmonize it with other types of measurement.

      > Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.

      Arithmetic is a means to an end, not an end in itself. During this time, our math curriculum has also become more advanced

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.

        Arithmetic is a means to an end, not an end in itself. During this time, our math curriculum has also become more advanced than it was from before when there were no calculators. As a society, we have a greater statistical sense than ever before (and need to further improve, a lot more). As a side note, look up "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart.

        Basic arithmetic is NOT a means to an end. It's actually required to live day to day life. After all,

        • by jma05 ( 897351 )
          Fair enough. *Very basic* arithmetic (coarsely dealing with 1-3 digit numbers) is not just a means. But I am not convinced that calculators destroyed those elementary skills.

          If a person neither wants to do mental arithmetic nor wants to pull out a calculator, it just means that he is either plain lazy or simply trusts that the incidence of errors to be small enough that an occasional error does not merit review every time. And don't forget that the same technology that gave us calculators also gave us ba
    • I don't agree with that at all. My kids probably couldn't identify what local plants they can eat and which ones they should avoid (a skill that was arguably of tantamount importance to our ancestors) but then again, our ancestors that depended on those skills to live probably weren't spending much of their time doing Calculus and discussing world politics, either.

      Ignoring the fact that everyone I know is fully capable of reading an analog clock, over 30 years after the first digital clocks were hitting th

      • I just thought of a perfect, real world example I ran into a couple years ago when attempting to get a tune-up on my mid-80's Buick daily driver (it was a rust-bucket beast, but the winters here in Wisconsin are harsh and it handled great in the snow)...I had a ton of trouble finding someone that could even do a tune-up on it. Why? Because it was a carbureted engine, and in this era of fuel injection, it's a skill that hardly anyone except for hobbyists uses anymore. I was incredulous, but according to s

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      It was all good, for me.

      When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks.

      My kids didn't. I still have an analog clock on the wall (they're grown now).

      Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.

      If that's true, is a black mark on teachers, not the calculators. I was never any good at rote memorization, and we didn't have calculators back then. So I bought a slide rule to keep from having to learn multiplication tables. Why would one need to memorize tables whe

    • My watch is dual digital/analogue, I can read a map, GPS only gives the coordinates one is at in longitude/latitude which is not useful for an ordinance survey map in the UK. And I do arithmetic in my head as well as on the calculator. Oh, and finally I'm part of the generation that grew up with this technology, I do use it all, I can do all mentioned both the old way or with the new high tech gadgets. The advantage of the new gadgets is I can do them all at once or offload some of the work and let my brain
    • When the digital clocks came, our children slowly lost the ability to read analog clocks.

      Have you ever met a real kid? They can read analog clocks just fine.

      Then ubiquitous calculators eroded arithmetic skills.

      There is no evidence this is true. Math and thinking skills have been improving [wikipedia.com] for decades.

      The with ever acclerating speed GPS killed our map reading abilities

      I know several women^Wpeople who would never use a map because it was too difficult to orient and figure out where they are. But by using a GPS, which automatically orients and shows their position, they have become more comfortable using maps and thinking in two dimensions. So GPS has increased their map reading abilities by giving them a shallo

  • by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:38AM (#40672375) Journal
    I use IXQuick for quite some time now. Google not only tried to be my brain, but my room mate, blind helper dog ("Did you mean ..."), stalker, mother and a lot more I never asked for.
  • How google has made a generation forget how to use book indices. How Calculators mean the mental arithmetic is disappearing from the average person. Hope that extra mind space isn't just used to remember brand names and apps!
  • Would be great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by p0p0 ( 1841106 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:39AM (#40672387)
    I would love to live in a world where we are integrated with our devices like some futuristic sci-fi story. Where we remove our hands from the wheel and the car takes over, or it automatically taxis us home when we're drunk.

    I just don't think I could put that amount of trust into any corporation. With the massive amount of password leaks lately and just the general track records of greedy corporations, they would need a HUGE incentive to get me on board.

    For instance, if they were transparent with their security protocols, showed that they followed them, and held themselves to a much higher standard then just the bare minimum that most corporations seem to.
    Even Google which has been a pretty great company has begun it's decline and is losing it's grasp of the "Don't Be Evil" slogan. I guess they are getting to big for their own good and probably won't change their path (eg. the removal of the option to remove their tracking data on your google account, the almost forced use of G+, and the discontinuation of Google Labs).
    • Where we remove our hands from the wheel and the car takes over, or it automatically taxis us home when we're drunk. I just don't think I could put that amount of trust into any corporation. With the massive amount of password leaks lately and just the general track records of greedy corporations, they would need a HUGE incentive to get me on board.

      So instead you trust the bank with all your money? The one with the online automatic payment system with only a password between the general public and your finances?

      Ask yourself who would be nefarious with your auto-auto. What incentives THEM to go fuck with you? Sure, there are simply psychopaths who want to watch the world burn, but they're pretty rare and usually get caught after the first time. Maybe the radical offshoot of Mothers Against Automated Drunk Driving, but really, what are their chances?

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by arcsimm ( 1084173 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:41AM (#40672405)
    So if somebody steals my Google Glasses, will they then proceed to run around town shouting that they're Manfred Macx, while I wander around in a functionally retarded state?
  • One step away.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:41AM (#40672407)

    Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.

    Or to the secret service when you are criticising the government. Or to the RIAA when you make an open invitation to come and watch a video at your house (an unlicensed public performance).

  • Advertisements on slashdot aren't supposed to terrify me, Google.
  • that the butler controls the master

    the advisor controls the king

    the henchman controls the boss

    when power and control flip between superior and underling, the power inversion is based on who has the most information, and who can therefore use control of information as a means of control, period

    and google has all the information

    "How Your Mind Is Becoming an Extension of Google" is the real story

  • Imagine... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hackula ( 2596247 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:48AM (#40672491)
    Imagine a tool that cuts paper called scissors. You now have scissor hands. You are a monster! Imagine walking on stilts. You now have 6 foot peg legs. The horror! Imagine using a pen. You spew ink everywhere! You are a God Damned SQUID!!!
    Cmon, is this a joke? Just because you have a tool, does not mean that said tool is a part of you. Let's just turn down the Kurt Vonnegut vision for a minute and cool off.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:50AM (#40672523)

    Imagine that the government is curious about your activities of late. At the press of a button, Google transmits everything you've said, heard, everywhere you've gone, the people you've met and/or telephoned, the stores you've visited and what you've bought. . . the possibilities are endless. This should free everyone from worrying whether the police consider us criminals. They won't have to guess, they'll know.

    In fact, we'll need fewer cops. With Google in proactive mode, it simply routes your car to the nearest fine or detention center whenever you commit a crime. The trial will be over before you arrive--Google transmits the data to the magistrate computer, which validates the offense and assigns the standard penalty. At that point only Google will be evil. Well, and maybe a few government people.

    NR

  • Imagine a fork being stabbed into your eye, over and over and over. Then realize that's not a fork, it's just a really skinny, really cold finger.

    I'd like what you propose as much as you'd like the above. I guess it's good we talked about this though.

  • It all sounds so rosy and wonderful... provided we can trust Google. They used to claim to do no Evil but that was a thing of the past. They've biased search results, stolen intellectual property and any number of other Evil things. I long for a Go(d)ogle who is Good(gle).

    • It's actually "don't be evil" [wikipedia.org] not "do no evil". You're probably getting confused with the three monkey thing [wikipedia.org]. This is one of those persistent errors that society just don't care to fix.

      Also, you know this post would carry a lot more weight if you linked a little sauce in there.
  • Or... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:58AM (#40672613) Homepage

    Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.

    Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when it decides you are doing something suspicious.

  • How that is different from having access to an (enhanced) library? or an encyclopedia? Having "offline" storage for knowledge has been with us since the stone age, and probably made civilization possible. In fact, your very concience could be a consequence of mankind having that kind of enhancement. Internet (and google, but could had been any search engine or way to pick from that amount the information the one that you want) improved things, but is just another stage of a very long process, and not the la
  • by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @08:10AM (#40672727) Homepage Journal

    Popular Science magazine came up with all these grand predictions about how were were going to use personal computers. At the time, PC's were clunky 8-bit CPUs with blinky lights in front and had to be programmed by flipping switches on the front panels.

    Needless to say, Popular Science Magazine got nearly every prediction wrong. They never figured on videogames, BBS's, graphic design, video editing, youtube or facebook. About all they got right was word processing.

    This idiocy regarding Google is about as correct. It also assumes Google is even going to be here in 20 years. Furthermore, something will come along to shake up the entire computing paradigm so that when we look back on 2012, we'll wonder why things were so primitive.

  • by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @08:11AM (#40672729)

    Yeah, I know with every new leap in technology someone comes out and claims that it going to make us dumber, but something like Google Glasses is one of those cases.

    Do you need persistent feedback on everything you are looking at?

    I certainly don't. I could do with less situational advertising in my life and I generally don't find it difficult to get around town without some constant reminder about where I am and an arrow to where I am going. I can read signs and understand the concept of street addresses pretty good. And I haven't reached that level of chronic social lethargy that makes pulling a phone out of my pocket a tedious chore or think it's uncool to hold a phone.

    I definitely think there are niche markets for Google Glasses but for general public consumption I think these will be even more annoying then some smug hipster walking around with their "Bluetooth" lit up and dangling out of their ear talking louder then they need to about nothing at all.

    Putting on a pair of Google Glasses is claiming to the world that you are too dumb and insecure to function in society without a trendy gadget of the month...where's my coffee

    • The appeal to me anyway is te fact that I could livestream video that is what I see, not off center not on a clunky helmet. This would be very useful in many situations from the simple, family time to the protests in the streets.
  • Side-loading (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Guilt ( 464909 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @08:14AM (#40672755)
    I've always assumed that I will not have uploading available to me, but that rather as I get older and (probably, unfortunately) more and more mentally infirm more and more of what I need to get done to live will be taken over by expert systems that know how I like things and otherwise react like me...the onion will grow so, that the fact that the centre were hollow might not matter to the outside world, and by then I should be past caring.
  • Cyborg theory (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    There's a lot of doom-and-gloom being thrown around here... about how Google is going to destroy us, that we're becoming less intelligent, that we'll stop learning and thinking and Google, like some benevolent tyrant, will answer all our questions, and our thinking faculties will atrophy and wither away.

    No.

    Google is a tool, like a pencil is a tool. And from the very first human, we have been integrated with our tools. Are we the lesser for our use of pencils to store our information? Are we the lesser for u

  • Bases on that summary, Google is fast becoming God so they should be tax exempt as a religion.
  • by Red_Chaos1 ( 95148 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @08:31AM (#40672913)

    I'd have no qualms with these scenarios if they only were ever used to aid the people. But the problem is that as has been pointed out, this is unlikely. It will be used as a vehicle to monetize people, and the government and various entities will want unrestricted access to it for the most trivial of "offenses" if they can even be stretched to fit the definition of the word. Big Brother and Big Business would love nothing more than to be able to get inside your head.

    Kind of sad that some of the greatest ideas and inventions cannot come to fruition or likely won't see widespread use because of the ways they could be abused far outstrip the legitimate and helpful uses.

    • Well I imagine that if you can afford it, you'll simply be able to own the device, data, network, proxy, workaround, or whatever it is to let you use the device as you wish. To an extent. The poor on the other hand, simply can't pay for this stuff. You don't sell to the poor. What facebook has managed to do is sell poor people to marketers. And at the same time they provide an arguably meaningful service to the masses. Likewise Google gives out free services in exchange for ads, which is almost the same thi
  • It is true to say that google is an app that extends the cabilities on the human mind; but this is not news and not new. The hoe was an extention of the human arm and hand that broadened out abilities. The abacus and the calculator enhanced our ability to do math. Telegraphs and phone wires and electromagnetic squeaks allow us to communicate far behind the physical limitations of our vocal chords. Google is simply the amalgamation of many minds into a common memory store. And this will progress as the
  • It is no particular insight that Google is an extension of your mind.

    Any tool that can manipulate symbols is an extension of your mind. Abacus, stick and clay tablet, and so on.

    Where Google is different is that it is a step forward in the evolution of a hive mind for humanity. The first library was a start down that path; Google plus the content it indexes is currently the most encompassing, friction free implementation of humanities long trail towards ultimate shared thought.

    • by moeinvt ( 851793 )

      "...humanities(sic) long trail towards ultimate shared thought."

      The sharing of thoughts that I get indirectly via sensory input is annoying enough. Last thing I want is to join a hive mind where I'm forced to have thoughts about sports, celebrities and network TV.

      It might be interesting to try out, but there's no way I'm signing up for a 2 year subscription.

  • Our basic cell phones track us [nytimes.com] and that gives others a lot of information about our habits. With a cell phone turned on the company knows where you are, when you get home at night, that you made a late night trip to the drug store, and much more. Then you add the smart phone apps and the personal details that the company knows get even more specific? Are we willing to let companies know the personal details of our life so that we can have a personal digital assistant? Is it worth the cost?
  • Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.'"

    Or when you're entering a McDonald's in France, I guess. Just in case.

  • if you dont like what the technology is doing or will do to you then dont use it! the point of technology was never to take over, it was to assist. feel like your cell phone has become a tether? use a land line! think your lawn mower is making you lazy? break out some scissors! scissors cutting into your sense of being? start ripping stuff with your hands!

    frankly, i like the idea of technology making sure that when i say, "i think i'm having a heart attack" and fall over my roomba comes out with a de

  • google is not a proper synonym for this! You can kill google, and another company will take that place.

  • Google's search, over the last few years, has gotten less and less helpful, as advertising became more and more big business. Try to find someone who's last name is hyphenated, or a product model with a hyphen in it. Or something with punctuation in what you're looking for, such as a period. There have also been plenty of searches that include, in the visible paragraph, exactly what I told it I did *not* want to see.

    Google as an extension of our minds? Pardon me, but maybe some other search engine will not

    • Very true. I was recently trying to buy tickets to a showing of Prometheus at the local Sundance Kabuki theatre in San Francisco. Google Search was totally broken for the task -- it kept giving me the showtimes itself instead of a link to the theater's own site, and all the links it provided were to reviews of the movies that were playing there. I had to finally guess the proper url (it was something like sundancecinemas.com) to actually get to the site where I could purchase the tickets and reserve the

  • I believe the title is misleading. It is not that Google becomes extension of our minds, it is us, humans, who become non-paid extensions, building blocks, contributors and teachers of the Google Proprietary Supermind.
  • give you a reach around as it fucks you in the ass. If that's where you keep your wallet.
  • - Or google closing all of your accounts because you don't fit in the TOS
    - Or google reporting all of your moves to your boss
    - Or google deciding your company is worth nothing and its stock going down leading to bankruptcy
    - Or google refusing to drive you somewhere, and refusing that you drive yourself
    - Or google ...

    Well, yes, I did imagine all of them, and it scares me.

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol

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