We’ve Updated Our Privacy Policy

Edward Champion is committed to bringing you the most truthful and bracing accounts of our modern world, whether the stories are fiction or nonfiction. And we want to make sure that you’re aware of some updates to our Privacy Policy so that we may better comply with one of the European Union’s newfangled progressive acronyms. It will help you better understand how and why we collect and use certain information pertaining to your life experience.

Information Collected Automatically: When you use Edward Champion — and by “use,” we mean this to encompass any social encounter, communication, or shared experience — it could be the subject of a future essay or a story told in audio drama format, sometimes many years after the events have transpired. Edward Champion is a writer, after all, and, as such, a desperate scavenger. We may write about the experience explicitly in an email or in our journals or through some embarrassing Facebook post within 24 hours of the transpired event. We may talk it out with our friends so that we may better understand what happened. Edward Champion often takes steps to always have “the first draft of history” at our disposal. If if the experience leaves a lasting impression, then there’s a pretty good chance that our subconscious will be unable to refrain from feeling or thinking about it. This is because Edward Champion is equipped with something that our development team refers to as the Human Heart. While we may possibly collect certain details involving times, names, and places, we wish to assure you that our processing methods are largely spontaneous and you will probably never know if you were the inspiration or the source of something unless the data matches pretty closely with the final product, in which case we will feel morally obliged to inform you.

Information Collected by Accident: Edward Champion has been known to become so curious about an esoteric topic that he will fritter away afternoons trying to confirm the details of some half-remembered TV show or a beautiful novel he no longer has in his possession or an obscure French film he watched in his twenties. Or he may be curious about the fate of a once beloved figure who nobody talks about anymore. He may, in the course of his considerable hunger for information, go to libraries and you may find him at a microfilm machine somewhere within the greater New York area. It is also possible that Edward Champion’s collection of this information will be all for naught, merely an exercise to get back to the thread of what he was attempting to write about in the first place. During the course of this information collection, his head will likely be filled up with facts and he may be misidentified as an expert, simply because he tends to be a sponge, often remembering details that others forget.

Cookies: Edward Champion sometimes eats cookies when he is nervous and may do so during the act of writing. This will likely not affect you in any way, but if the European Union requires us to upload pictures of us eating cookies, we will do so to Instagram, which the European Union has declared as the arbitration venue for all cookie-eating disputes. We will not collect any cookies from you or ask you to make them for us, unless you are invited to Edward Champion’s domicile of creation and all parties have agreed to a bakeoff formally communicated through a hastily composed text message. We may, however, bake cookies for you and distribute these quite whimsically and randomly.

Data Retention: Edward Champion is not as much of a packrat as he used to be. But he does live with a lot of books and will likely buy your latest volume if he really likes you or thinks that your work is the cat’s pajamas.

Updating Your Account: At any time, you can choose not to read or partake in Edward Champion’s creations. We realize that Edward Champion can be a rather intense person, even though any perceived intensity is largely by accident and he is fairly easygoing in person. If you have difficulties with Edward Champion or you feel that your user experience has been misunderstood, he will likely meet up with you in a bar and buy you a beer and talk about your user experience in the interest of ensuring that all parties understand each other and that they laugh about the great follies of life on a more frequent basis.

Third Parties: Edward Champion will probably speak glowingly of you to third parties. He may play matchmaker. He could get you involved with other creative parties to increase the likelihood of very cool things happening. If you know him, he will probably read a draft of your novel or script in progress. Since Edward Champion is an exuberant type, he may urge other parties to give you a shot. Please understand that the use of Edward Champion may just surprise you, especially if he becomes very loyal to you. Please try to respect this.

Why Amazon’s Firefly Must Be Rejected

On Wednesday afternoon, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced Firefly, an app for its new Fire phone that can scan just about any object in the real world and, with the push of a button, allow you to purchase it from Amazon. As of today, 100 million items can be scanned and identified by Firefly. Firefly can read barcodes, a DVD cover, a QR code, damn near anything. It effectively turns every physical store into an Amazon showroom, where the customer can walk in, scan an object, and be on her merry way with an order waiting by mail or drone delivery. It remains unknown just how much Firefly tracks (such as scanned objects that the customer hesitates over) or what Amazon intends to do with the additional data it will connect through Firefly, but given Amazon’s $600 million contract with the CIA for cloud computing services, any sinister alliance is possible. What’s especially creepy is that Firefly can also recognize street addresses and phone numbers. Firefly intends to listen to any songs playing from your speakers and any movie screening on your TV, giving you the option to purchase these.

Assuming it garners substantial mass adoption, Firefly threatens to become one of the most insidious assaults upon American life, where every action and every quiet moment becomes an opportunity to squeeze dollars. It is the most salient example of Amazon reaching ever so closer to its ideal of vertical integration — a practice famously and rightly halted in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948), when the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios could not own their own theaters and maintain the exclusive right to show their own films. The difference with Firefly is that Amazon doesn’t have to make the products and could argue this if confronted with any serious legal challenge.

Amazon has just turned the entire physical world — the streets you walk on, the bedroom you retreat to, the shops you frequent — into a commercial marketplace. One can only imagine the fresh and awkward social hell to be experienced if a party guest points Firefly at someone wearing a snazzy dress. Rather than complimenting the partygoer on her sartorial flair, Firefly turns this into a potential sales transaction. One no longer has to seek exotic or bespoke items through languorous journeys in which one never asks for the time. With one simple app, the curatorial impulse and the quest for the obscure is traduced. Firefly threatens to deracinate the remaining tangible value of the physical world. It puts a price tag on taste, texture, hearing, sight, and smell. Will such quantitative objectification eventually extend to people? To credit poles that assess one’s financial worth along the lines of what Gary Shteyngart predicted in his satirical near future novel, Super Sad True Love Story?

The question that consumers must ask themselves is whether they want to live in such a world and whether convenience is worth pointing a phone in someone’s face. It is quite possible that establishments will fight Firefly by enacting “No Phones” policies along the lines of bars that prohibit Google Glass. But if Amazon is willing to take such a bold lead with Firefly, to truly view all humans as little more than avaricious hosts for the gargantuan corporate parasite, other companies will surely follow its lead.

We can Google any reference or half-formed remembrance with our phones. We can take photos of our families and friends. We can call anyone in the world from just about any location at a price and convenience that was inconceivable ten years ago. These are grand technological achievements that, on the whole, benefit the human race.

Firefly is a crass betrayal of this. It will cause many specialized businesses or establishments (such as indie bookstores) that operate at a precarious profit margin to go under. It could artificially inflate homogeneous products while expunging the artistic value out of the esoteric. But most importantly, it’s the first app to overtly put a price tag on everything in the universe. Think about that. Do you really want your friends to scan all the items in your house and get an instant cash value for everything you have struggled for years to build? (And how much sneaky data will Amazon grab to get a collective value on any individual’s possessions? Could this be compared against credit reports? Could this prevent working people from buying homes or small business owners from establishing credit?) Do you really want one company to encourage and profit from this rapacity?

That bald boorish billionaire has just signaled that he does not want to make your life better. He will stop at nothing to profit from you at every minute. Lex Luthor was never intended as a role model, but Bezos has set out to become just that. His efforts must be resisted by every thinking and breathing individual until the bright glow from his cretinous pate is permanently stubbed out.

Thirty-Five Arguments Against Google Glass

Google Glass is a snazzy set of specs that will part the Red Sea if you tap it from the right angle. It aims to fuse smartphones and computers into a hands-free user experience more pleasurable than sex, religion, and world domination combined.

Glass is not yet on the market, but the news of its existence cut a hew through Mountain View with the strident fife of an unpaid piper wooing unsuspecting kids into a dark cave. It inspired Google co-founder Sergey Brin to publicly announce that he felt less male with the thick tools that came before. Some wondered why Brin didn’t just hold hard to his smartphone and slam down shots every Friday night like the rest of America. But when your net worth is $23 billion, different rules apply.

Brin was good enough to describe his new instrument to the Wall Street Journal last September:

They are, uh, a new form of computing, uh, that’s designed to really free you. So you’re hands-free. Uh, you know, your eyes are free. Your ears are free. Uh, and yet you can do, uh, many of the things that you might typically expect a computer or a mobile device to do. Uh, whether it’s taking pictures or video or getting messages or navigation. Uh, all those things are available.

The glasses are not now available to the general public, but Google informed The Verge a few weeks ago that the specs would cost “less than $1,500” when hitting the stores, which is believed to be sometime next year. Last month, Google offered an Explorer Program for “bold, creative individuals” who longed to test the device. Some people wearing early Glass prototypes began making bold and creative appearances in San Francisco Bay Area bars and restaurants, keen on “exploring” territory already inhabited by humble regulars. They were not received with the bountiful benisons that their algorithms predicted. As a man named David Yee put it on Twitter:

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I put forth the modest proposition that Google Glass, conjured and constructed and conceived only in terms of “cool” and propped up by ostensible “journalists” who have never thought to question Mr. Brin’s brilliant PR, could pose more problems to our world than any digital invention we have seen in some time. Contrary to Mr. Brin’s suggestions, his device will not “free” us. It will quite possibly destroy several vital qualities of life we now take for granted, preying upon kind and decent and hardworking people who are still playing pickup from an economic blitzkrieg in which they had no power, little hope, and no control. One would think that a man born in Moscow under Brezhnev would grasp the cruel irony of being directly responsible for an entirely new set of encroachments upon freedom and human possibility. On the other hand, great hills of money often move mountains in other ranges.

Here are thirty-five arguments against Google Glass:

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ARGUMENT ONE
It could destroy whatever shreds of privacy we have left.

This is the greatest criticism against Google Glass. So let’s look at this in terms of law. If present terms are not refashioned by Congress in the next year to meet the realities of 2014 digital life, Google may be helped by current law, which may not protect the American public from the “electronic communications” of video recorded from a pair of glasses and uploaded to Google. The Stored Communications Act, drafted and legislated in 1986, was put into place well before webmail, social media, and cloud computing were realities. And until the SCA is updated by legislators to reflect today’s world, it remains possible that a Google Glass video — if it is defined as an “electronic communication service” comparable to email — will remain unprotected because of how the SCA now defines “electronic storage.” (See these recent cases for the present state of affairs, including Jennings v. Jennings, in which the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that accessing another person’s email doesn’t count as a violation — even when the other person correctly guesses the email account’s security questions. But see also Viacom Int’l, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., 253 F.R.D. 256, 258, 264 (S.D.N.Y. 2008), in which a court defined YouTube as “remote computing service” — the counterpart to “electronic communication service” — without supplying a reason.)

Metadata may create more headaches. As Mark Hurst has suggested, not only is it likely that the Glass videos will be uploaded to Google’s server, but “all of the indexing, tagging, and storage could happen without the Google Glass user even requesting it.” It’s possible that Google could introduce a service in which privacy could turn into a lucrative sideline where someone pays a premium not to be videotaped or photographed or indexed. Imagine a scenario in which Google, having rejiggered our present expectations of privacy, is further allowed to profit from the amended definition. Having already disrupted cities and widened the digital divide with the infamous Google Bus, this ungentle giant is poised to shatter our world further with Glass.

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ARGUMENT TWO
It will turn the United States into a surveillance state.

Forbes‘s Kashmir Hill was the first to observe this. But as seen in the above photograph, taken from the Youth Ball on Obama’s Inauguration Day on January 20, 2009, we were already on our way there. In just under six years, an entire generation has trained itself to take a photo with a smartphone rather than stand awestruck before mighty events unfolding.

But what if you could record and save every moment? And what if all this information could be used to incriminate other people? As Hill pointed out, Google Glass will deracinate the Young Turk’s privileged regret of not being able to jerk out her phone in time to capture a moment once called Kodak. Soon, with a simple voice command and a pair of glasses, the Young Turk can saunter up to two regular people having loud sex in a car, memorialize this private moment through video, and upload it to the cloud in an instant. Who cares if the video goes viral and these people lose their jobs? Who cares if you live in a small town where homophobia is rampant and the two taped people share the same gender? For many using Google Glass, this shutterbug roundelay will be about the lulz. But the lulz won’t sting nearly as much as the more disturbing prospect of civvies ratting out neighbors they don’t want to talk to sinks into our national psyche. McCarthyism will feel charmingly quaint by comparison. A proud nation of incognizant spies won’t have any trouble filling up the information coffers inside that massive data center that the NSA has almost finished constructing in Utah.

ARGUMENT THREE
It will hold more people needlessly accountable for easily pardonable activities.

According to a CareerBuilder survey last year, nearly two in five companies used social networking sites to screen potential employees. Drinking, using drugs, and posting “provocative” or “inappropriate” material were more serious reasons not to hire someone than clearly vocational concerns such as poor communication skills and badmouthing former employers. In 2011, a Georgia teacher was fired for posting a Facebook photo. The crime? Holding a glass of beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. So what will happen when Glass lathers up more videos offering more rabid opportunities for vengeful people to be offended? Will an entire subculture emerge in which creeps sift through a person’s Google Glass oeuvre looking for the one soundbyte that will go viral and destroy that person’s reputation? As more technology enters our lives, we have become more beholden to an unreasonable ideal. We’ve seen how employers humiliate prospective employees with endless interviews because they crave perfection, but a culture that does not allow people to make mistakes cannot possibly know and feel what it is to be alive.

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ARGUMENT FOUR
It is remarkably easy to steal a pair of glasses.

Just ask the guy who stole Jonathan Franzen’s specs three years ago. We have seen how laptops, smartphones, and tablets were pilfered prolifically during early adoption. (In fact, nearly half of all robberies in New York during 2011 involved smartphones and tablets.) But consider how effortless it is to snatch a pair of glasses from a person’s head. If the Google Glass user is lost in the moist miasma of a fresh fix, then there’s a good chance that his perspective will be quite removed from what’s happening in the real world. This allows the criminal to grab the glasses and run, with little time for the Google Glass user to acclimate to unlayered reality. By the time the Google Glass user has deduced that he has been fleeced of his high-end eyewear, the criminal has greatly outpaced him.

Because the specs are worn on the outside of a highly visible part of the body, Google Glass is more vulnerable to theft than a purse or a wallet or a smartphone. And if the Google Glass user has shared considerable personal information, then the prospects for identity theft are quite promising. Once criminals work out the kinks, this type of crime could prove more lucrative and high-speed than credit card skimming. And if someone repeatedly has her Google Glass specs stolen, can Google continue to take the financial hit of replacing the glasses? With Google Glass retailing close to $1,500, this may open up a new insurance business which extorts the Glass user. Will certain neighborhoods become too “high-risk” for prospective Glass applicants? Mr. Brin’s price point doesn’t exactly signal a commitment to egalitarianism.

So what of pragmatic security measures? I highly doubt that the myopic utopians basking in Glass’s technological empowerment will take kindly to a vulgar chain attached to the specs. It could remind them of a greasy key with a heavy brick unlocking a dingy gas station restroom. What we do know is this: in its present form, Google Glass will be as easy to pluck from a stranger’s noggin as a clown nose.

(It’s also possible that Glass will include some form of remote administration to protect against threat. But this may also create problems. See Argument Twenty-Two.)

number6


ARGUMENT FIVE
It gives Google far more personal information than it needs to know.

According to Google’s privacy policy, this is what Google now collects from you:

  • details of how you used our service, such as your search queries
  • telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls
  • IP address
  • device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL
  • cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account
  • location information
  • device information
  • any personal information you give Google (emphasis added)

Now this is just what Google gets from browsers. And this is the list that arrived just after Google changed its privacy policy in March 2012. The aim was to collect deeper information about its more than 1 billion users. There was, of course, no way to prevent Google from combining the personal data it collected through the many services offered through many devices. Much of this, of course, has been used to recalibrate advertising. But if Google has more data it can mine from you (that is, personal information that you “give” through Glass), and the Google Glass user is constantly recording her life and adding heaps of personal info that advertisers will want to know about, a Google user’s personal dossier will become highly cultivated indeed.

Google has a very poor history of sympathizing with people who don’t want their personal information shared. Forget that these users have very principled reasons for staying anonymous. But as far as Google is concerned, quiet lives don’t contribute to the hard profit line. In December 2009, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt barked to CNBC, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” If this remains Google’s philosophy in 2013 (without Schmidt), then will this corporate sentiment apply to Google Glass?

We are dealing with a company that casually collects as much personal information as it can about its users without always informing them. Look no further than this FCC report from last year (PDF), which describes how Google’s Street View vehicles picked up “payload” data — that is, email, text messages, Internet usage history, and other personal information — between May 2007 and May 2010 while performing “location-based services.” Not only did Google collect 200 gigabytes of payload data between January 2008 and April 2010, but Google transferred it all to a data center in Oregon. (This privacy breach case was recently settled for the paltry sum of $7 million.)

So how much payload data will Google Glass collect? And what will the user agree to when signing up for the headset? If data limit isn’t an issue and Google employees are incapable of respecting privacy even on a subconscious level, what brave new metadata will be fed into Google’s data centers?


ARGUMENT SIX
It will open new possibilities for online sexual extortion.

Last year, we were introduced to Hunter Moore, declared “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” by Rolling Stone for publishing compromising photos sent in by embittered ex-lovers. Moore would humiliate the women in these images by posting the full name, city of residence, profession, and social media profile. He deemed what he did “revenge porn.” At the height of Moore’s success, his website earned him $10,000 in monthly ad revenue. There was also the vile Craig Brittain, who collected naked pictures of ordinary people and charged $250 to remove the photos. These are two very public examples of online sexual extortion, an atavistic practice which has caused countless women to be harassed. Consider the sextortionist who blackmailed 350 women to strip through Skype.

Contrary to Jeff Jarvis’s risible suggestion that humanity does not contain “uncivilized perverts,” all this awful behavior brimmed to the top of the cruel cauldron with the technology we have in place right now. Will Google Glass’s easy and portable setup encourage some of these malicious misogynists to leave their homes and seek out these women in the streets? Thanks to Google Glass, tomorrow’s Hunter Moores and Craig Brittains will innovate new mobile methods ensuring that more women are photographed, videotaped, extorted, harassed, and brutalized.

photographerassault


ARGUMENT SEVEN
It may increase violence.

On March 8, 2013, GeekWire reported on a Seattle bar that became the first establishment to ban Google Glass. It started with a Facebook message that read: “For the record, The 5 Point is the first Seattle business to ban in advance Google Glasses. And ass kickings will be encouraged for violators.” While the “ass kickings” aspect of this message was clearly tongue-in-cheek, it does highlight one little discussed consequence of sticking an unwanted camera in someone’s face: you may get your ass beat.

The kind of violence we’re considering goes well beyond Justin Beiber threatening a photographer or Alec Baldwin getting into another paparazzi rumble. As we continue an ongoing dialogue about First Amendment rights and what photographers can and cannot shoot, cameras mounted on specs could lead to a greater distrust of the photographic form. It could lead to more assaults directed at legitimate photographers who are trying to document history. Street photographers have developed well-honed rules that take into account respect for subjects. (See also Argument Fifteen.) But when anybody with Google Glass styles himself a “photographer,” can these inexperienced types be counted on to display the same finesse? If these new “photographers” invade the privacy of subjects, will their subjects remain calm and nonviolent?

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ARGUMENT EIGHT
It will discourage personal risk.

In a 2008 study, three Dutch researchers demonstrated that security cameras triggered approval-seeking behaviors. The mere presence of cameras was enough to suggest some omniscience. Another experiment in 2011 revealed how cameras discouraged 86 students from cheating. These two studies relied on clearly delineated cameras. But it does leave us wondering how risk or a free-flowing conversation will be actively discouraged when a person enters a restaurant, only to find four people sitting at tables wearing Google glasses, all recording the world around them.

(Argument Sixteen also relates to the issue of risk, discussing how artists and performers could be held more accountable for what “offends.”)

skullphone


ARGUMENT NINE
We have no idea what health problems Glass will create.

Last July, Cult of Android revealed that the HTC Evo 4G, the Apple 4S, and the Blackberry Bold all exposed users to an SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) level at well over 1 W/kg. The FCC has set the maximum SAR at 1.6 W/kg. Google recently filed documents with the FCC, revealing a 1.34 W/kg SAR for Project Glass. That’s more radiation than the iPhone 4S. But unlike the smartphone, which is only placed near the head when answering a call, Project Glass will be constantly on the head. Which means that Glass users will be exposed to more constant radiation. Additionally, according to healthcare advocate Camilla Rees, companies often report SAR values differ from the real number. Will Google Glass lead to an uptick in brain cancer? In 2011, a World Health Organization report (PDF) suggested one remedy to the carcinogenic risks from smartphones: “it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as hands-free devices or texting.” Unfortunately, Google Glass pushes “hands-free” back to the head.


ARGUMENT TEN
It may increase violations of doctor-patient confidentiality and attorney-client privilege.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains a list of confidentiality breaches which affect 500 or more individuals. There are presently 556 records of large scale breaches. Countless thousands have had private health information disseminated beyond the seemingly secure confines of a hospital. These breaches, in turn, cost healthcare providers money. While the HHS doesn’t lag behind tech as much as Congress does with the SCA, it has only just introduced measures four months ago to protect patients when using mobile devices. Present research indicates that only 44% of healthcare providers encrypt their devices. This leaves one to wonder what fresh hell Google Glass will unleash. Will doctors become hooked on Glass in the way that they are presently reliant on smartphones? And, if so, will the images and records that doctors collect be secure enough for the HHS? Can Google really be entrusted to protect all this data?

And then there’s attorney-client privilege. In 2009, an attorney exchanged text messages with his deponent client. The subsequent case, Ngai v. Old Navy, ruled that surreptitious text messages were not privileged under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30. This does lead one to wonder if an attorney who is wearing Google Glass during a deposition will be subject to similar disclosures of “unprivileged” communication.

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ARGUMENT ELEVEN
It could be hacked.

In 2010, Google was hit with a highly sophisticated hacking attack from China. The hackers stole intellectual property, scoured source code, and peered into the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Google never provided details on how Operation Aurora had occurred. And it’s safe to say that recent attacks in the past month from China demonstrate that the attacks are far from over.

But nobody appears particularly concerned about what Google will do to encrypt its new tool from vicious hackers. To get a sense of just how much bad security can smash a person’s digital life, consider the horrors endured by journalist Mat Honan:

I bought into the Apple account system originally to buy songs at 99 cents a pop, and over the years that same ID has evolved into a single point of entry that controls my phones, tablets, computers and data-driven life. With this AppleID, someone can make thousands of dollars of purchases in an instant, or do damage at a cost that you can’t put a price on.

Given how Google has erected an eclectic empire on the bones of search, what’s not to suggest that something as ostensibly straightforward as Glass will bulge with similar spectacle? Will some future Mat Honan find a video simulacrum of himself constructed from long pulls at a Google Glass feed? And will he will have to spend years of his life contesting it? Hacking typically happens because we unthinkingly keep devices on without considering how they can be invaded. As “virtualization evangelist” Mike Foley expressed in a blog post about data sensitivity, “What if I was streaming my Glass feed via a MiFi?” It’s a good question. And we haven’t even considered how News of the World-style phone hacking could develop with these new devices.

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ARGUMENT TWELVE
It will discourage anonymity.

In an August 2011 blog post, Danah Boyd called “real name” policies an abuse of power. Decrying guidelines in effect at Google+, Boyd observed that vulnerable people or political dissidents were clearly at risk through mandatory outing:

What’s at stake is people’s right to protect themselves, their right to actually maintain a form of control that gives them safety. If companies like Facebook and Google are actually committed to the safety of its users, they need to take these complaints seriously.

In the aftermath of the nymwars, Google+’s policy is still highly prejudicial against pseudonyms. The only way someone can obtain a pseudonymous Google+ account is “by providing links to other social networking sites, news articles, or official documents in which you are referred to by this name.” And for someone with limited Internet access in a country with a suppressive regime or for someone who fears for her life, this policy is a needless hardship for someone hoping to pass along invaluable information to the outside world.

Why is this important? Because, in the past year, Google has been increasingly aggressive in directing users to the Google+ page. As The Wall Street Journal reported in January, some users may not be fully aware of how much Google is cross-referencing:

Sam Ford, a 26-year-old Navy petty officer, says he signed up for Google+ on his smartphone because it would let him automatically upload new photos to a Google+ folder—one that he kept private. Later, he says, he was surprised to see that his Google+ profile page—which includes his name—was tied to a software review that he wrote recently on the Google Play online store.

So Google wants to out you. It wants to make it very difficult for you to procure an anonymous account. And it wants everything you do on any of its devices — on your computer, on your smartphone, on your Google Glass — to be united publicly for anyone with enough grave tenacity to see. And even though anonymous speech is protected by the First Amendment, if you don’t abide by these terms, it’s Google’s way or the highway:

We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time.


ARGUMENT THIRTEEN
It isn’t distinct enough from the body.

People were permissive of smartphones and the cameras that came before because these tools were clearly distinguishable from the body. For all my plaints leveled in Argument Two about the United States turning into a surveillance state, we can at least see that the Youth Ball partygoers are photographing the Presidential dais with discrete devices. But if we’re going to wear something, shouldn’t it communicate something back to other people? Is this not the purpose of fashion?

Enter Kate Hartman, an eccentric and affable artist and educator who has been investigating the issue of “wearable communication.” Hartman has proffered such innovations as the Talk to Yourself Hat, in which the wearer speaks into one end of a long tube leading back to his ears, and The Boundary Belt:

The Boundary Belt is provides the wearer with the ability to produce a spontaneous boundary marker in the event of an ambiguous or misconstrued situation. With a press of the emergency release button (located on the belt), the boundary is immediately launched, clearly indicating to the approaching party where they are or are not welcome.

So if Google is going to encourage rampant alienation and elitism, there seems to me a fundamental design flaw. Wearable communication needs to make a distinct and highly visible impression to count. There’s still hope, of course, that Google will equip later versions of Glass with light weaponry, turning these chichi specs into ground-level drones that will massacre anyone who hasn’t yet swallowed the Kool-Aid. Should not Glass become a fashion statement that kills on the platform? If we’re going to push technology to the limit, why not take the phrase “killer app” more literally?


ARGUMENT FOURTEEN
It could give the police far more details about you than you can possibly know.

A few weeks ago, the ACLU published a lengthy list of what Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials were able to extract from a suspect’s smartphone. The list included call activity, phone book directory information, all stored voicemails and text messages, apps, several passwords, and 659 geolocation points. Two years ago, the Michigan State Police were reportedly using Cellebrite devices to copy the entire contents of a smartphone in two minutes. (The MSP refuted the ACLU’s claims.) But as the ACLU revealed in April 2012, approximately 200 law enforcement agencies were tracking cell phones without a warrant. (The ACLU also offers this helpful map to determine whether or not your local police department is really into warrantless cell phone tracking.)

If police departments are collecting a smartphone’s geolocation points (or other data on your phone), then what is to stop the cops from confiscating every single video that you ever made with Google Glass? (For that matter, what is to prevent Google+ from offering some Glass Archive answer to Facebook’s Graph Search?) How long will Google archive videos or make them accessible through Glass? That drunken sex video you made while you were wearing Glass could be used to incriminate your character or, at the very least, give the police some glimpses of your posterior you never thought they would see.


ARGUMENT FIFTEEN
It will discourage kindness and respect.

Sometime last year, an unidentified man began taking videos of people around Seattle without their permission and posting this to YouTube. He became known as “The Creepy Cameraman,” although he later adopted the moniker “Surveillance Camera Man.”

“I’m taking a video,” says the mumbling voice behind the camera when people ask why he’s taping them. But this is the only reason he offers as he approaches people with his camera as they are trying to have private conversations or enjoy their meals or have a quiet moment after a long day of toil. Surveillance Camera Man could be performance art. It could be some kid’s idea of Candid Camera. Whatever the case, it’s one of the most mordant commentaries on 21st century life I’ve seen in the last six months.

Surveillance Camera Man’s justification is that, because various establishments have surveillance cameras, his ground-level camera isn’t any different. And to get a sense of how dehumanized Surveillance Camera Man is (or, at least, presents himself to be), watch in the above video as he films a young woman screaming as she is being arrested near the 2:19 mark. He doesn’t ask if the young woman is okay. The young woman is there merely for his photographic non-purpose.

If this isn’t a harbinger of what Google Glass could serve up as a parallel to Kitty Genovese, I don’t know what is. We’ve already seen soldiers posing before humiliated and tortured prisoners with the Abu Ghraib photos. If, as Susan Sontag argued in one of her last essays, “the photographs are us” and brutality has come to dominate the visual and digital culture of American life, then what will happen when those who surrender kindness and respect put on a pair of glasses?


ARGUMENT SIXTEEN
Artists will be held more accountable for material that “offends.”

Last year, Patton Oswalt was called an asshole because he deigned to call out an audience member who was taping one of his new routines with her cameraphone. Despite the fact that Oswalt asked her politely to not tape his routine with her phone, she continued to do so. As Oswalt wrote:

For starters, whatever camera phone she was using had a piercing, distracting light on it which she merrily aimed right into my eye.

Worse, here’s when she started taping: halfway through a new, longer joke that I’m working on — a very embarrassing recollection from my younger years that I’m very nervous about performing and still very unsure of how to unspool. This was only the fourth time I’ve ever performed it, as well as the fourth time I’ve ever admitted this incident in public. So it still feels like a very nervy high wire walk for me. There’s times when I lose the audience and have to get them back, freeze up, and wonder if I shouldn’t have just kept this whole incident to myself. I’m walking into new territory with this one, and it’s scary and I feel very raw and dry-mouthed when I do it.

Oswalt would own up to not keeping his cool. On the other hand, if risk is essential to expression and creativity, isn’t strong opposition against those who wish to hinder creative progress the sanest possible response? What effect will Google Glass have on standup comedians or other artists? Will the performing arts deliquesce into some tepid shell of its former self because all on stage can be recorded at all times? If every moment we have is taped with Google Glass, and we know that we are always being watched, how will future artists take risks? (See also Argument Eight.) And how can art build and evolve when risk and originality is discouraged?


ARGUMENT SEVENTEEN
It may kill off what remains of the moviegoing experience.

First, there were talkers. Then smartphones disrupted the moviegoing experience. It is now almost impossible to go to a movie theater (save for the Alamo Drfthouse) without contending with bright LCDs flashing in the dark because some spectators have a pressing need to text pedantic messages during a gripping scene. Glass will push this obnoxious behavior to new levels. Not only will Glass encourage more talking (after all, some will need to multitask during a movie), but it could lead to an unprecedented wave of piracy.

It’s quite surprising that the MPAA has stayed mum about Google Glass. Because Glass threatens the film industry’s livelihood far more than a smartphone. The entertainment industry has certainly duked it out with Google in recent months over the latter’s failure to crackdown on copyright infringement. But why fight Google on torrents showing up in search results when Google is about to unleash a device that can record a first-run movie projecting on a screen at 720P?

If you’ve attended an all-media screening for an advance movie in recent years, you’ve probably encountered the wands and the peers into reticules and backpacks and the requests to check in your phones because of piracy concerns. But Google Glass will be available with prescription lenses. And what this means — especially if Hollywood wishes to enforce equally stern security at everyday screenings and Glass is the only pair you brought to the theater — is that Glass wearers could be turned away at the door.


ARGUMENT EIGHTEEN
It will create problems with consent.

Twelve states in America legally require that all parties consent to the recording of a telephone call. Most of these state laws were devised when telephones were landline only. (For example, California Penal Code § 632(a), which regulates one party consent for telephone recordings, was legislated in 1967 as the Invasion of Privacy Act.) It never occurred to California state legislators in 1967 that phones would be cordless or that conversations would occur more frequently in cafes and restaurants outside of private corded lines. Much like the Stored Communications Act described in Argument One, this is another example of legislatures simply not acting fast enough to account for rapid technological advancement.

Unfortunately, consent can no longer be regulated in the old way. In the last few months, Google asked users to permit Google Search on Android-powered phones to record audio and take pictures and video with a new update. If Google can do this with the Search app, what’s to stop Google from seizing your consent with Glass?

This goes back to the passive-aggressive ultimatum in Argument Twelve. Google realizes that waiving consent “may not be for everyone at this time.” But since Google is the one unveiling the fancy glasses, it will be more than happy to strip you of rights you didn’t know you had through a sneaky permissions acceptance.


ARGUMENT NINETEEN
Cool places will be outed by boors.

In 2010, Brent Cox wrote an essay for The Awl, bemoaning the notion of publicizing a fried dumpling joint in Chinatown that offered him a fast, delicious, and affordable way to live. Before Foursquare’s constant check-ins became a febrile pastime practiced by wired youth too taken with tagging and before Yelp unleashed a ceaseless horde of would-be Pete Wells types excoriating restaurants, it was a common practice to stay silent about a happening place, lest it be “discovered” by members of the public or be denuded of charm once everybody found out about it. Cox opted to stay mum about the dumplings: a commendable decision for a Brooklynite that deserves several hugs and a few pints of lager. But for every Brent Cox, there are several dozens who will blab.

Oversharing has been thoroughly sent up by Please Rob Me. But Carnegie Mellon researchers have also used Foursquare data to pinpoint a neighborhood’s area and character. So if video information is piled atop geotagging and we continue to encourage a culture in which the Brent Coxes of our world become as rare as polar bears, it’s possible that the quiet establishment you now enjoy won’t, as David Yee tweeted above, be your favorite place anymore.

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ARGUMENT TWENTY
It will discourage people from paying attention.

When a small window can pop up anytime with a “more desirable” friend, even as a friend in the real world sits before you trying to have a conversation, we have a problem. We have all experienced the phenomenon of people checking their smartphones for messages in social situations. But when Google Glass creates a new visual overlay with emails, IMs, or video messages from friends during a meal, it ushers in a new wave of continuous partial attention in our culture. The problem with this is that humans aren’t very good at multitasking. (This infographic offers some helpful stats, including the startling figure that only 2% of people can actually multitask effectively.) Multitasking costs us more time and reudUces our productivity by 40%. As Cornell professor Zheng Wang put it, “They seem to be misperceiving the positive feelings they get from multitasking. They are not being more productive – they just feel more emotionally satisfied from their work.”

Glass will probably make many people feel good, which is precisely what one expects from an alluring narcotic. But it will come at the expense of focus. Teachers will contend with distracted students as they pass along essential knowledge, even though learning and multitasking can’t work at the same time. If you’re very good at paying attention to people right now, you may find yourself an unexpected specialist in about five years.

googleglass1


ARGUMENT TWENTY-ONE
It will turn more strangers into stalkers.

One of Glass’s big features is the ability to track another person’s location down to the very foot. This will certainly create additional pressure for people to walk faster or be on time to social engagements, but I’m concerned about how this will encroach on our geographical privacy. Should the world really know our precise coordinates at all times? Don’t we have the right to disappear for a few hours into whatever location we desire without being hassled by some guy we politely endured at the party last Friday and who added us to his Google+ Circle before we could gently let him down? Could those who are barely acquainted with us turn into stalkers?

Before Glass, this was already a very legitimate concern. In 2010, The Daily Beast‘s Lisa Riordan Seville reported on how Foursquare inspired strangers to stalk people. Seville describes how social media strategist Carri Bugbee checked into a restaurant on Foursquare. The hostess came over to Bugbee, telling her that she had a telephone call. Bugbee answered the phone and was greeted with a male voice who found her Foursquare check-in and told her that she shouldn’t use the service because people could learn where she lived. Then he called her a “stupid bitch,” among other insults.

With Google Glass, these casual threats will be ratcheted up, thanks to heightened visual information more available to the public. Not only will a potential stalker be able to track you through your geotags, but he may be able to discover the exact table you are sitting at through another Glass feed. From all this, he could inspire his peers to deliver a full-scale assault in the real world.

After the creep called, Bugbee slept that night with the lights on. What would the creep have done if he had Google Glass to work with?

Amanda Todd


ARGUMENT TWENTY-TWO
It will create more cyberbullying and stress.

On September 7, 2012, a brave Canadian girl named Amanda Todd uploaded a video that went viral. She held up a series of flash cards to describe her experiences of being bullied. When Todd was in seventh grade, a creep asked her to bare her breasts through video chat and the creep used this to blackmail her. Amanda had turned to drugs and alcohol and suffered from depression and panic disorder because of this experience. And because the Internet is a medium that invites cruelty as it does warmth and wonder, Todd suffered more abuse through social media. She was bullied at school. A little more than a month after the flash card video, Amanda Todd killed herself.

As Ars Technica detailed in a lengthy investigation earlier this week, hackers have installed remote administration tools that permit them to spy, scare, and enslave people into doing what they want. From the comfort of his ranch home, a bitter 32-year-old paraplegic can now let his enmity devour him, using his computer to ruin the lives of teen girls. (Because of this man’s ongoing threats, one young woman didn’t leave her dorm room for a week.)

So who will Glass’s “ratters” be? Because of the theft issues I described in Argument Four, Google will have to include some form of remote administration on Glass. But RAT works both ways. And if Google can’t prevent China from hacking into its site, how will it stop hackers from taking Glass by remote?

solomonoasch


ARGUMENT TWENTY-THREE
It could make you more willing to believe lies.

In the 1950s, a social psychologist named Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments in which subjects were shown two cards: one featured a vertical line, the other showing three lines (one the same length as the first one). Asch asked his subjects to identify which line on the second card matched the line on the first card. But he enlisted other people to stand next to the subjects who blurted out the wrong answer. What Asch discovered was that three out of four of his subjects agreed with these incorrect answers. In 2005, Gregory Burns updated the Asch experiments using functional MRI scanners. He discovered that social conformity was rooted in brain areas oriented around perception. Five decades after Asch’s experiments, subjects gave into group pressure, with 41% of the subjects going along with the group on wrong answers.

Berns discovered that his subjects felt judgment in brain areas associated with emotion: the amygdala, which is associated with fear of rejection. In her book Quiet, Susan Cain points out that the social fear identified in the Asch and Berns experiments not only makes our world harmful for introverts, but threatens the very fabric of our culture and institutions. People who are “slow” with their opinions, who wish to think about a topic from several angles before responding, could be drowned out by the noisome crowd. And if a group can outright alter our perceptions through social pressures, then how can we stand for the truth? The question we now ask ourselves is whether Glass, which stimulates perception by adding another layer and which may encourage the user to go along with the views of those who chatter in our screen, will cause us to believe in more lies. Could Glass could prove so seductive to some that there won’t be any need to Google anything for veracity again?


ARGUMENT TWENTY-FOUR
It will create more needless distraction.

Anyone who has attended a wedding in the last five years knows how smartphones have altered the nupital landscape. Enthusiastic amateurs not only become feverish about documenting the day, but they often get in the way of the professionals. The problem has grown so large that some couples have created “unplugged weddings,” in which the bride and the groom ask their assembled guests to clamp down on their smartphone use. But what happens when the wedding guests all wear Glass? Will they all mutter “Okay, Glass, record a video” or “Okay, Glass, take a picture” at the same time and talk over a quiet moment that isn’t theirs to pollute?

And what effect will the Google Glass light, signifying that it is recording something, have on the way we revere the wonders of the dark? The recording light will have to be bright enough for us to know that someone is taping us. But if a stranger comes up as we’re enjoying a candlelight dinner with our lover or observing the beautiful stars from a dark open patch with friends, how will these distractions kill the moment? Jane Brox’s excellent book on the history of artificial light, Brilliant, describes how our inner courage has dimmed as we have craved more illumination. As Brox puts it, “The more light we’re accustomed to, the more we feel the need for security.” But what about the human security built without technology? Will focus and fortitude be so easily surrendered as we accumulate more distractions? It would seem that the people at Google watched They Live and wildly misinterpreted what Carpenter’s sharp-edged satire had to say about human awareness.

streisandhome


ARGUMENT TWENTY-FIVE
It will expand the Streisand effect to an unprecedented level.

In 2003, before social media and YouTube even existed, Barbara Streisand’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to a website in an attempt to get an image of her Malibu home removed. This resulted in the image being distributed further. Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick called this the Streisand effect, wondering how long it would take lawyers to “realize that the simple act of trying to repress something they don’t like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see is now seen by many more people.”

This smart observation proved especially illuminating when Trafigura issued an injunction restricting The Guardian from reporting on the oil trader’s possible involvement in a toxic waste dump scandal. The willful suppression of reported material — whether it be Trfigura or a nine-year-old girl photographing her school meals — is a cancer against free expression that must be battled at all costs.

But is there a reportorial defense for the cyberbullies and other assorted ghouls? Last month, Gawker‘s Camille Dodero revealed how a band of trolls cyberbullied a six-year-old girl with progeria named Adalia and her mother. Here’s what the ringleader had to say:

After Adalia’s passing, he said, the only online trace of her existence would be these cruel images. “You know whose fault it’s gonna be? It’s not gonna be the millions of people on the Internet who looked at them. It’s gonna be yours for letting these pictures escape,” he stammered, as if Adalia’s baby photos were leaked documents. “You are a sick woman. You are more disgusting and horrible than my fat disgusting ass could ever be.” He was nearly spitting. “You are one stupid bitch.”

The parallel that Dodero draws between “baby photos” and “leaked documents” is especially perspicacious. Journalism typically reports on something. It doesn’t resort to cheap abuse.

If this type of video vitriol expands with Glass, there could be legislative repercussions against how we express ourselves online. More likely, expression will carry on as it has before. And anyone seeking grievance could find themsleves immune from sociopathic jackals seeking vigilante-style restitution. And it’s all because of the Streisand effect.

Sled Dogs and Member of Amundsen Expedition


ARGUMENT TWENTY-SIX
It could prevent people from discovering themselves.

In her wonderful book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit was guided by a question that a student posed to her, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is unknown to you?” Some people need to find themselves by becoming lost, by not knowing their physical and existential bearings. It is often the accidents and the side quests in life — Archimedes jumping from the bathtub to discover gradual displacement or a Japanese sword falling from W.S. Gilbert’s wall, inspiring him to write The Mikado — which point us in the right direction. But if we are constantly wearing a device in which our adventures are constantly interrupted by messages, we could very well be discouraged from the grand acts we’re meant to play out in life.

In a recent essay for The New York Times, Evgeny Morozov argued this point from another angle, bringing up Leszek Kolakowski’s “In Praise of Inconsistency,” which argued that inconsistency was the way to avoid being a obdurate idealogue. Unfortunately, unquestioning idealogues are the very types who will leap onto Glass like fat and unfunny cats with suction cups.


ARGUMENT TWENTY-SEVEN
It will discourage people from seeking unfamiliar viewpoints.

Last November, I argued against the block button, pointing out how blocking someone simply because you disagree with them (as opposed to legitimate harassment) often leads people to write off figures who tell us something wise that we don’t want to hear. This, in turn, leads social media users to become hostile to outside-the-box thinking. I have learned in the last few months that Eli Pariser has referred to this phenomenon as “the filter bubble” and has written a book on the subject. Pariser calls the filter bubble “a prosthetic solution horizon”:

It provides you with an information environment that’s highly relevant to whatever problem you’re working on. Often, this’ll be highly useful: When you search for “restaurant,” it’s likely that you’re also interested in near synonyms like “bistro” or “cafe.” But when the problem you’re solving requires the bisociation of ideas that are indirectly related — as when Page applied the logic of academic citation to the problem of Web search — the filter bubble may narrow your vision too much. What’s more, some of the most important creative breakthroughs are spurred by the introduction of the entirely random ideas that filters are designed to rule out.

Now that Google Hangouts make it effortless to block people who are talking — even before they have a chance to explain themselves — Parisier’s worries about false application and people who inure themselves to wild and random ideas are evermore justified. Hangouts were an instrumental part of Sergey Brin’s 2012 Glass presentation. And when Hangouts are rolled into Glass, the filter bubble will prove evermore irresistible.


ARGUMENT TWENTY-EIGHT
It could create another place where advertisement takes over our lives.

While Google presently has no plans to add advertising to Glass, how long will the company hold out? It’s worth pointing out that Amazon, in an effort to encourage more adoption, eventually introduced the ad-supported Kindle Fire. When the $1,500 specs market dies out, there is no reason not to believe that Google will roll out a low-cost version of Glass: perhaps one in which the user must contend with more irksome ads. Fortunately, one innovator has offered a solution.

googleglass5a


ARGUMENT TWENTY-NINE
It will create needless competition over who has the most worthwhile life experience.

This underlying philosophy was there in the “One Day” video, but it reached new heights (literally) with the “How It Feels” video, where Google Glass users were shown recording video while sky diving (pictured above), performing on the trapeze, flying a jet plane, and ice skating. All the video needed was a Richard Wagener soundtrack. Will someone who lives a fascinating quiet life feel bad because she lacks the guts, the training, or the physical acumen to measure up to this? Will the quotidian life be discouraged in our culture? Will mean people use Google Glass videos to demean or humiliate those who don’t live these “larger” lives? How does it feel indeed to be on the other side of “How It Feels”?

googleglass2


ARGUMENT THIRTY
It will discourage people from striking up conversations with strangers.

Near the end of its run, the TV series Fringe depicted a future in which humanity was enslaved by pale men called the Observers. The Observers had the ability to read other people’s minds. (Ironically enough, they were also revealed to be technologically augmented versions of human beings.) In “The Bullet That Saved the World,” Peter enters a shop to purchase a necklace and, just as he’s striking up a conversation with the guy behind the counter, his experience is completely disrupted by an Observer who reveals exactly what Peter wants.

“It will look good on her,” continues the Observer. “The young blonde woman. What is baseball? You’re thinking of the Red Sox.”

Peter becomes understandably rankled. Of course, since the Observers control Earth, Peter can’t exactly kick the Observer’s ass.

Now human beings don’t have the ability to read minds. But the Observer here does sound an awful lot like a guy who has surgically implanted Google Glass into his skull. And Glass, as it stands right now, isn’t really that far away from this. Imagine some creep overhearing a conversation in a store and using the details he overhears to Google you on Glass. Because the conversationalists know they are being observed and they know that the creep can indite more data about you, the promising banter becomes stillborn.

The “One Day” video prides itself on the user asking Google Glass, rather than a Strand Books employee, where the music section is in the store. As someone who has entered into several jocular conversations with the wonderful employees of the Strand (and who has been recommended interesting books and informed of news that I would never have thought to look up), the idea of abandoning that part of my life because a few insensitive technicians who aren’t even interested in books would rather spy on me fills me with the kind of violent fury I usually reserve for rapists, Jay Leno, and union busters.


ARGUMENT THIRTY-ONE
It could discourage companies from hiring people.

I’ve already touched upon needless prejudices against potential employees in Argument Three, but there’s another problematic future ahead for labor. When the national unemployment rate continues to hover around 8%, and well-qualified candidates are humiliated by an employer’s quest for perfection, companies could decide not to hire professional greeters or retail employees if they know that people can get the information for free through Google Glass. I’ve already discussed the assault upon conversations in Argument Thirty. But imagine the further erosion of customer service. What if you can’t have a face-to-face conversation with a store manager to get a refund or explain why a product is bad? What if you’re directed to a faceless form-style interface where not a single person can be held accountable? This will be bad for the future of labor and customer service.

staceysgone


ARGUMENT THIRTY-TWO
It will create unfair advantages for online retailers.

In late 2011, Amazon committed one of the most dastardly iron-to-the-knees acts in its history: it sent around a promotion link urging people to go into brick-and-mortar stores and scan books using a price check app, where the customer could then get a better deal at the online retailer. The novelist Richard Russo took to the New York Times:

The fickle gratitude of people who will have about as much loyalty to Amazon tomorrow as they do today to Barnes & Noble, last year’s bully? This is good business? Is it just me, or does it feel as if the Amazon brass decided to spend the holidays in the Caribbean and left in charge of the company a computer that’s fallen head over heels in love with its own algorithms?

The assaults on showrooming have been well documented. GetElastic’s Linda Bustos has pointed out how Google’s mobile Search app supports image capture search. Just like Amazon’s Price Check app, this means that if you aim the camera at a book’s barcode with your phone, Google Search will bring up an option to search Google Shopping or to view the book in Google Books. This also allows Google Search to produce the “nearby” vendor results so you can search for a better deal elsewhere. For struggling independent bookstores, a customer donning Google Glass with built-in ISBN capture search could be a greater threat than the Amazon Price Check contretemps. But if Glass users get more accustomed to using brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for a purchase they can make online, this could have a devastating effect on retail outlets, especially the small ones.

googleglass3


ARGUMENT THIRTY-THREE
It could usher in a new form of vertical integration and that does not compensate talent.

In the early days of motion pictures, studios not only made all the movies, but they also owned most of the theaters. During the first half of the 20th century, there was a good chance that you frequented a house owned by a studio which played nothing but studio movies. This was one of the most famous examples of vertical integration, where a business controls both the suppliers and buyers. Adolph Zukor came up with the idea of block booking, which allowed Paramount to sell its films in packages. If a movie theater wanted a big ticket picture, then the theater would also have to buy countless dogs. This meant that studios could get away with flooding the theaters with inferior pictures and securing a market. Many independent producers couldn’t get their movies into theaters.

But United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948) put a stop to this practice. The Supreme Court ordered studios to split their production and exhibition companies and/or sell off any theaters they owned. This resulted in many “art house” theaters filling screens with independent and foreign fare.

All this is happening again with Google. It is quite likely that you have a Gmail account, that you use Google to search the Internet, that you are using a smartphone running Android (an open-source operating system backed and owned by Google), and that you are uploading videos to YouTube. Google is so good at eluding antitrust charges that, only a few months ago, the Federal Trade Commission was forced to abandon a sweeping antitrust investigation after 18 months.

Perhaps what we’re really talking about is a new form of vertical integration. Google survives by controlling the services while its users create the content. Google will profit from Glass sales. It will rake in cash through advertising on the “theaters” it owns through YouTube. But Glass wearers are ultimately the ones who are generating these new movies. Don’t these new auteurs (or the random strangers who end up “starring” in these videos) deserve a take of the profits? While it’s true that YouTube extended revenue sharing to viral videos a few years ago and that the “Charlie Bit My Finger” video earned Howard Davies-Carr more than $158,000, one must legitimately ask if this is enough reimbursement for a video that has been viewed half a billion times. Or how about Psy’s “Gangnam Style”? Is $870,000 fair compensation for a video seen by nearly 1.5 billion people? (To get a real sense of how YouTube cheaps out, consider that Robert Downey, Jr. earned more than $50 million for The Avengers, which has grossed $1.5 billion worldwide.)

YouTube is clearly underpaying its talent. And Google hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about how much it collects from a viral video. But YouTube did make $50 billion in revenue last year, or more than 33 times the total gross on The Avengers. The irony here is that Hollywood has been more munificent towards its talent than Google. Hollywood has to pay scale. Why shouldn’t Google?

We can expect more of the same stinginess with Glass as more viral video stars are proliferated and Google rakes in a greater share than it deserves.

phoneaccident


ARGUMENT THIRTY-FOUR
It will make driving dangerous.

In 2011, the Governors Highway Safety Association conducted a study revealing that smartphones were responsible for 15 to 25% of all traffic accidents. Yet David Pogue — arguably the most unimpeachable journalist who has ever worked at The New York Times — was quick to point out that “the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re talking or driving or reading.” But will Google Glass have something akin to an airplane mode for these activities? Indeed, why does one need to wear the glasses all the time? Would not a driver have a temptation to chat with a friend while driving? And could that continuous partial attention cause more collisions?


ARGUMENT THIRTY-FIVE
It could attempt to erase people in need from existence, as well as serious problems that we cannot ignore.

Ayesha – TV Interview with Brian Lehrer from Hybrid Reality on Vimeo.

There was another helpful lead buried in Morozov’s New York Times essay, and it came from Ayesha Khanna. In the above interview with Brian Lehrer, Khanna identifies the forthcoming period of human history as “a hybrid age”:

The idea is that reality is no longer dominated by humans, but now we coexist with technology. Every single action, even emotional relationships that we have, are going to be mediated by technology. Let’s talk about a couple of examples. One example is augmented reality. Augmented reality allows you to have software that superimposes information on objects that you see. So if you take a camera of the Eiffel Tower, it will actually give you information of the history of the Eiffel Tower. Now in Germany, they’ve devised software that will actually allow you to delete that information as well. So if you decide you don’t like homeless people in your city, and you use this software and implant it in your contact lenses, then you won’t see them at all. So now we have enhanced our basic sense by using technology.

There is nothing “enhanced” at all in pretending that a homeless person doesn’t exist. It is bad enough that many of us live out our lives often pretending that a bedraggled man desperate for help and approaching us for spare change is invisible, but imagine a piece of software that would erase the homeless from your perceptual existence. I cannot think of a more inhumane and crassly automatic manner of living. What if Google (or some other authority) decided that other people or other viewpoints that we needed to hear should be erased? Is this really a life that we want mediated by technology? Morozov identifies this pathology as “solutionism,” whereby problems are solved in a pristine and roseate technological haze.

This sounds an awful lot like Jane McGonigal’s remarkably naive and insensitive vision of a world rooted around gamification, which I strongly condemned in a January 2011 essay. Judging from the early apps revealed at South by Southwest, Glass’s emphasis will revolve around the constant confirmation of one’s saccharine existence. In a story filed on March 11, 2013, Google “developer advocate” Timothy Jordan raved to The Verge about Path, an application that will flummox you with endless affirmation. “Path sends me pictures from the people I know really well and the people that I love,” gushes Jordan. “I can tap on any one of them to comment or choose an emoticon without breaking my stride.”

But what about the people you don’t know very well and need to learn from? Why the need for childish stimulation and constant multitasking? I’d like to see smug bastard select an emoticon without breaking his stride during an evening walk through northeast Detroit. That is, if he bothers to notice or give a damn about the very real people surviving near the edge of 8 Mile Road.

* * *

“This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” — Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone six years ago, he ignited a true revolution. He took three separate ideas (“Widespread iPod with touch controls,” “revolutionary mobile phone,” and “breakthrough Internet communicator”) and merged them into one device. Watching Jobs’s Macworld 2007 keynote today, it’s spellbinding to see Jobs place the iPhone into Apple’s legacy, demonstrate a clear historical trajectory of progressive invention, and clearly delineate how other competitors have gone wrong. Most importantly, everyone watching Jobs’s speech knows they can be a part of this revolution. Jobs is a digital Henry V rallying his troops. It’s San Francisco’s answer to St. Crispin’s Day. But in order to change the world, Jobs had to push his engineers to their breaking points, remain fastidious beyond reason on the design details, anticipate all problems in advance, and truly empower his consumers in terms they could easily understand.

Sergey Brin wants to change the world, but he doesn’t share any of these qualities. He is an unrehearsed man, awkward before a crowd, who invites nervousness rather than awe. He cannot explain in cogent terms how Glass can and should alter your life. What is Glass’s answer to Multi-Touch? What is Glass’s revolutionary UI? The fact that you can wear it? In his 2007 keynote address, Jobs articulated ten very specific iPhone functions that everyone could use. But in 2012, Brin warbled before the crowd, with a bunch of skydiving pals beaming back video on a screen in an auditorium. Jobs didn’t need skydivers and guys on mountain bikes to sell the iPhone. The proof was in the concept.

The difference here is palpable: Jobs believed that the iPhone was for everyone. For Brin, Glass is for a privileged elite. But if you want to start a revolution, then you need to know how to speak and appeal to the people. And you should really work out the kinks before you speak out.

Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers

So Google has released a new browser called Chrome. But I’ll never use it. And it’s because Chrome’s EULA wishes to take anything that I type into my browser window (which would include, ahem, this blog entry, any email I access through the Web, and just about anything else involving the Internet) and give it to Google for them to use for any purpose. From the EULA:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

I should note that “Services” is defined as “your use of Google’s products, software, services, and web sites,” but this is, to say the least, disingenuous. Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she “owns” the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. And if someone reveals highly personal information through Chrome — like, say, the details of one’s sex life, an early draft of a novel, or some very embarrassing incident — Google has the right to reprint this anywhere. And not only do they get to reprint this content, but they can likewise generate revenue from it. Revenue that should, by all rights, go to the person who authored the content in the first place.

You have to hand it to Google. They’ve hit upon a way to take what’s out there on the Web, monetize the content for their own purpose while screwing over the person who labored over the words. Will we see new clauses in publishing contracts contain provisos requesting authors not to use Google Chrome as a web browser? After all, if Google can reprint it, this pretty much eliminates intellectual property rights.

Is this Google’s crafty way of getting around all the YouTube lawsuits and angry publishers? After all, if the content was submitted through Google Chrome, well, Google can reuse it. So if Stephenie Meyer slips up again and she was using Chrome, well, she’ll have no grievance against Google when Google “reprints” it for its “Services.”

So use Google Chrome if you’re perfectly happy watching your words taken by Google. Use Google Chrome if you don’t value your work.

[UPDATE: Based on the public outcry, Google has amended Section 11.1 of the EULA to read as follows:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

The offending sentence has been removed. It’s very heartening to see that Google takes these concerns seriously. And because of this, I shall probably take Chrome for a test drive sometime this weekend.]

“Am I Being Detained?”

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

A Tumultuous Privacy of Storm

The Register: “This appears to be more than a mere argument in support of the constitutionality of a Congressional email privacy and access scheme. It represents what may be the fundamental governmental position on Constitutional email and electronic privacy – that there isn’t any. What is important in this case is not the ultimate resolution of that narrow issue, but the position that the United States government is taking on the entire issue of electronic privacy. That position, if accepted, may mean that the government can read anybody’s email at any time without a warrant.”

And They Wonder Why We Raise a Stink About Habeas Corpus

Washington Post: “The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.”

Oh, and, by the way, as of February 2008, if you leave to and from the United States by air or by sea, you will need special clearance from the same Automated Targeting System listed in this article. Your name will be fed into a computer and, before you can get your boarding pass, your name will be checked against a “risk factor” saved for forty years in the computers. The DHS, of course, has been sketchy about what details it has been collecting.

Take Care with the Noun Phrases You Type Into the Ether

Siva Vaidhyanathan: “Google’s not required to ensure that the search engine that would guide people to these books actually delivers good results. Google is not required to make sure that the scanning process actually gets every page of every book and makes it all clear. There are no requirements that Google use metadata effectively or the metadata certainly already attached to books. There’s no guarantee that Google will offer people the best possible results for their queries. And most importantly, Google does not do anything to protect user confidentiality and in the world of book searching this is a really important factor. It is an essential part of librarianship. It is an essential part of the ethics and policies of libraries. Users should not feel that their use of any sort of research material might someday come to light and be misinterpreted as some sort of nefarious activity. We should feel comfortable in our information seeking habits. And I’m afraid that Google corralling so many of our information seeking habits puts us all at risk.” (via Ron Silliman)

Google: Enabling Stalkers, One Feature at a Time

Google: “Starting today, Google Maps users can add a map to their website or blog just by copying & pasting a snippet of HTML. This new functionality enables Google Maps users to share and disseminate geographic information in the same way that YouTube users share videos. Bloggers and webmasters no longer need an API key or knowledge of Java Script to put a Google Map on their website or blog.”

I’m sure J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon will really appreciate this new feature once some bozo copies and pastes a snippet of HTML somewhere.

A Special Message from Google

Our Business Referral Representative program has proven so successful that we are, at long last, launching our Total Information Acquisition program. In our ongoing efforts to expand the Google database and invade the privacy of everyone, and leave nothing whatsoever left to the human imagination, Google wants to know everything about you, your friends, your peers, and it’s all fun and profitable! As a Total Information Acquisition Representative, you’ll visit local residences to collect information. It doesn’t matter if you break into these homes or befriend people. We’ll simply need you to collect data. What kind of furniture do they have? What’s in their refrigerators? When are they likely to be awake? Boxers or briefs? Are they slobs or neatniks?

We’ll then use all this information for Google Maps, Google AdWords, and a new social network called Google Humiliation. Just be sure to take a few digital photos of the residences that will appear in the Google Maps listing along with physical measurements and personal secrets that might be interesting. After the visit, you submit the residences’ info and photo(s) to Google through your Local Homeland Referrals Office, and we’ll pay you up to $10 for each listing that is approved by Google and verified by at least three of the Resident’s acquaintances.

In fact, if you met a Resident at a bar and secure your way into the Resident’s apartment (what you do with the Resident sexually is really none of our concern, although it would help Google tremendously if you could tell us how they are in the sack!), we’ll pay you extra!

All you need to be a successful Total Information Acquisition Representative is a passion for helping the world know more about Residents, a love of the Internet (some knowledge of how paparazzi photographers invade the lives of celebrities is great, too), and access to a computer and a digital camera.

Remember that Google is your friend. Forget the Fourth Amendment. As we all know, this quaint notion of being “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” is on the way out. This is the wave of the future! Together, we will disseminate every bit of knowledge about every person on the planet!

Privacy Invasion Spills Over Into Print

The Google Maps Street View was one thing. But a certain magazine, which I will not name or link to, has offered a map of New York for literary enthusiasts. The map in question contains both an address and a photo of a notable author’s house. I’m fairly certain that the magazine did not obtain permission from the author to do this. And I have a problem with this. Are not authors — or anyone, for that matter — entitled to some reasonable privacy? Granted, the true stalker lunatic will go to any lengths to discover a phone number or an address. But how is aiding and abetting a stalker a good thing? Is Gawker Stalker responsible for this trend? Who benefits by the dissemination of such private information? Or are we simply becoming a less private society and am I the only guy who gives a shit about it?

Sudafed Users Are Terrorists!

I went to pick up some Sudafed this morning and was shocked that I had to show my photo ID. Apparently, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, your driver’s license is taken, with all of the information recorded into a computer, and only then, after this five minutes of nonsense, are you able to purchase your Sudafed. The effort was initiated in October to go after methamphetamine labs. But this is an utterly debasing thing to go through when you’re standing in line feeling like shit and all you really want to do is rest up and get better. The other thing: does my name go into a fucking database because I had the temerity to want to cure my fucking cold? And is this really the best way to fight meth labs when these drug cooks are going to get their ephedrine elsewhere?

When Revelations Go Bad

When Simon Owens tried out his Craig’s List social experiment, he was discreet and respectful enough to edit out names, phone numbers, and photographs out of the responses.

Unfortunately, as Andy Baio reports, Jason Fortuny (a blogger who I will not link to) conducted the same experiment, but published his unedited results to a public forum. They contained photos, contact information, and the like. As a result, many of the men who responded to Fortuny’s stunt have begged him to remove the entries. Fortuny has refused. Here then is the moral question: How many marriages, relationships, and professional lives will be uprooted because of Fortuny’s antics? Because Fortuny derives great pleasure in ruining people?

This is unconscionable and invasive. But it is also, unfortunately, well within the law. Unless the victims of this hoax might somehow prove that they were misled or coerced, or suffered considerable emotional distress, I cannot see any restitution here. Further, even if a prosecuting attorney obtains a protective order, what is to prevent the information posted by Fortuny from being disseminated or mirrored somewhere else?

My own policy with emails and comments is to keep any personal information conveyed to me along these lines private or, should someone post a public comment with this kind of information, I will replace the numerals with Xs after I have approved it and released it to the public. I do this out of courtesy to any and all individuals who may not understand the virulent nature of the Internet.

It is Fortuny’s ethics here which must come into question. The Internet has long been a place where people have trusted the confessional timbre of email, shooting off incredibly personal messages and information through IMs and messages. But sent to the wrong party or through the wrong conduits, an innocuous revelation or a step forward at intimacy might prove to have serious ramifications.

Someone was going to come along and do something along these lines, exposing the dark underbelly of this mostly amicable beast. But this may set an unfortunate precedent. Will Fortuny’s stunt apply to online journalism? Will personal information extend to the infamous Apple case?

I will be watching these results with interest and concern.

Today in Investigative Journalism: A Widow Who Loves Her Micturating Dogs

New York Times: “No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from ‘numb fingers’ to ’60 single men’ to ‘dog that urinates on everything.’…It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs.”

One Step Closer to Bester’s “The Demolished Man”

Forbes: “Carnegie Mellon researcher Tanja Schultz says one possible application is a “silent” cell phone that can detect and translate unuttered phrases like ‘I’m in a meeting’ and ‘I’ll call you later.’ Japan’s NTT Docomo is working on a subvocal mobile phone operated by sensors worn on the fingers and thumb. A speaker grips his face, putting the sensors in contact with the cheekbone, upper lip and chin. So far Docomo’s system recognizes the five Japanese vowels 90% of the time.” (via MeFi)

Books Subject to Governmental Approval

The Book Standard reports that the House of Representatives have added a clause to the Children’s Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2005 in which books which offer “any visual depiction of simulated or sexually explicit conduct” or are “produced in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, or is shipped or transported or is intended for shipment or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce” must, as with pornography, report every performer portrayed in a visual depiction. In other words, if a photograph appears in a book depicting anything considered “sexually explicit” (a term that isn’t even defined by H.R. 4472, which suggests that this could apply to an innocuous image of two men kissing), the government wants to track your participation.

Of course, such a Stalinistic tactic does not, in fact, run directly counter to the First Amendment, but this does raise serious questions about whether certain performers might be audited or “investigated” simply because their work is considered “sexually explicit” by the U.S. government. Consider an author like William T. Vollmann, who regularly features provactive photographs by Ken Miller in his work, in an effort to chronicle the poor and the prostitutes. Will future editions of The Royal Family now have to be eviscerated of these photos?

Blind Zeal as Expertise

Timothy Naftali, a so-called “expert” in the history of intelligence and spying, has no clue what he’s talking about. The following interview is intended to be a discussion attempting to understand the complexities on why the U.S. government would need to skirt around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but Naftali’s gushing tone, to say nothing of his lack of nuance in examining the issue in question is baffling in its stupidity. Coming across as a big-time NSA booster on Morning Edition, Naftali let loose the following priapic monomania this morning. Amazingly, he’s an associate professor.

A: If you accept, and I do, that there is the possibility of al Qaeda or its affiiates having cells in this country, how do you monitor these people? If they’re changing their cell phones and if they’re moving from computer to computer. How do you do that?

Q: The PATRIOT Act appeared to address that very problem.

A: No, it didn’t.

Q: Made it possible to give a warrant that will follow an individual from one telephone to ano–

A: But what if you don’t know the individual, Steve? What if you’re looking for patterns of behavior? What if you don’t know the individual’s name?

Q: What if you don’t know the number? How do you follow one person around? From going into Wal-Mart and buying a cell phone?

A: You don’t follow one person around. What you do is you listen to conversations.

Q: You mean you listen to a million random conversations hoping to hear this guy?

A: The White House is saying that it is very careful not to listen to point-to-point conversations in the United States. From one point in the United States to another. But there is a way through data mining to analyze where calls originate and where they go. This is a — basically an attempt to look for patterns, use of words, length of telephone calls, length of email, frequency of these communications, both voice and data, and then to look for suspicious patterns. And how do you define suspicious? I don’t know. But the now Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Michael Hayden, has talked about there being a subtle soft trigger. A computer learns what’s suspicious and then it will act on its own. So what we’re talking about is a higher order — a smarter Google if you will.

* * *

In other words, the hard line being espoused here is a technological miracle for an unspecified and unproven pattern for unspecified profiles. Not even Naftali can determine what patterns might constitute “suspicious” behavior and yet he’s gung-ho to micturate on the Fourth Amendment entirely on speculation. I mean, am I suspicious because I happen to enjoy shopping for groceries at 3 AM? Or because I send emails at odd hours? Or, for that matter, have the courtesy to reply to people with lengthy emails? (Insomniacs, of course, are the most suspicious Americans of all.)

What makes Naftali sound even more like an insouciant fundamentalist is his notion that a self-learning computer that will magically stumble upon the right formula. In the interview, he doesn’t cite a single example why we should subscribe to this methodology, although he offers oblique references to John Poindexter’s TIA project (addressed in this letter).

Make no mistake: this is blind zeal masquerading poorly as analysis. It fails to offer a multilateral take on the subject. It fails to offer a solid benchmark on the current state of intelligence, whether there’s too much spying or not enough. It fails to consider the American concern for privacy or Plamegate or the considerable intelligence that the Bush administration failed to check up on before 9/11, well before the PATRIOT Act. (Could it be that the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA was doing just fine before any of this craziness went down and that the incompetence from top-level administration is the cause? Why is it that nobody bothers to dwell on this question?) It is exactly the kind of dangerous “expertise” that doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s wrong.

Why Current MTA Procedures Operating In Clear Violation of the Fourth Amendment Are a Terrible and Invasive Idea

Languor Management: “He was getting more and more suspicious of me, and aggressive. I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything I could have possibly done but I was scared to death about what would happen to me. I didn’t even want to move because I thought any sudden movement might give him a reason to shoot me….Why was he putting me through this? Why should I have to tell him that I hoping to have sex tonight? “

When You’re a Fink, You’re a Fink All the Way

If you have a Yahoo email account and you eventually find yourself writing about something that might be considered inexplicably dangerous (if not now, then perhaps in the not-too-distant future), you may want to ensure that your personal information is fabricated. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has confirmed that Yahoo provided journalist Shi To’s private information to Chinese authorities. The journalist was then sentenced to ten years in prison. What was Shi’s crime? He dared to spell out media restrictions in place within China. Former President Bill Clinton also weighed in at an Internet forum, saying, “The internet, no matter what political system a country has, and our political system is different from yours, the internet is having significant political and social consequences and they cannot be erased.” He then went into a panegyric about how none of this had any negative effects on e-commerce.

It’s good to know that in the Clinton and Yang vision of the Internet, business comes first and that political extradition and freedom of speech is as expungable as a spam message.

And So the Invasiveness Begins…

The FBI has issued the first demand for library records under the Patriot Act. The library in question is apparently somewhere in the Bridgeport, Connecticut. The ACLU said that it was barred from disclosing the identity of the specific location or the details of the FBI demand. But if the ACLU can’t get this out into the public, perhaps some enterprising citizen journalist (who has more time than I do today) might want to start making some calls. Here are some places to start.

Big Google is Watching You

Google Scholar is a very helpful resource. Say you need to find an obscure or out-of-print book. Well, punch it into Google Scholar, type in your ZIP code, and, shazam, a listing of libraries shows up. Even so, given that Google is the top dog search engine and has been criticized for its very serious privacy concerns, one wonders why Google would introduce a feature that bears such a striking correllation to related attributes within the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act authorizes the Department of Justice (and its related entities) to keep track of booklists that citizens check out at libraries or buy from bookstores, presumably based on the silly logic that anyone who reads A Catcher in the Rye (which would include a sizable cluster of high school students) is going to transform overnight into Mark David Chapman.

But Google Scholar fits the bill so exactly that one wonders what relationship the company might have with the government. If Google’s infamous cookie (which resides on a system until 2037) remains in play through Google Scholar, the big question is why does Google need this data? To service its users or to profit while compromising an individual’s privacy? What happens when a teenager trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation looks for a book on the subject to see if his urges are biologically normal? None of these very sizable concerns is addressed in the FAQ.

Harbingers of Horrific Plans

Bad reviews? Shoddy placement? Nope. Bruce Stockler says the biggest obstacle to publicizing a book is obituaries

The University of Michigan has launched a 20,000 volume digital collection. It uses a system similar to Amazon’s Search Inside the Book feature (minus the page limitation) and you can search through the entire collection for a specific word or phrase. But, unfortunately, there isn’t an author search. Some of the gems I’ve found include Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes (with such sterling prose as “Rienzi made no reply; he did not heed or hear him — dark and stern thoughts, thoughts in which were the germ of a mighty revolution, were at his heart.”), Seward Hilter’s Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports (“The females of the lower educational levels, Kinsey notes, had more often been afraid that masturbation would mean physical harm and also that it was abnormal and unnatural. We should note, however, that the women of the lower educational levels tend to marry at earlier ages, and that more of them might masturbate eventually if they postponed marriage to later ages.” Oh really?), the complete works of Coleridge, Guizot’s The History of Civilization, and some Thackeray.

De Niro and Scorsese are set to write a joint memoir. The director and star report that they have a unique writing approach. Before they begin each chapter, the two of them duke it out over who gets to sit in front of the computer. So far, Scorsese reports that he’s only lost one ear and three fingers.

Slightly old news, but the FBI reports to be on the lookout for almanac carriers. Anyone carrying an Information Please may very well be plotting terrorist activities, especially if the books are “annotated in suspicious ways.”