Opinion Not so smart

Spare a moment for Google Glass and the revolution that never was, now that it has all but joined the great graveyard of technological detritus. Mountain View has announced that it is reorganising its Glass team and shutting down its “Explorers” programme.

Since it debuted in 2012, Google Glass has been a butt of jokes, suspicion and scepticism. Its original sin was that it looked somewhat dorky, and even celebrities couldn’t make it seem cool. Then early adopters — who had paid $1,500 to have the privilege of test-driving Google’s new moonshot — started questioning its usefulness. It detracted from interpersonal interaction, reported testers, and had limited functionality. Experience shows that people are willing to risk a certain amount of social ribbing for convenience — see the rise of Bluetooth headsets — and trade privacy for the same reason. But given the device’s poor reputation and high price tag, and the thought that Google, whose power and data collection already trouble many consumers, could now have a literal view into not just the Glass owner’s life but also the lives of those she interacted with, struck people as, well, creepy. It was quickly banned from cinema halls, for fear of copyright infringement, from restaurants, bars and even Google’s own shareholder meetings. In retrospect, it’s surprising Google Glass lasted as long as it did.

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But the idea behind Glass — of creating a new interface that frees our hands and still lets us look at a screen — holds appeal. Google, of course, recognises that and has left open the possibility that a commercial version of a retooled Glass might one day appear. In its next iteration, perhaps, it won’t make one look like the Borg while they skee20ve others out by recording their latest food-related mishap.