It is getting ever easier to record anything, or everything, that you see. This opens fascinating possibilities—and alarming ones
Take, for example, an idea on which Google applied for a patent in 2011: a camera that would keep track of which adverts and billboards its wearer noticed, and of any emotional responses they evoked. Glass cannot analyse its wearers’ world, or its wearers, anything like this well yet, and many companies patent ideas without planning to make use of them. But it is hardly paranoid to think that a company which says its mission is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” might be interested in looking over its users’ shoulders, if it can find a way to do so that they will think helpful and not find intrusive. If it could do so usefully and acceptably enough, Google could help users interrogate their own histories in much the same way as they now search for weather forecasts and celebrity news.
