I'm more interested in the potential for the glasses seeing things and taking action without the user being involved.

That could do.... a lot. Good and bad.

A worker in a store/warehouse/wherever could effectively do inventory while doing other work...slowly, but constantly, and without disruption.

Ad companies could pay you to run software that will track all the brands that you see. If you think anonymizing data isn't enough now, imagine when there are even more potentially identifying variables.

That's just off the top of my head.

Is it just me, or do a surprising amount of dystopias involve ad companies?

Not just you. I think it's a societal reaction to being annoyed.

I actually liked the idea of tailored ads, originally. I wasn't rushing to give them my details, but I figured I was bombarded by ads anyway (this was back when google was the new crazy people thinking they could topple AltaVista, X10 pop-under ads were everywhere, and populating your /etc/hosts with false entries was your only adblocker) so it'd be nice to have those ads have a chance to be interesting.

But they didn't do what I wanted, or they barely did it. Instead they warred with the content I was trying to read, and they could go all out.

It's even a painful circle:

- a site has good content, but needs to pay costs, so they put up ads

- the ad companies get some results, but want more, so they make pushier, flashier, more animated ads

- Perhaps people find the content not worth this visual abuse, so they move on. Meaning the site is making less from the ads, so they put in more ads out of necessity.

Rinse, lather, repeat. (Though I really have no idea if that third step happens. It may just be the first two)

Perhaps if/when we have a real micropayments solution this can break, but currently any content that is paid for by ads tends to have only one-way incentives - be it the ads on TV, the radio DJs that have to rave about crap products, or whatever, we the audience can't _effectively_ vote with our dollars AGAINST the ads, so they have practically no limit to how pushy they get. (The ads in movie theaters aren't there to cover "free" content, but I've heard the margins in running a theatre are very thin, and you're still sort of a captive audience)

I wonder if that's because ad companies are inherently dystopic, or because ad companies are paying huge amounts of money to be constantly in everyone's head, and thus come easily to mind when thinking of possible futures (or indeed, anything else).

Probably some of both.

That's not a glasses advantage though. The smartphone in my hand does that (my smartphone, an overpowered barcode scanner)

> in my hand

That's the important part you're missing.

Having it always looking in the direction your head is facing is an advantage of the head mounted form factor even if it doesn't depend on the eyepiece display.

Not needing a hand to look at the output is an advantage of the eyepiece.

So, yeah, the glasses do make a difference over a smartphone in this use case.

A specially made hand held device could do it too, but it would still be a problem because you're using hands.

Could put it on your wrist, like QBs have. A fragile device on your head, over your eyes, still doesn't seem like the best solution.

Most safety equipment is designed for glasses and also works with google glass. Further, you want nothing strapped to you when dealing with heavy machinery not even a watch which means you would need to keep it in a pocket and use your hands to manipulate it.

PS: Even rings have cost many people their fingers.

> manufacturing industry

> in my hand

Gloves, dirty and thick.

TEMBA, HIS ARMS WIDE