Google Glass Kiboshes Ass

The interwebs are atwitter with Google's bombshell of a move to ban porn from their already metaphorically masturbatory facial-computer, Google Glass. The story broke as developer company MiKandi became the first to create a pornography application for Glass, brilliantly titled Tits & Glass. Immediately following this development, Google pulled an "oh shit we had no IDEA people were going to try to use this for porn," and updated its developer policy:

1. Sexually Explicit Material: We don't allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of content with child pornography, we will report it to the appropriate authorities and delete the Google Accounts of those involved with the distribution.

Gotta love Google, veiling themselves with the cloak of morality: We're banning porn . . .  And we DEFINITELY don't want kiddie porn. In fact, if anyone tries to upload kiddie porn we will royally F*CK you because kiddie porn is REPUGNANT . . . have you forgotten about that first clause yet?

Besides the obviously Orwellian move to outright ban certain content from personal tech, the issue here is that Google clearly does not understand its target market.

Bro, can't WAIT for the Feministing.com app! 

That aside, readers should take note that Google's purist view on content is nothing new in the tech world. Recall in 2010 Steve Jobs dropped the "freedom from porn" line in an e-mail exchange with Gawker's Ryan Tate. The point is that as long as tech titans offer cutting-edge peripherals that make consumers feel good about themselves, no one is really going to give a shit what content gets banned.

The reality is that this story offers a nice distraction from the growing concern over Glass' face and voice recognition capabilities. In a clip from the IDG News Service's coverage of the Google IO convention, O'Reilly Media's VP of Content, Mike Hendrickson, encapsulates the debate perfectly:

" . . . so the creepy part is you could stalk people, the cool part is you can also remember names, which, if you're bad at remembering names, Glass could be a really good mnemonic for helping you do that,"

Remembering names.

Imagine you're at a bar and you recognize someone from across the room. Instead of being a complete creeper, walking up to them and saying, "hey I'm sorry, what's your name again?" you can just talk into the totally normal-looking wire frame on your face, focus in on the person, and BOOM, social awkwardness avoided!

Make out session brought to you by the Remember that Biddy app

But people, the team at American Difter would like to reassure you that Google is already taking measures to prevent these kinds of invasive, privacy-crushing capabilities. Let's revisit the platform developer policy concerning face/voice recognition apps:

1. Don't use the camera or microphone to cross-reference and immediately present personal information identifying anyone other than the user, including use cases such as facial recognition and voice print. Applications that do this will not be approved at this time.

Nothing says digital integrity like ". . . will not be approved at this time." 

Have a nice dift.