Google Glass Will Make You Manly, Says Sergey Brin

BY RYAN TATE
02.27.13
2:23 PM

Google co-founder Sergey Brin talks about Google Glass at the TED conference in Long Beach. Photo: TED/Flickr

LONG BEACH, California — Google Glass will help fight the antisocial and “emasculating” habit of compulsive smartphone checking, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a surprise appearance at the TED Conference Wednesday.

In his 10-minute TED talk, Brin didn’t provide concrete new details on Glass, a cross between a smartphone and a pair of glasses. But he did confess that, having used Glass, he felt emasculated and isolated every time he checked his regular smartphone.

“You’re actually socially isolating yourself with your phone,” Brin told the audience. “I feel like it’s kind of emasculating…. You’re standing there just rubbing this featureless piece of glass.

In contrast to a smartphone, Google Glass allows people to keep their head up as digital information is overlaid onto their world, no matter where their gaze is pointed.

“I whip this out and focus on it as though I have something very important to attend to,” Brin added later, holding up his phone. “This [Google Glass] really takes away that excuse.… It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluded away in email or social posts.”

Brin also said Glass helps advance a longstanding dream of his to let users receive highly relevant information without actually having to run searches.

“My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all — the information would just come to you as you needed it,” Brin said. “This is the first form factor that can deliver that vision.”

Of course, devices like Google Glass are sure to have downsides as well. Hopefully not too many conversations fall dead as one party becomes immersed in highly targeted information overlaid onto their view of the other person. Surely losing your friend’s eye contact halfway through a sentence would be emasculating and socially isolating in its own way.

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/google-glass-at-ted/

BLOGGER COMMENT: Aside from the "Google Glass" hype and the rather poor and misdirected marketing effort here, Sergey has offered a compelling explanation for the recent growth of the facial hair fashion statement. As I recall, Sergey himself was clean-shaven until, presumably, he was feeling the full force of the emasculating use of smart phones. The fashion-forward unkempt facial hair look is, it seems, everywhere, especially amongst the most emasculated of us, the white male. As I recall it all began with the casual, unshaven (I work so hard I don't have time for razors) look sported by white males in every trendoid advertising venue from luxury auto commercials to the love car (Subaru), to award shows, hip tv series and the like. Complemented with, of course, the ubiquitous plaid shirt or sweater with untucked shirt tails. Shorty after, the iconic full beards began to appear...everywhere. I've been told this is all a reaction to the "metrosexual" look popular in urban environments a couple of years ago. But I think Sergey is onto something here. The fast track to "manliness" for many emasculated males is the beard. I remember reading in some social history of England awhile back that whenever England had a Queen men grew beards. Whatever...

I sported a full beard for many years when I was in academia and publishing. Nicely maintained. I thought it gave me gravitas:) Then came the carefully trimmed, Spanish-inspired beard. Finally, I did the mustache and, the mustache and goatee. I stopped growing facial hair when my beards caused some crazy itching.

My opinion on all this, gentlemen: there are many men who should never grow beards or five-o'clock shadows--you just don't have the hair, never will, and patchy facial hair will make you look like you have some sort of disease; facial hair will not make a "man" of you, whatever that means and, an unkept beard or shadow is just not that hot to most men or women--look at the mess Sergey's made of himself:)

As for Sergey's new look: I don't want that man messing with my data:) He seems to lack respect for his investors and consumers; he's playing to the IT people, and seems to have forgotten that the Silicon Valley wild boy look doesn't play much further than Silicon Valley and, well, he is no longer a "boy."