Google Glass smells bad

Scoble was at Coachella, an outdoor concert, and took his Google Glass off. Scoble did that. The original whore of Glass. He tells an interesting story. People don't like the association.

How I think of it: Google Glass has a bad smell. It's connected to the bus protests in SF. All the publicity about the 1 percent and the NSA news, Google gets black eyes all the time and never grows from it. Just like Microsoft in the 90s. People who think of themselves as super geniuses are awful at listening.

The message is this: 1. We love technology. 2. But we want to be creative with it, not be owned by it. 3. It was once cool to have billions of dollars. 4. Now, having all that money makes you something we don't understand, or like.

So wearing Google Glass says something about the person wearing it. You're owned and you don't mind if everyone knows. Even worse, you're an agent of ownedness. Because you're wearing that bad-smelling thing, the rest of us start to stink. Get away with that.

Now it's ironic that Scoble kind of gave Glass the bad smell in the first place. But that's the way it goes in the real world. For all the billions Google has, they have to do PR just like everyone else. For every Scoble they need five LeBrons to polish the image.

BTW, there's something really offensive about a super-rich company asking people to pay $1500 to beta-test their product. And this isn't just any super-rich company, it's the iconic one. The one people think of first when they think of super-rich. Did it ever occur to them that they might actually pay people to do their testing?? Like it's some kind of privilege to use an unfinished product? And what happens when 1.0 ships? Does everyone get a free upgrade? Or do they have to pay all over again?


Last built: Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 11:23 AM

By Dave Winer, Monday, April 21, 2014 at 11:39 AM. So, it has come to this.