Google Glass, the wearable robot eyeglasses rejected by consumers as a creepy invasion of personal privacy, has quietly been making a comeback, WIRED reports. Developers have made sure to keep their progress a secret this time, perhaps cowed by the proper thrashing they received from Matt Labash in these pages (“Through a Google Glass, Darkly,” April 28, 2014).
Glass, now named Glass EE (Enterprise Edition), has found a use on factory floors. Though just as charmingly borg-like as its predecessor, Glass EE is a professional tool. What was once an irritating plaything for the social media crazed has been repurposed for people on the job who need real-time information, hands-free.
General Electric says warehouse workers who use the devices are 46 percent more efficient, helping to avoid the need to automate more jobs. “There’s been concern about machines replacing human workers,” the company reports. Their experience “shows that, for many jobs, combinations of human and machine outperform either working alone.” Which sounds like a rare bit of good news for the endangered American worker, a way to stay relevant in this brave new world, with such robots in it.
Glass EE still has the potential to be creepy. There are doctors who have taken to wearing the spectacles, live-streaming their patient examinations to medical transcriptionists halfway around the world. Supposedly this frees them to spend less time on data entry and more meaningful face-to-face time with sick people. And no doubt everyone’s quite confident that all that live-streamed personal information is 100 percent secure and fully hardened against hacks. Yes, quite confident indeed.
Astro Teller, head of the division in charge of the project at Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has said “none of us have given up on the idea that over time Glass will become less and less intrusive, and that more and more people will use it.” Or perhaps, more and more people won’t have a choice but to wear the nasty things. Will the only way to beat the machines be to become one yourself?
