Note: Read.Me technology will at first be voluntary and fun, but as soon as governments figure out that personal RFID identification greatly decreases police and emergency response info-gathering, “Read.Me” RFIDs or some kind of readable, scannable ID will become not just a good idea, but the law. Of course it will first start with employers under the color of security, like the badges worn at many larger companies. Now a security guard (or janitor) can scan the room for people who may not belong there.

Facial recognition, of course, is involuntary, and it will take a bit more effort to construct profiles on everyone, but the data-mining effort required will be some work. With “Read.Me” however, you are voluntarily posting information about yourself to those within visual range. NOW, when you go into public with these glasses, people watching takes on a whole new meaning. You can read people involuntarily through facial recognition, checking out their Facebook, Twitter stream, blog & Pinterest pics — to help you decide whether you want to meet or not — or you can just keep stalking.

Now part of people watching is discretion, so people are going to want to have the invisible Google Glasses so that can observe people anonymously. This will create a huge upsurge in Oakley stocks, which I figure to be a Google takeover target within a year. Google Glasses (aka dataoptic scanners) will create a whole new product category equal to, if not surpassing, tablets.

When “Read.Me” is enabled “On”, you will see the person’s name floating above their head, which is the name they wish to be addressed by when approached by “Googler Glassers”. It might not be their real name — most likely their RFID nickname so that they know that you know them based only by scanning them.

Side Note: We already use the term Google to mean to look things up. Now we will have to have another term to describe being scanned by a Google optics wearer. Perhaps we will hear the sentence “did you see that chick over there? she just totally -glassed- me!” Maybe someone needs to go to the UrbanDictionary.com and put that entry in there right away!
Glass, glassing, glasses:
Meaning: to scan or to be scanned by dataoptic glasses, first introduced by Google, but quickly followed up by the competitive product iGlass from Apple…

The next iteration gets more interesting, however. When so many adopt voluntary Read.Me transmissions, there will be a need to filter out the interesting from the non. Imagine looking at a crowd and only seeing the “singles” in the crowd, or the Jews, or the above $250K net worth, or the Bentley owners, or dog owners? Yes, filtering will become very interesting, mostly likely opening up a huge business in APIs to integrate scanning with selected interests.

If, for example, you are into dating, then you could see other members of the same dating groups, such as eHarmony, It’s Just Lunch, or Plenty of Fish. No doubt their programmers are already whipping up wireframes for (dataoptic enabled) personal encounters. By using various memberships, we allow others in our affinity groups to see us, but those who are not “in the club” will never know. You could see whether a person is a MENSA member or in Ashley Madison.

All this does demonstrate that the backend work for dataoptics is going to be huge. No doubt the glasses alone won’t be sufficient, and there will be PC/tablet/TV/Smartphone integration.

The facial recognition side will grow as well, but the voluntary nature of FR is more difficult. If your profile is public on Facebook, then everyone will be able to see that. But what if you want a deeper view. Will there be a Law Enforcement (LE) view that let’s cop’s scan a crowd for those with outstanding warrants? How about Sex Offender Registries – will we all be able to see the digital “scarlet letters” SO next to their name as you glance towards them?

It’s going to be interesting to watch this arena of “View Management”. Can only cops have LE views? How about security guards? Or moms at playgrounds and teachers at public schools? Will teachers be able to view students with a GPA floating next to their name as they look over the class? Will the teachers now know the name of everyone in the school, or just the students enrolled in their classes. Will students be allowed to even where them at all? Will teachers be able to detect whether a student has “Read.Me” enabled during class. Will Cisco create a whole new line of classroom or office “scan jammers”?

Wow, is this ever going to be a ride…. tellray@gmail.com

Snore.

This isn’t grad school. No one cares about Foucauldian analysis. We all know that Foucalt was a fraud.

Well, at least those of us bold enough to read outside the syllabus and discover J.G. Merquior, who single-handedly established that Foucault was a charlatan.

If you want to minimize your digital footprint, don’t use social media. Buy a prepaid phone that doesn’t require registration, and use a prepaid plug-in modem that gives you a new IP address each time you get online. Give up a bit of convenience to maintain your privacy. Problem solved.

To some degree the social surveillance we’re beginning to experience is increasingly similar to small town or village life where everyone knows your business and anyone could be watching at anytime. It’s rather suffocating and is why so many people throughout history who didn’t want to conform left small towns for big cities.

My concern is what happens when the global village becomes as suffocating as podunk hollow.