Google Glass: Innovative or Invasive?

In class tonight, we started talking about Google Glass. If you haven't heard much about it, its a pretty interesting and innovative idea.

But, is it innovative or is it invasive?

How much of a threat is it to a person's privacy? Should Google be able to have access to us living in our life as well as all of the other data they have access to? When Google already has access to our search history, pictures, videos and lords knows what else, do we really want to give them access to even more? And how safe is all of this data going to be? How much of our personal information will Google be able to sell off to advertisers?

But most importantly, would you be willing to wear them? Would you be willing to spend roughly $1,500 for them?

I can't speak for everyone, and I surely wouldn't want that responsibility, but I think that these could be really amazing. As most of you can already tell, I live much of my life online. I don't have many qualms about posting where I am through foursquare, telling people what I'm thinking at a given moment via twitter, going into detail about topics on here, posting pictures on Instagram, and even posting videos (however rarely) on Youtube. To me, using Glass isn't a huge leap from using your everyday smartphone (although it is a much more advanced product).

While privacy is a concern for me, I don't think I'm as worried as other people around the web are. Google isn't forcing you to use or purchase Glass, so how much information you share is still up to you. What they can do with that information is what scares me a little. How safe will my information be? What will Google be able to do with the information they have? What should Google be able to access from my life? If I'm sharing a personal video meant only to be seen by one recipient, will there be rules about if Google can access it? What can Google do with the videos that I create? Who will Google be able to sell my information to?

There are a lot of unknowns about what Google will be able to do with the information they are gathering from the users of Glass. There are also a lot of laws and regulations being discussed in order to answer all of these questions (as well as so many others that I haven't even thought to ask) and it will be interesting to see how our legislators try to appease the potential buyers as well as Google.

Although, I know I wont be buying them not only do to the cost, but I think they're very unattractive. So hopefully they're doing some work with designers to make them fashionable.