OBITCHUARY
GOOGLE GLASS CAUSE OF DEATH: Public Trial
By Thomas Beckley–Forest : Illustration by Rob Byers Google Glass was born in a wild blaze of glory. The reign of this futuristic, plastic spectacle over the cool gadget world was short but sweet, scoring him appearances on New York City’s fashion runways and the faces of awestruck world leaders. He was conceived by the mysteriously named Google X division and Sergey Brin, co– founder of Google and a certified king geek. At any given time he believed that he was only a few steps away from putting on a metal suit and flying around the country with Iron Man. His status as the golden boy of the Google Dynasty gave Brin a dangerous amount of confidence, leading him to parade Google Glass around in a place that the little guy simply wasn’t ready to be—the consumer market. It’s safe to say that Google Glass had a serious case of daddy issues. His hip and futuristic charm began to wear off once people realized that having a giant, superimposed digital picture constantly hovering in front of their faces might become dangerous when trying to, say, drive a car or fly a plane—both things that people are featured doing in Google Glass ads. It could also get annoying if you want to, say, live your life without a fucking
box of pixels hovering in front of your face. Google Glass also made the few people privileged enough to buy and wear his $1,500 prototypes inadvertently look like they’d walked off the set of the next RoboCop or Terminator sequel. Did Silicon Valley designers really think that making humans look and act like dystopian cyborgs was a worthwhile contribution to society? Google Glass certainly did. “I want to turn my brain into a Wi–Fi hotspot too,” people would say in this brave, new, post-Google Glass world. When it came to personal technology, Glass agreed that nothing was too intrusive. Google Glass finally died of complications due to what doctors believe was a fatal combination of media overexposure, unresolved technical problems, and mental stress that involved Brin leaving his wife for a fellow Google X developer. His memory lives on in advertisers’ dreams of getting as close to consumer eyes as possible. Google Glass is survived by his much more successful, younger cousin FitBit and his newborn nephew Apple Watch. They have vowed to honor his memory by annoying the public in the same way Google Glass would have: forever. JM
JERK
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