As Douglas Adams famously and incisively put it,

“There’s a set of rules that anything that was in the world when you were born is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you’ll probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”

I think I’ve found my first post-35 technology about five years early, and it’s Google’s glasses.

Figure a few years for this to make it into general use, and we’re bang on my age of transition, I guess. I can think of nothing I’d like less than having my field of vision partially obscured by whatever G-mail thinks is most worthy of my attention—new messages, helpful advice, or the inevitable location-based text ads. It is just not that difficult for me to reach into a pocket and check my phone when I want to see my e-mail.

Also: notice that none of the people encountered by the Google glasses-wearing fellow in the video are wearing Google glasses? That’s because even people who do want G-mail alerts directly in their eyes don’t want to live among the kind of socially stunted cyborgs we’d all become if we wore these things, talking to the air and pointing at things that exist only in cyberspace.

In short, ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh.◼