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posted by janrinok on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the are-glassholes-too-unpopular? dept.

You might be forgiven for thinking Google Glass was a mere blip on the landscape of recent history, which raises the questions: Where is Glass? And what is its status?

Google Glass first arrived on the scene about a year-and-a-half ago, but has since been left to publicly pasture. Despite the initial troubles with battery life, a lack of apps, and even arriving to testers and developers without a particular pain point to solve, it was nevertheless widely lauded as the first major mainstream break into wearable technology.

Jump to today, and every company and their friends (and rivals) are developing wearable devices of variable shape and size, but now, according to Reuters, more than half the Glass developers it surveyed have since abandoned their projects for a number of reasons; not to mention that Glass creator Babak Parviz left Google for rival Amazon.

Wherever Google Glass is, it's not dead - yet - even though it smells funnier than usual. However, its future remains unknown.

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  • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:39AM (#116324)

    Isn't its purpose to collect yet more information for Google to process as it sees fit? So doesn't that mean that its future isn't unknown?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:53AM (#116357)

      they all got sucked into the glasshole

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @06:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @06:30AM (#116328)

    Targeted Individuals - Government and Military Weapons (Mind Games)

    ####

    Mirrored here under Fair Use -
    --
    Mind Games

    New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.

    By Sharon Weinberger
    Sunday, January 14, 2007

    IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN'T ACT THE PART. He is standing just where he said he would be, below the Philadelphia train station's World War II memorial -- a soaring statue of a winged angel embracing a fallen combatant, as if lifting him to heaven. Girard is wearing pressed khaki pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue button-down. He looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual Friday -- a local businessman with a wickedly dark sense of humor, which had become apparent when he said to look for him beneath "the angel sodomizing a dead soldier." At 70, he appears robust and healthy -- not the slightest bit disheveled or unusual-looking. He is also carrying a bag.

    Girard's description of himself is matter-of-fact, until he explains what's in the bag: documents he believes prove that the government is attempting to control his mind. He carries that black, weathered bag everywhere he goes. "Every time I go out, I'm prepared to come home and find everything is stolen," he says.

    The bag aside, Girard appears intelligent and coherent. At a table in front of Dunkin' Donuts inside the train station, Girard opens the bag and pulls out a thick stack of documents, carefully labeled and sorted with yellow sticky notes bearing neat block print. The documents are an authentic-looking mix of news stories, articles culled from military journals and even some declassified national security documents that do seem to show that the U.S. government has attempted to develop weapons that send voices into people's heads.

    "It's undeniable that the technology exists," Girard says, "but if you go to the police and say, 'I'm hearing voices,' they're going to lock you up for psychiatric evaluation."

    The thing that's missing from his bag -- the lack of which makes it hard to prove he isn't crazy -- is even a single document that would buttress the implausible notion that the government is currently targeting a large group of American citizens with mind-control technology. The only direct evidence for that, Girard admits, lies with alleged victims such as himself.

    And of those, there are many.

    IT'S 9:01 P.M. WHEN THE FIRST PERSON SPEAKS during the Saturday conference call.

    Unsure whether anyone else is on the line yet, the female caller throws out the first question: "You got gang stalking or V2K?" she asks no one in particular.

    There's a short, uncomfortable pause.

    "V2K, really bad. 24-7," a man replies.

    "Gang stalking," another woman says.

    "Oh, yeah, join the club," yet another man replies.

    The members of this confessional "club" are not your usual victims. This isn't a group for alcoholics, drug addicts or survivors of childhood abuse; the people connecting on the call are self-described victims of mind control -- people who believe they have been targeted by a secret government program that tracks them around the clock, using technology to probe and control their minds.

    The callers frequently refer to themselves as TIs, which is short for Targeted Individuals, and talk about V2K -- the official military abbreviation stands for "voice to skull" and denotes weapons that beam voices or sounds into the head. In their esoteric lexicon, "gang stalking" refers to the belief that they are being followed and harassed: by neighbors, strangers or colleagues who are agents for the government.

    A few more "hellos" are exchanged, interrupted by beeps signaling late arrivals: Bill from Columbus, Barbara from Philadelphia, Jim from California and a dozen or so others.

    Derrick Robinson, the conference call moderator, calls order.

    "It's five after 9," says Robinson, with the sweetly reasonable intonation of a late-night radio host. "Maybe we should go ahead and start."

    THE IDEA OF A GROUP OF PEOPLE CONVINCED THEY ARE TARGETED BY WEAPONS that can invade their minds has become a cultural joke, shorthanded by the image of solitary lunatics wearing tinfoil hats to deflect invisible mind beams. "Tinfoil hat," says Wikipedia, has become "a popular stereotype and term of derision; the phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and is associated with conspiracy theorists."

    In 2005, a group of MIT students conducted a formal study using aluminum foil and radio signals. Their surprising finding: Tinfoil hats may actually amplify radio frequency signals. Of course, the tech students meant the study as a joke.

    But during the Saturday conference call, the subject of aluminum foil is deadly serious. The MIT study had prompted renewed debate; while a few TIs realized it was a joke at their expense, some saw the findings as an explanation for why tinfoil didn't seem to stop the voices. Others vouched for the material.

    "Tinfoil helps tremendously," reports one conference call participant, who describes wrapping it around her body underneath her clothing.

    "Where do you put the tinfoil?" a man asks.

    "Anywhere, everywhere," she replies. "I even put it in a hat."

    A TI in an online mind-control forum recommends a Web site called "Block EMF" (as in electromagnetic frequencies), which advertises a full line of clothing, including aluminum-lined boxer shorts described as a "sheer, comfortable undergarment you can wear over your regular one to shield yourself from power lines and computer electric fields, and microwave, radar, and TV radiation." Similarly, a tinfoil hat disguised as a regular baseball cap is "smart and subtle."

    For all the scorn, the ranks of victims -- or people who believe they are victims -- are speaking up. In the course of the evening, there are as many as 40 clicks from people joining the call, and much larger numbers participate in the online forum, which has 143 members. A note there mentioning interest from a journalist prompted more than 200 e-mail responses.

    Until recently, people who believe the government is beaming voices into their heads would have added social isolation to their catalogue of woes. But now, many have discovered hundreds, possibly thousands, of others just like them all over the world. Web sites dedicated to electronic harassment and gang stalking have popped up in India, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Russia and elsewhere. Victims have begun to host support meetings in major cities, including Washington. Favorite topics at the meetings include lessons on how to build shields (the proverbial tinfoil hats), media and PR training, and possible legal strategies for outlawing mind control.

    The biggest hurdle for TIs is getting people to take their concerns seriously. A proposal made in 2001 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to ban "psychotronic weapons" (another common term for mind-control technology) was hailed by TIs as a great step forward. But the bill was widely derided by bloggers and columnists and quickly dropped.

    Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman, would not discuss mind control other than to say the proposal was part of broader legislation outlawing weapons in space. The bill was later reintroduced, minus the mind control. "It was not the concentration of the legislation, which is why it was tightened up and redrafted," was all Gordon would say.

    Unable to garner much support from their elected representatives, TIs have started their own PR campaign. And so, last spring, the Saturday conference calls centered on plans to hold a rally in Washington. A 2005 attempt at a rally drew a few dozen people and was ultimately rained out; the TIs were determined to make another go of it. Conversations focused around designing T-shirts, setting up congressional appointments, fundraising, creating a new Web site and formalizing a slogan. After some debate over whether to focus on gang stalking or mind control, the group came up with a compromise slogan that covered both: "Freedom From Covert Surveillance and Electronic Harassment."

    Conference call moderator Robinson, who says his gang stalking began when he worked at the National Security Agency in the 1980s, offers his assessment of the group's prospects: Maybe this rally wouldn't produce much press, but it's a first step. "I see this as a movement," he says. "We're picking up people all the time."

    HARLAN GIRARD SAYS HIS PROBLEMS BEGAN IN 1983, while he was a real estate developer in Los Angeles. The harassment was subtle at first: One day a woman pulled up in a car, wagged her finger at him, then sped away; he saw people running underneath his window at night; he noticed some of his neighbors seemed to be watching him; he heard someone moving in the crawl space under his apartment at night.

    Girard sought advice from this then-girlfriend, a practicing psychologist, whom he declines to identify. He says she told him, "Nobody can become psychotic in their late 40s." She said he didn't seem to manifest other symptoms of psychotic behavior -- he dressed well, paid his bills -- and, besides his claims of surveillance, which sounded paranoid, he behaved normally. "People who are psychotic are socially isolated," he recalls her saying.

    After a few months, Girard says, the harassment abruptly stopped. But the respite didn't last. In 1984, appropriately enough, things got seriously weird. He'd left his real estate career to return to school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was studying for a master's degree in landscape architecture. He harbored dreams of designing parks and public spaces. Then, he says, he began to hear voices. Girard could distinguish several different male voices, which came complete with a mental image of how the voices were being generated: from a recording studio, with "four slops sitting around a card table drinking beer," he says.

    The voices were crass but also strangely courteous, addressing him as "Mr. Girard."

    They taunted him. They asked him if he thought he was normal; they suggested he was going crazy. They insulted his classmates: When an overweight student showed up for a field trip in a white raincoat, they said, "Hey, Mr. Girard, doesn't she look like a refrigerator?"

    Six months after the voices began, they had another question for him: "Mr. Girard, Mr. Girard. Why aren't you dead yet?" At first, he recalls, the voices would speak just two or three times a day, but it escalated into a near-constant cacophony, often accompanied by severe pain all over his body -- which Girard now attributes to directed-energy weapons that can shoot invisible beams.

    The voices even suggested how he could figure out what was happening to him. He says they told him to go to the electrical engineering department to "tell them you're writing science fiction and you don't want to write anything inconsistent with physical reality. Then tell them exactly what has happened."

    Girard went and got some rudimentary explanations of how technology could explain some of the things he was describing.

    "Finally, I said: 'Look, I must come to the point, because I need answers. This is happening to me; it's not science fiction.'" They laughed.

    He got the same response from friends, he says. "They regarded me as crazy, which is a humiliating experience."

    When asked why he didn't consult a doctor about the voices and the pain, he says, "I don't dare start talking to people because of the potential stigma of it all. I don't want to be treated differently. Here I was in Philadelphia. Something was going on, I don't know any doctors . . . I know somebody's doing something to me."

    It was a struggle to graduate, he says, but he was determined, and he persevered. In 1988, the same year he finished his degree, his father died, leaving Girard an inheritance large enough that he did not have to work.

    So, instead of becoming a landscape architect, Girard began a full-time investigation of what was happening to him, often traveling to Washington in pursuit of government documents relating to mind control. He put an ad in a magazine seeking other victims. Only a few people responded. But over the years, as he met more and more people like himself, he grew convinced that he was part of what he calls an "electronic concentration camp."

    What he was finding on his research trips also buttressed his belief: Girard learned that in the 1950s, the CIA had drugged unwitting victims with LSD as part of a rogue mind-control experiment called MK-ULTRA. He came across references to the CIA seeking to influence the mind with electromagnetic fields. Then he found references in an academic research book to work that military researchers at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research had done in the 1970s with pulsed microwaves to transmit words that a subject would hear in his head. Elsewhere, he came across references to attempts to use electromagnetic energy, sound waves or microwave beams to cause non-lethal pain to the body. For every symptom he experienced, he believed he found references to a weapon that could cause it.

    How much of the research Girard cites checks out?

    Concerns about microwaves and mind control date to the 1960s, when the U.S. government discovered that its embassy in Moscow was being bombarded by low-level electromagnetic radiation. In 1965, according to declassified Defense Department documents, the Pentagon, at the behest of the White House, launched Project Pandora, top-secret research to explore the behavioral and biological effects of low-level microwaves. For approximately four years, the Pentagon conducted secret research: zapping monkeys; exposing unwitting sailors to microwave radiation; and conducting a host of other unusual experiments (a sub-project of Project Pandora was titled Project Bizarre). The results were mixed, and the program was plagued by disagreements and scientific squabbles. The "Moscow signal," as it was called, was eventually attributed to eavesdropping, not mind control, and Pandora ended in 1970. And with it, the military's research into so-called non-thermal microwave effects seemed to die out, at least in the unclassified realm.

    But there are hints of ongoing research: An academic paper written for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would use sound waves to send words into a person's head. "The signal can be a 'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage the enemy to surrender," the author concluded.

    In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. That work is frequently cited on mind-control Web sites. Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the research laboratory's directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab's policy not to comment on its microwave work.

    In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002 patent -- records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least through 2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear -- the research laboratory, citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials.

    The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal effects of microwaves. Yet Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, tagged microwave attacks against the human brain as part of future warfare in a 2001 presentation to the National Defense Industrial Association about "Future Strategic Issues."

    "That work is exceedingly sensitive" and unlikely to be reported in any unclassified documents, he says.

    Meanwhile, the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic radiation to create pain is well-known, as are some of the limitations of such weapons. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. So, yes, there is technology designed to beam painful invisible rays at humans, but the weapon seems to fall far short of what could account for many of the TIs' symptoms. While its exact range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700 meters, and the beam cannot penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Considering the size of the full-scale weapon, which resembles a satellite dish, and its operational limitations, the ability of the government or anyone else to shoot beams at hundreds of people -- on city streets, into their homes and while they travel in cars and planes -- is beyond improbable.

    But, given the history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be categorically dismissed.

    Girard, for his part, believes these weapons were not only developed but were also tested on him more than 20 years ago.

    What would the government gain by torturing him? Again, Girard found what he believed to be an explanation, or at least a precedent: During the Cold War, the government conducted radiation experiments on scores of unwitting victims, essentially using them as human guinea pigs. Girard came to believe that he, too, was a walking experiment.

    Not that Girard thinks his selection was totally random: He believes he was targeted because of a disparaging remark he made to a Republican fundraiser about George H.W. Bush in the early 1980s. Later, Girard says, the voices confirmed his suspicion.

    "One night I was going to bed; the usual drivel was going on," he says. "The constant stream of drivel. I was just about to go to bed, and a voice says: 'Mr. Girard, do you know who was in our studio with us? That was George Bush, vice president of the United States.'"

    GIRARD'S STORY, HOWEVER STRANGE, reflects what TIs around the world report: a chance encounter with a government agency or official, followed by surveillance and gang stalking, and then, in many cases, voices, and pain similar to electric shocks. Some in the community have taken it upon themselves to document as many cases as possible. One TI from California conducted about 50 interviews, narrowing the symptoms down to several major areas: "ringing in the ears," "manipulation of body parts," "hearing voices," "piercing sensation on skin," "sinus problems" and "sexual attacks." In fact, the TI continued, "many report the sensation of having their genitalia manipulated."

    Both male and female TIs report a variety of "attacks" to their sexual organs. "My testicles became so sore I could barely walk," Girard says of his early experiences. Others, however, report the attacks in the form of sexual stimulation, including one TI who claims he dropped out of the seminary after constant sexual stimulation by directed-energy weapons. Susan Sayler, a TI in San Diego, says many women among the TIs suffer from attacks to their sexual organs but are often embarrassed to talk about it with outsiders.

    "It's sporadic, you just never know when it will happen," she says. "A lot of the women say it's as soon as you lay down in bed -- that's when you would get hit the worst. It happened to me as I was driving, at odd times."

    What made her think it was an electronic attack and not just in her head? "There was no sexual attraction to a man when it would happen. That's what was wrong. It did not feel like a muscle spasm or whatever," she says. "It's so . . . electronic."

    Gloria Naylor, a renowned African American writer, seems to defy many of the stereotypes of someone who believes in mind control. A winner of the National Book Award, Naylor is best known for her acclaimed novel, The Women of Brewster Place, which described a group of women living in a poor urban neighborhood and was later made into a miniseries by Oprah Winfrey.

    But in 2005, she published a lesser-known work, 1996, a semi-autobiographical book describing her experience as a TI. "I didn't want to tell this story. It's going to take courage. Perhaps more courage than I possess, but they've left me no alternatives," Naylor writes at the beginning of her book. "I am in a battle for my mind. If I stop now, they'll have won, and I will lose myself." The book is coherent, if hard to believe. It's also marked by disturbing passages describing how Jewish American agents were responsible for Naylor's surveillance. "Of the many cars that kept coming and going down my road, most were driven by Jews," she writes in the book. When asked about that passage in a recent interview, she defended her logic: Being from New York, she claimed, she can recognize Jews.

    Naylor lives on a quiet street in Brooklyn in a majestic brownstone with an interior featuring intricate woodwork and tasteful decorations that attest to a successful literary career. She speaks about her situation calmly, occasionally laughing at her own predicament and her struggle with what she originally thought was mental illness. "I would observe myself," she explains. "I would lie in bed while the conversations were going on, and I'd ask: Maybe it is schizophrenia?"

    Like Girard, Naylor describes what she calls "street theater" -- incidents that might be dismissed by others as coincidental, but which Naylor believes were set up. She noticed suspicious cars driving by her isolated vacation home. On an airplane, fellow passengers mimicked her every movement -- like mimes on a street.

    Voices similar to those in Girard's case followed -- taunting voices cursing her, telling her she was stupid, that she couldn't write. Expletive-laced language filled her head. Naylor sought help from a psychiatrist and received a prescription for an antipsychotic drug. But the medication failed to stop the voices, she says, which only added to her conviction that the harassment was real.

    For almost four years, Naylor says, the voices prevented her from writing. In 2000, she says, around the time she discovered the mind-control forums, the voices stopped and the surveillance tapered off. It was then that she began writing 1996 as a "catharsis."

    Colleagues urged Naylor not to publish the book, saying she would destroy her reputation. But she did publish, albeit with a small publishing house. The book was generally ignored by critics but embraced by TIs.

    Naylor is not the first writer to describe such a personal descent. Evelyn Waugh, one of the great novelists of the 20th century, details similar experiences in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. Waugh's book, published in 1957, has eerie similarities to Naylor's.

    Embarking on a recuperative cruise, Pinfold begins to hear voices on the ship that he believes are part of a wireless system capable of broadcasting into his head; he believes the instigator recruited fellow passengers to act as operatives; and he describes "performances" put on by passengers directed at him yet meant to look innocuous to others.

    Waugh wrote his book several years after recovering from a similar episode and realizing that the voices and paranoia were the result of drug-induced hallucinations.

    Naylor, who hasn't written a book since 1996, is now back at work on an historical novel she hopes will return her to the literary mainstream. She remains convinced that she was targeted by mind control. The many echoes of her ordeal she sees on the mind-control forums reassure her she's not crazy, she says.

    Of course, some of the things she sees on the forum do strike her as crazy. "But who I am to say?" she says. "Maybe I sound crazy to somebody else."

    SOME TIS, SUCH AS ED MOORE, A YOUNG MEDICAL DOCTOR, take a slightly more skeptical approach. He criticizes what he calls the "wacky claims" of TIs who blame various government agencies or groups of people without any proof. "I have yet to see a claim of who is behind this that has any data to support it," he writes.

    Nonetheless, Moore still believes the voices in his head are the result of mind control and that the U.S. government is the most likely culprit. Moore started hearing voices in 2003, just as he completed his medical residency in anesthesiology; he was pulling an all-nighter studying for board exams when he heard voices coming from a nearby house commenting on him, on his abilities as a doctor, on his sanity. At first, he thought he was simply overhearing conversations through walls (much as Waugh's fictional alter ego first thought), but when no one else could hear the voices, he realized they were in his head. Moore went through a traumatic two years, including hospitalization for depression with auditory hallucinations.

    "One tries to convince friends and family that you are being electronically harassed with voices that only you can hear," he writes in an e-mail. "You learn to stop doing that. They don't believe you, and they become sad and concerned, and it amplifies your own depression when you have voices screaming at you and your friends and family looking at you as a helpless, sick, mentally unbalanced wreck."

    He says he grew frustrated with anti-psychotic medications meant to stop the voices, both because the treatments didn't work and because psychiatrists showed no interest in what the voices were telling him. He began to look for some other way to cope.

    "In March of 2005, I started looking up support groups on the Internet," he wrote. "My wife would cry when she would see these sites, knowing I still heard voices, but I did not know what else to do." In 2006, he says, his wife, who had stood by him for three years, filed for divorce.

    Moore, like other TIs, is cautious about sharing details of his life. He worries about looking foolish to friends and colleagues -- but he says that risk is ultimately worthwhile if he can bring attention to the issue.

    With his father's financial help, Moore is now studying for an electrical engineering degree at the University of Texas at San Antonio, hoping to prove that V2K, the technology to send voices into people's heads, is real. Being in school, around other people, helps him cope, he writes, but the voices continue to taunt him.

    Recently, he says, they told him: "We'll never stop [messing] with you."

    A WEEK BEFORE THE TIS RALLY ON THE NATIONAL MALL, John Alexander, one of the people whom Harlan Girard holds personally responsible for the voices in his head, is at a Chili's restaurant in Crystal City explaining over a Philly cheese steak and fries why the United States needs mind-control weapons.

    A former Green Beret who served in Vietnam, Alexander went on to a number of national security jobs, and rubbed shoulders with prominent military and political leaders. Long known for taking an interest in exotic weapons, his 1980 article, "The New Mental Battlefield," published in the Army journal Military Review, is cited by self-described victims as proof of his complicity in mind control. Now retired from the government and living in Las Vegas, Alexander continues to advise the military. He is in the Washington area that day for an official meeting.

    Beneath a shock of white hair is the mind of a self-styled military thinker. Alexander belongs to a particular set of Pentagon advisers who consider themselves defense intellectuals, focusing on big-picture issues, future threats and new capabilities. Alexander's career led him from work on sticky foam that would stop an enemy in his or her tracks to dalliances in paranormal studies and psychics, which he still defends as operationally useful.

    In an earlier phone conversation, Alexander said that in the 1990s, when he took part in briefings at the CIA, there was never any talk of "mind control, or mind-altering drugs or technologies, or anything like that."

    According to Alexander, the military and intelligence agencies were still scared by the excesses of MK-ULTRA, the infamous CIA program that involved, in part, slipping LSD to unsuspecting victims. "Until recently, anything that smacked of [mind control] was extremely dangerous" because Congress would simply take the money away, he said.

    Alexander acknowledged that "there were some abuses that took place," but added that, on the whole, "I would argue we threw the baby out with the bath water."

    But September 11, 2001, changed the mood in Washington, and some in the national security community are again expressing interest in mind control, particularly a younger generation of officials who weren't around for MK-ULTRA. "It's interesting, that it's coming back," Alexander observed.

    While Alexander scoffs at the notion that he is somehow part of an elaborate plot to control people's minds, he acknowledges support for learning how to tap into a potential enemy's brain. He gives as an example the possible use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, for lie detection. "Brain mapping" with fMRI theoretically could allow interrogators to know when someone is lying by watching for activity in particular parts of the brain. For interrogating terrorists, fMRI could come in handy, Alexander suggests. But any conceivable use of the technique would fall far short of the kind of mind-reading TIs complain about.

    Alexander also is intrigued by the possibility of using electronic means to modify behavior. The dilemma of the war on terrorism, he notes, is that it never ends. So what do you do with enemies, such as those at Guantanamo: keep them there forever? That's impractical. Behavior modification could be an alternative, he says.

    "Maybe I can fix you, or electronically neuter you, so it's safe to release you into society, so you won't come back and kill me," Alexander says. It's only a matter of time before technology allows that scenario to come true, he continues. "We're now getting to where we can do that." He pauses for a moment to take a bite of his sandwich. "Where does that fall in the ethics spectrum? That's a really tough question."

    When Alexander encounters a query he doesn't want to answer, such as one about the ethics of mind control, he smiles and raises his hands level to his chest, as if balancing two imaginary weights. In one hand is mind control and the sanctity of free thought -- and in the other hand, a tad higher -- is the war on terrorism.

    But none of this has anything to do with the TIs, he says. "Just because things are secret, people tend to extrapolate. Common sense does not prevail, and even when you point out huge leaps in logic that just cannot be true, they are not dissuaded."

    WHAT IS IT THAT BRINGS SOMEONE, EVEN AN INTELLIGENT PERSON, to ascribe the experience of hearing disembodied voices to government weapons?

    In her book, Abducted, Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy examines a group that has striking parallels to the TIs: people who believe they've been kidnapped by aliens. The similarities are often uncanny: Would-be abductees describe strange pains, and feelings of being watched or targeted. And although the alleged abductees don't generally have auditory hallucinations, they do sometimes believe that their thoughts are controlled by aliens, or that they've been implanted with advanced technology.

    (On the online forum, some TIs posted vociferous objections to the parallel, concerned that the public finds UFOs even weirder than mind control. "It will keep us all marginalized and discredited," one griped.)

    Clancy argues that the main reason people believe they've been abducted by aliens is that it provides them with a compelling narrative to explain their perception that strange things have happened to them, such as marks on their bodies (marks others would simply dismiss as bruises), stimulation to their sexual organs (as the TIs describe) or feelings of paranoia. "It's not just an explanation for your problems; it's a source of meaning for your life," Clancy says.

    In the case of TIs, mind-control weapons are an explanation for the voices they hear in their head. Socrates heard a voice and thought it was a demon; Joan of Arc heard voices from God. As one TI noted in an e-mail: "Each person undergoing this harassment is looking for the solution to the problem. Each person analyzes it through his or her own particular spectrum of beliefs. If you are a scientific-minded person, then you will probably analyze the situation from that perspective and conclude it must be done with some kind of electronic devices. If you are a religious person, you will see it as a struggle between the elements of whatever religion you believe in. If you are maybe, perhaps more eccentric, you may think that it is alien in nature."

    Or, if you happen to live in the United States in the early 21st century, you may fear the growing power of the NSA, CIA and FBI.

    Being a victim of government surveillance is also, arguably, better than being insane. In Waugh's novella based on his own painful experience, when Pinfold concludes that hidden technology is being used to infiltrate his brain, he "felt nothing but gratitude in his discovery." Why? "He might be unpopular; he might be ridiculous; but he was not mad."

    Ralph Hoffman, a professor of psychiatry at Yale who has studied auditory hallucinations, regularly sees people who believe the voices are a part of government harassment (others believe they are God, dead relatives or even ex-girlfriends). Not all people who hear voices are schizophrenic, he says, noting that people can hear voices episodically in highly emotional states. What exactly causes these voices is still unknown, but one thing is certain: People who think the voices are caused by some external force are rarely dissuaded from their delusional belief, he says. "These are highly emotional and gripping experiences that are so compelling for them that ordinary reality seems bland."

    Perhaps because the experience is so vivid, he says, even some of those who improve through treatment merely decide the medical regimen somehow helped protect their brain from government weapons.

    Scott Temple, a professor of psychiatry at Penn State University who has been involved in two recent studies of auditory hallucinations, notes that those who suffer such hallucinations frequently lack insight into their illness. Even among those who do understand they are sick, "that awareness comes and goes," he says. "People feel overwhelmed, and the delusional interpretations return."

    BACK AT THE PHILADELPHIA TRAIN STATION, Girard seems more agitated. In a meeting the week before, his "handlers" had spoken to him only briefly -- they weren't in the right position to attack him, Girard surmises, based on the lack of voices. Today, his conversation jumps more rapidly from one subject to the next: victims of radiation experiments, his hatred of George H.W. Bush, MK-ULTRA, his personal experiences.

    Asked about his studies at Penn, he replies by talking about his problems with reading: "I told you, everything I write they dictate to me," he says, referring again to the voices. "When I read, they're reading to me. My eyes go across; they're moving my eyes down the line. They're reading it to me. When I close the book, I can't remember a thing I read. That's why they do it."

    The week before, Girard had pointed to only one person who appeared suspicious to him -- a young African American man reading a book; this time, however, he hears more voices, which leads him to believe the station is crawling with agents.

    "Let's change our location," Girard says after a while. "I'm sure they have 40 or 50 people in here today. I escaped their surveillance last time -- they won't let that happen again."

    Asked to explain the connection between mind control and the University of Pennsylvania, which Girard alleges is involved in the conspiracy, he begins to talk about defense contractors located near the Philadelphia campus: "General Electric was right next to the parking garage; General Electric Space Systems occupies a huge building right over there. From that building, you could see into the studio where I was doing my work most of the time. I asked somebody what they were doing there. You know, it had to do with computers. GE Space Systems. They were supposed to be tracking missile debris from this location . . . pardon me. What was your question again?"

    Yet many parts of Girard's life seem to reflect that of any affluent 70-year-old bachelor. He travels frequently to France for extended vacations and takes part in French cultural activities in Philadelphia. He has set up a travel scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the name of his late mother, who attended school there (he changed his last name 27 years ago for "personal reasons"), and he travels to meet the students who benefit from the fund. And while the bulk of his time is spent on his research and writing about mind control, he has other interests. He follows politics and describes outings with friends and family members with whom he doesn't talk about mind control, knowing they would view it skeptically.

    Girard acknowledges that some of his experiences mirror symptoms of schizophrenia, but asked if he ever worried that the voices might in fact be caused by mental illness, he answers sharply with one word: "No."

    How, then, does he know the voices are real?

    "How do you know you know anything?" Girard replies. "How do you know I exist? How do you know this isn't a dream you're having, from which you'll wake up in a few minutes? I suppose that analogy is the closest thing: You know when you have a dream. Sometimes it could be perfectly lucid, but you know it's a dream."

    The very "realness" of the voices is the issue -- how do you disbelieve something you perceive as real? That's precisely what Hoffman, the Yale psychiatrist, points out: So lucid are the voices that the sufferers -- regardless of their educational level or self-awareness -- are unable to see them as anything but real. "One thing I can assure you," Hoffman says, "is that for them, it feels real."

    IT LOOKS ALMOST LIKE ANY OTHER SMALL POLITICAL RALLY IN WASHINGTON. Posters adorn the gate on the southwest side of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, as attendees set up a table with press materials, while volunteers test a loudspeaker and set out coolers filled with bottled water. The sun is out, the weather is perfect, and an eclectic collection of people from across the country has gathered to protest mind control.

    There is not a tinfoil hat to be seen. Only the posters and paraphernalia hint at the unusual. "Stop USA electronic harassment," urges one poster. "Directed Energy Assaults," reads another. Smaller signs in the shape of tombstones say, "RIP MKULTRA." The main display, set in front of the speaker's lectern has a more extended message: "HELP STOP HI-TECH ASSAULT PSYCHOTRONIC TORTURE."

    About 35 TIs show up for the June rally, in addition to a few friends and family members. Speakers alternate between giving personal testimonials and descriptions of research into mind-control technology. Most of the gawkers at the rally are foreign tourists. A few hecklers snicker at the signs, but mostly people are either confused or indifferent. The articles on mind control at the table -- from mainstream news magazines -- go untouched.

    "How can you expect people to get worked up over this if they don't care about eavesdropping or eminent domain?" one man challenges after stopping to flip through the literature. Mary Ann Stratton, who is manning the table, merely shrugs and smiles sadly. There is no answer: Everyone at the rally acknowledges it is an uphill battle.

    In general, the outlook for TIs is not good; many lose their jobs, houses and family. Depression is common. But for many at the rally, experiencing the community of mind-control victims seems to help. One TI, a man who had been a rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard before voices in his head sent him on a downward spiral, expressed the solace he found among fellow TIs in a long e-mail to another TI: "I think that the only people that can help are people going through the same thing. Everyone else will not believe you, or they are possibly involved."

    In the end, though, nothing could help him enough. In August 2006, he would commit suicide.

    But at least for the day, the rally is boosting TI spirits. Girard, in what for him is an ebullient mood, takes the microphone. A small crowd of tourists gathers at the sidelines, listening with casual interest. With the Capitol looming behind him, he reaches the crescendo of his speech, rallying the attendees to remember an important thing: They are part of a single community.

    "I've heard it said, 'We can't get anywhere because everyone's story is different.' We are all the same," Girard booms. "You knew someone with the power to commit you to the electronic concentration camp system."

    Several weeks after the rally, Girard shows up for a meeting with a reporter at the stately Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where he has stayed frequently over the two decades he has traveled to the capital to battle mind control. He walks in with a lit cigarette, which he apologetically puts out after a hotel employee tells him smoking isn't allowed anymore. He is half an hour late -- delayed, he says, by a meeting on Capitol Hill. Wearing a monogrammed dress shirt and tie, he looks, as always, serious and professional.

    Girard declines to mention whom on Capitol Hill he'd met with, other than to say it was a congressional staffer. Embarrassment is likely a factor: Girard readily acknowledges that most people he meets with, ranging from scholars to politicians, ignore his entreaties or dismiss him as a lunatic.

    Lately, his focus is on his Web site, which he sees as the culmination of nearly a quarter-century of research. When completed, it will contain more than 300 pages of documents. What next? Maybe he'll move to France (there are victims there, too), or maybe the U.S. government will finally just kill him, he says.

    Meanwhile, he is always searching for absolute proof that the government has decoded the brain. His latest interest is LifeLog, a project once funded by the Pentagon that he read about in Wired News. The article described it this way: "The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audiovisual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health."

    Girard suggests that the government, using similar technology, has "catalogued" his life over the past two years -- every sight and sound (Evelyn Waugh, in his mind-control book, writes about his character's similar fear that his harassers were creating a file of his entire life).

    Girard thinks the government can control his movements, inject thoughts into his head, cause him pain day and night. He believes that he will die a victim of mind control.

    Is there any reason for optimism?

    Girard hesitates, then asks a rhetorical question.

    "Why, despite all this, why am I the same person? Why am I Harlan Girard?"

    For all his anguish, be it the result of mental illness or, as Girard contends, government mind control, the voices haven't managed to conquer the thing that makes him who he is: Call it his consciousness, his intellect or, perhaps, his soul.

    "That's what they don't yet have," he says. After 22 years, "I'm still me."

    Sharon Weinberger is a Washington writer and author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Tuesday at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

    View all comments that have been posted about this article.
    © 2007 The Washington Post Company

    Source:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001399_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @06:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @06:41AM (#116332)

      tl;dr ... get over it ...

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:49AM

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:49AM (#116356) Journal

      Something I've never understood: what's the point of the "read more of this comment" link if it doesn't actually truncate the post? This has been a problem on Slashdot for as long as I can remember and SN inherited it. I thought maybe it was a poorly chosen default setting, but I didn't see anything that looked relevant.

      These sort of troll posts would be far less appealing to post if the truncating/read more actually worked.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:15AM

        by acid andy (1683) on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:15AM (#116364) Homepage Journal

        The trouble with "Read More" features is that when you're trying to fit text with a proportional font into a fixed size container, it's difficult to reliably measure exactly how many characters will fit, given differences in browser rendering engine, zoom levels, text size and the fonts installed on a user's system. There are ways to go about measuring it using javascript but I would question how reliable they would be in all those cases.

        Consequently if you estimate a cut-off position inaccurately you end up with either it cut off too early and loads of whitespace before the "Read More", or, worse, cut off too late and hardly any additional text shown and possibly text overflowing or clipped from the container.

        Having said that, your point still stands - for soylent the comment containers are variable sizes and it's not even tried to truncate that enormous comment at all.

        I realise I'm way off topic here, so with regard to Google Glass, could it be the backlash against the intrusive nature of someone recording you in public and bans on the product in many places that's had an impact on its status?

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
        • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:51AM

          by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:51AM (#116371) Journal

          Regarding the difficulty of truncation:

          I'd probably just go for the simple option of truncating at a certain number of characters, make the question of "but how many is good?" a setting in the preferences page, and try to pick a semi-reasonable default. You could even get fancy with it, probably: truncate if a single paragraph gets too long (wall-of-text), if the post has too many individual paragraphs, or finally if it just passes a certain overall length.

          No need to get ridiculously complicated, though. It doesn't have to be perfect for everybody, it just needs to break it somewhere that isn't completely insane by default.

          I realise I'm way off topic here, so with regard to Google Glass, could it be the backlash against the intrusive nature of someone recording you in public and bans on the product in many places that's had an impact on its status?

          I said something similar in a different comment. The fact that it's a recording device instead of an output device is a scary privacy nightmare. A lot of people don't even like being photographed (openly OR secretly), and they aren't going to appreciate people walking around with cameras strapped to their faces all day.

          Better to have it as an output device that another product sends data to, making it a fancy HUD with no ability to record. No fear of being recorded could reduce the 'glasshole' stigma, and it would be less worrisome to have the device blend into sunglasses or prescription lenses, which would also solve the "holy shit those are ugly" stigma, too.

          If they didn't have a way to send the captured data to another device, it wouldn't even matter that the glasses have a camera. They could use the camera internally to augment your vision with zoom or low-light visibility, and people generally wouldn't care because they'd have no way to send the recorded data out.

          The idea of the glasses has so much potential that we'll probably never see realised because some dipshit decided they needed to be a life-recording (and data-mining-for-google) device instead.

          • (Score: 1) by jmorris on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:47PM

            by jmorris (4844) on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:47PM (#116473)

            If they didn't have a way to send the captured data to another device..

            Defeats the purpose. The whole point was augmented reality and the glasses themselves are never likely (in our lifetime) to carry enough battery to support the computing needed to pull that off. So offloading to a more powerful device has to be part of the design.

            The dream is to be the ability to just walk around and have popups appear over people with their name and reminder notes, etc. Walk by a store and have a targeted ad popup. (it is google after all) If you are working, have notes and tech manuals appear on demand and already opened to the right place depending on what you are looking at. It need to know what you see to give you instantly usable information. Remember that it won't ever have much of a UI other than voice control and visual input.

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:05PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:05PM (#116479) Journal

            I'd truncate after a certain number of 80 character lines. Say 25. Carriage returns end a line, as usual. Etc. Html is only a little more difficult, generate the text and apply the same rules (i.e., linecount auto-increments after 80 characters or after a break).

            But sure, let the number of lines be user settable in preferences. Hell, even let max line length be settable, though that would be likely to cause confusion unless carefully explained. (You don't what that to be the limit for the actual line length, as that should change depending on the width of the window it's displayed in, merely to be a device for calculating where the truncation/continuation should happen.)

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 17 2014, @03:01PM

            by cykros (989) on Monday November 17 2014, @03:01PM (#116736)

            The idea of the glasses has so much potential that we'll probably never see realised because some dipshit decided they needed to be a life-recording (and data-mining-for-google) device instead.

            That's okay, the idea for Glass wasn't really Google's in the first place. There may be something earlier, but at the very least, William Gibson [wikipedia.org] was writing about augmented reality glasses all the way back when Linus was churning out the first release of the Linux kernel in '93. That they ever got the hype they did had more to do with how many people have been drooling over the prospect of them since that book (and obviously others that have used the idea of augmented reality glasses, such as Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez) came out. Sadly, Google didn't bring reality even close to living up to the fiction surrounding Glass, outside of the massive cost that Gibson ascribed to his augmented reality glasses, which was perhaps the worst aspect of all to emulate about the fiction. Twice the price of an HTC One M8 for a device I'm more likely to break, with far less overall functionality, all to have a camera strapped to my face (and meanwhile, requires I have a smartphone to begin with)? Surely, nobody is surprised this particular product died in childbirth.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:36AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:36AM (#117036)

              1992 prior art [wikipedia.org]

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:12AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:12AM (#116338)

    It's too expensive. You can build a super sweet new computer for the same price.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20 2014, @07:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20 2014, @07:21PM (#118209)

      The current price is because it is a development device, it hasn't had a "public release" yet. If/when a version for the general public is released I would expect it to be *much* cheaper.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Jerry Smith on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:28AM

    by Jerry Smith (379) on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:28AM (#116342) Journal

    Even if the were 90% cheaper, a lot of people still wouldn't use one. Yes, buy one perhaps but it would end up in the drawer with the egg boiler, coffee mill and the juicer.

    --
    All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:06PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:06PM (#116373) Journal

      The same thing is happening now with tablets, which is why damned near every place has a dual or quad tablet for $30-$40 on black friday. the folks that bought tablets ended up with them in a sock drawer because their phones took the ultra portable spot and the desktop/laptop took the work spot so tablets are quickly becoming just another fad.

      As for Glass I'd say stick a fork, the early birds are all playing with the Rift and Joe Average don't want the thing, its a solution in search of a problem.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 1) by dlb on Sunday November 16 2014, @03:02PM

        by dlb (4790) on Sunday November 16 2014, @03:02PM (#116408)

        The same thing is happening now with tablets

        Could well be the case, but my anecdotal observations is that tablets are nicely filling a niche for users who enjoy doing such things as sitting on the couch surfing the net or playing the many popular app games. And they also seem to be doing well with the k-12 education folks, especially the iPad. The walled-garden is sometimes a good thing, especially when trying to keep students on task and out of certain online places that would get their parents upset should they venture into them. Also, administering and tech supporting hundred or thousands of iPads is far easier than trying to do the same with laptops. Much easier. Google glasses, in my opinion, seem far too involved for most of us to bother with. A tablet, on the other hand, brings simplicity to the user. That's a strong selling point.

        • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:18PM

          by melikamp (1886) on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:18PM (#116449) Journal

          And they also seem to be doing well with the k-12 education folks, especially the iPad.

          I am not disputing anything you said, and actually think you are totally spot on. But it is just fucking sad that the iPad, which is by design a device that trades games for spying on user, is even considered in education. Making students sit through commercial product ads would be a similar level of corruption, and I am sure it is happening somewhere in the US too...

          • (Score: 1) by dlb on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:46PM

            by dlb (4790) on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:46PM (#116472)

            But it is just fucking sad that the iPad ... is even considered in education.

            The trade off for the ease of implementation and support is having the kids use a predominantly consuming device rather than one designed for producing and/or creating. Typing, graphics, video and such are painful on an iPad compared to a desktop. And then there's the whole "spying on the user" thing you mentioned. I agree, Apple is not a corporation that I trust...but no more than I trust Google and MS...and all the Oracles, Dells, HPs, and other corporations. (I don't fear falling into a police state, I fear the growing corporate state.)

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 17 2014, @06:59AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday November 17 2014, @06:59AM (#116621) Journal

          Uhhh that is what the 5 inch smartphone sitting in your pocket is for AND it makes calls AND txts AND sms AND is a camera AND plays games...see the problem? While its easy to get the phone to do everything the tablet can do it is NOT possible to do the inverse.

          And are you REALLY gonna bring up the iPad in class when it looks like the LA school board decided to spend a billion just to get away from iPads [modmyi.com]? and I can produce others showing the same trend, the tablets are being dropped for laptops and Chromebooks because hey! The more powerful device with a keyboard is just naturally more useful for roles where typing is required.

          Mark my words tablets are going the way of the eReader...remember in the late 90s when the press hyped the fuck out of those? Where are they? they are a little niche in a VERY big pond, that's where! Don't get me wrong tablets DO have their place, I'm arguing that its not with the majority, its with specialized roles. Your medical workers, the guy taking inventory, any kind of job requiring field agents like insurance claims, in those kind of situations a tablet makes sense, but for the masses? Maybe a cheap tablet for the kiddies, that's it.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 17 2014, @03:07PM

            by cykros (989) on Monday November 17 2014, @03:07PM (#116740)

            While eReaders are indeed redundant in most day to day life, the 3 weeks of battery life I get on my Nook Simpletouch is by far the most impressive power efficiency of any of my devices. That, when rooted, it'll give me some basic utilities isn't bad either. Definitely a device I wouldn't go on a camping trip without.

            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:09AM

              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday November 18 2014, @12:09AM (#117020) Journal

              But do you think the masses would actually use the thing or toss it in a drawer? That is what I was getting at, that while it will find a niche, just as netbooks can still sell to a certain audience, the masses simply won't find a use for it. This is why the tablets are being dumped on the market for BF, the retailers are seeing the sales drop like a stone and want to unload 'em before the market completely dies. My guess is the future of tablets is glorified video players for kiddies and a few niches like medical while the rest just use smartphones.

              --
              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 17 2014, @05:17AM

        by cykros (989) on Monday November 17 2014, @05:17AM (#116597)

        Eh, tablets are just getting stuffed in a drawer because nobody reads anymore. Sure, getting a smartphone got me using my 7" tablet less, but unless I plan on giving up reading books, I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

        Also, sure, the phone is a great handheld mobile device, but if I've got a paper to type up, it's the tablet I'll be pairing the bluetooth keyboard with before even remotely considering trying it on the phone. 4" screens just don't cut it for productivity tasks in most cases.

        On the other hand, I'm still not sure what I'd really do with Glass on any kind of regular basis. If it had been more of an overlay over normal field of vision rather than a HUD type display, with good app support, perhaps, but outside of gaming, I have to admit, I don't see much reason to want one other than an unhealthy obsession with cyberpunk literature. Most of anything that ever comes up as a cool idea has some glaring reason why it's just not likely to get done at this time.

        With any luck though, Glass will just end up being the early MS smartphone equivalent in the wearable market. A flop, but one that at least puts someone in a position to know which pitfalls to avoid moving forward, though, truth be told, anyone who saw it doing all that well at $1500 probably lives in San Francisco to begin with...

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 17 2014, @12:36PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 17 2014, @12:36PM (#116674)

        Whats killing the cheap tablets is shipping 320x240 screens and android 2.0 software and the worlds smallest battery that only "runs" for about a half hour, despite it being Nov 2014. That poisons the market into people thinking all tablets are garbage (no, but the $40 ones are definitely garbage and don't even make good doorstops...)

        The standard SN car analogy would be like dumping 1970s american cars or 1980s yugos onto the market flooding everything else out. Then they'll act surprised when nobody trusts the new BMW at first glance after the flood is over. Amusingly the enviro people never try this strategy to break the american addiction to cars, although it would work pretty well.

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday November 21 2014, @06:53AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Friday November 21 2014, @06:53AM (#118403) Journal

          Uhhhh...the average tablet on BFADS.net is a dual core 1GHz with a 1078x800 resolution and 8GB of storage so...nope. Its just folks simply can't find a use or the things. Hell my family are serious early adopters and the only tablet? Ended up in the sock drawer of the youngest boy as nobody could figure out a use for the thing.

          Hell I had a customer trying to sell me a damned nice dual core tablet for $30 and as I told him "What would I do with the thing?" and he said "Now you know why I want to get rid of it!". The phone in my shirt pocket handles quick lookups, my AMD netbook handles the portable work role, hell with Windows 10 it makes a great portable media tank, and at home I got a loaded hexacore that is a multitasking beast...where would the tablet fit in? Give me a screen in the shitter?

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:19AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:19AM (#116351)

    What did you expect? It having a future???

  • (Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:24AM

    by ticho (89) on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:24AM (#116352) Homepage Journal

    It's just google throwing crap at the walls to see what sticks. The Glass stuck for a while, but not enough- it then inevitably slid down the wall, leaving a smelly stain that will take a while to get rid of.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by E_NOENT on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:54AM

      by E_NOENT (630) on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:54AM (#116358) Journal

      I'm semi-surprised the whole "augmented reality" trend has had such difficulty catching on.

      A few years ago when phones started showing up with GPS and accelerometers, it seemed pretty cool (if cumbersome)--being able to superpose information on the view through a phone camera. The idea of Google glass seemed like the holy grail at the time: a wearable piece of tech that would usher in the era of augmented reality.

      Interesting it's tanking so badly. Any ideas why?

      --
      I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:05AM (#116363)

        I am not affiliated with Google and have little interest in Google glass so this is just a wild guess. Perhaps it is because Google aren't concerned with making the best product for the wearer but rather the best product to support their main business (advertising).

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @03:26PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @03:26PM (#116414)

          And yet they've banned apps from advertising on the platform.

      • (Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 17 2014, @03:23PM

        by cykros (989) on Monday November 17 2014, @03:23PM (#116748)

        Part of the issue with augmented reality is that with current tech levels anyway, it is almost necessarily synonymous with MASSIVE data mining and privacy breaches, the likes of which make Facebook seem tame by comparison. Just look at how people respond to Ingress or Field Trip (two of the more popular AR apps put out by Niantic, one of Google's subsidiaries). If you want to be able to say, walk through a city, and have perhaps the dates of building dates and perhaps their names hover over the door, chances are, that information (and whatever else you're expecting your device to do) just isn't being stored locally, but rather is using some cloud service or other, and unlike just plain data storage, with every query to the cloud, you're sending gps data as an absolutely necessary part of that query.

        Now, surely, someone will point out that "the average person doesn't really worry about privacy much anyway", and from the look of things today, you'd be right. But I would contend that the market for interesting AR applications at this point anyway isn't the average person, but rather, those of us who grew up consuming science fiction and generally nerding out. And surprise surprise, we're a bit more privacy conscious than the average bear.

        The real trick I think is going to be really giving average folks a reason that AR is going to be indispensable to them. I don't actually see the privacy implications getting much better all that soon. It's not impossible, but would require large data syncs to local storage periodically, something not many people want on their monthly data bill, and being expected to sync with a computer to do it wouldn't exactly make it likely to happen. Make it something that saves people a few hours a month while giving them easily accessed new and useful information however, and we can probably expect to see some decent growth. It will, however, almost certainly be a bit more like gardening and less like opening the gates at a race track. Not everyone bought a personal computer in 1985, not everyone bought the first smartphone when Microsoft dropped it stillborn on the market, and not everyone is going to buy the first AR glasses or whatever other form factor winds up being used. Hopefully though, we can at least get information out of the failures that happen enough to craft the product that people WILL find useful. I think noting how many specific workplace related uses Glass is being considered for, and looking into tailored products rather than a general purpose model for the masses, may be a better takeaway strategy at this point than many. How many people had cell phones for work only at first, and upon getting used to them, felt they needed one for personal life as well?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:02AM

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:02AM (#116360) Journal

      It's just google throwing crap at the walls to see what sticks. The Glass stuck for a while, but not enough- it then inevitably slid down the wall, leaving a smelly stain that will take a while to get rid of.

      Probably didn't stick because it got pushed as a 24/7 privacy violation toy instead of a personal HUD. Plus it looks dumb as hell because it stands out instead of blending into what you're already wearing.

      Also, the basic idea has a lot of potential, but it really needs to be a "read only" device: accept input and display it, without capability to output to other devices. Might have avoided the whole "glasshole" stigma if that had been the case, even without making them less of an eyesore.

      • (Score: 1) by ticho on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:41AM

        by ticho (89) on Sunday November 16 2014, @11:41AM (#116370) Homepage Journal

        Although a nice idea in theory, I don't think that is possible. If a device talks TCP, it can't not "output", since TCP is a two-way communication.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:15PM

          by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:15PM (#116374) Journal

          Although a nice idea in theory, I don't think that is possible. If a device talks TCP, it can't not "output", since TCP is a two-way communication.

          All that means is that TCP isn't the correct solution. Something else is, even if it has to be created first.

          Or maybe the camera and microphone could have been left out of the first models. Doesn't matter if the device can send data if it has no way to gather data to send back. It's functionally read-only at that point.

          Sure, you lose some interesting use cases, like using a camera and overlay to provide vision augmentation (zoom, low light vision), but it could still be a useful first-gen design until the needed one-way protocol is found or created. Better than having the device be DOA because everyone's (rightfully) concerned about being recorded constantly.

          Another reason lacking the recording capability would help: everyone carrying around recording tools 24/7 is a relatively new area for etiquette. Without decades of social norms setting precedent, we end up relying on each individual to decide whether it's rude to record or not in any situation, and most people just don't think about others when making those decisions. For the average person, consideration of whether other people want to be recorded or not doesn't matter. It's just "Do I want to record this? Yes. Fuck everyone else, then!"

          We haven't even ironed out what's appropriate public behaviour with a smartphone, so it should have been painfully obvious that strapping one on your face and turning on recording wasn't going to be well received.

          • (Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:05PM

            by ticho (89) on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:05PM (#116444) Homepage Journal

            All that means is that TCP isn't the correct solution. Something else is, even if it has to be created first.

            I'm not exactly sure how do you imagine this working. The device has to have some way to request the information it needs for it to be useful. Therefore it has to be able to transmit data somehow. An option would be to have it rely on pre-cached locally stored data (at home, via USB?) only.

            • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:51PM

              by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:51PM (#116454) Journal

              I'm not exactly sure how do you imagine this working. The device has to have some way to request the information it needs for it to be useful. Therefore it has to be able to transmit data somehow. An option would be to have it rely on pre-cached locally stored data (at home, via USB?) only.

              Maybe I'm just failing to understand something here, but why does it even need to request anything? Establish link with a device (some kind of Bluetooth-esque pairing), that device pushes data, and the glasses just output the data they get. A dumb display, nothing more. Your monitor doesn't need a full network stack and the ability to upload photos to dropbox, why should the glass?

              That's why I called it a HUD and didn't mention augmented reality stuff, because you could do the HUD without two-way communication. Use the phone's GPS for navigation and have directions appear on the HUD. Bring up important messages or caller information. Maybe even show fitness-related info that's being tied into these wearable toys so you can see heart rate and such real-time. Plus the vision augmentation example I made in the previous post; it could be a built-in feature that that's handled entirely by the headwear.

              It might not be as flashy a gimmick as drawing rendered objects onto your field of view or having the headwear automatically detect a person's face and then look them up online for you, but a dumb display that's always in your field of view and connected to your phone is still useful and far more acceptable than the privacy nightmare that glass currently is.

              • (Score: 1) by ticho on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:59PM

                by ticho (89) on Sunday November 16 2014, @07:59PM (#116476) Homepage Journal

                So you want to "demote" Glass to a mere phone accessory, something like a hands-free head set. I could go with that, yes.

                • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:46PM

                  by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:46PM (#116489) Journal

                  So you want to "demote" Glass to a mere phone accessory, something like a hands-free head set. I could go with that, yes.

                  Basically, yeah. Pair it up and it acts like a connected display. I'm picturing it being like the HUD in an FPS, mostly putting up useful information on the edges of your vision. You can still do some cool things while making it far more acceptable to the average person that way. Especially in the case of some kind of wearable that's indistinguishable from normal (sun)glasses, which would make people paranoid with the current incarnation of Glass.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:40PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:40PM (#116379)

          I think he's getting at, don't stick a camera in it.

          On one hand, I don't wear glasses so I'm not seeing myself start, other than sunglasses and I don't spend that much time outside overall.

          On the other hand, I haven't worn a watch since the 90s so I'm not seeing myself start, although pretty much everything but the touch UI on the watch would work as well or better on glasses.

          • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 16 2014, @01:53PM

            by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday November 16 2014, @01:53PM (#116400) Homepage
            Weird that you would word "don't stick a camera on it" as "[do] accept input". I certainly think that reducing its ability to accept input would have reduced the number of black eyes and broken noses.
            --
            Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 16 2014, @05:17PM (#116448)

      SNL killed it. Everyone saw the Weekend Update sketch [nbc.com] (the original was much longer, but they took it down).

      Nobody wants to pay $1500 to be a laughingstock.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:45PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:45PM (#116380)

    Where is Glass?

    Glass ran away to Vegas with Google Reader and eloped at the Elvis chapel. Apparently she's now pregnant with octoduplets of android watches (it makes her butt look fat) although it sounds like infant mortality is taking its toll and I donno if the watches are gonna make it. I heard rumors Google Wave is the actual babby daddy but thats just gossip.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:58PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Sunday November 16 2014, @12:58PM (#116389)

    TFA is ignoring the obvious: while it even uses the term "glasshole," it doesn't even mention the hostility the non-Glass-wearing public has to the device and those who wear it. I have only encountered Glassholes twice, and both times I gave them a steady glare until they either took off the device or left the room. I will not tolerate being filmed and tracked by Google because some hipster wants to show off his overpriced toy, and I will not let the Glassholes drive anonymity out of all public spaces.

    Good riddance.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 16 2014, @02:07PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday November 16 2014, @02:07PM (#116402) Homepage
      Given the lack of replies to this post already, quite what was it "trolling" for? Bad mod - what you really meant was "I disagree". And if you disagree, don't be a freaking coward, post your point of view, and enter the debate.

      Google glass never reached this far east, I'm not sure what I'd do if I were to see a pair on someone. I'm tempted to say that staring at them is probably the best solution to the problem as it's such a perfect match for the perceived wrong. I don't want to be watched, so I'm going to watch you in return. Sure, it's a public place, but there's a massive difference between "street photography", and "snooping".

      I kinda felt a bit guilty once doing my best to avoid staring at a group of 4 deaf people who were having a very heated argument in a harbour. It was fascinating to see - not a single sound was made, but there was so much action and so much emotion it was truly a spectacle. Even though it was a public place, it just felt inappropriate to take in this wonder of silent communication. It's hard to define, but sometimes you just know that something's not good. (Well, if you have a socially-aware conscience, that is.)
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:12PM

        by Sir Garlon (1264) on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:12PM (#116515)

        Well, possibly, the mod meant "you made your point in a needlessly belligerent way," which shoe might arguably fit. I was just trying to let that hostility show through. Maybe overdid it.

        --
        [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @05:08AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @05:08AM (#116594)

        Maybe, but bitching about moderation is a sure way to get modded down.

  • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:29PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday November 16 2014, @08:29PM (#116484)

    Google built it, hyped it, made it hard to get, and wanted developers to get it and come up with a killer app. No one ever did. No one ever came up with anything but niche apps. Nothing that would justify the eye-popping price. (Even the iPad wasn't that much.) Google could have debuted the device with a killer app that would make people want it, but they apparently didn't know what to do with it either. No one ever came up with anything to do with low-power computer + natural vision + GPS. So the glass had a short half-life and I knew it was over when early adopters were trying to unload theirs on ebay.

    This is why I am puzzled by Oculuwhatever's acquisition by FB - it's like glass, only less useful. If Oculuwhatever had a killer app, it would be 100x more killer on glass.

    And I'm also puzzled by the wristwatch trend, since we're finally liberated from wearing an anchor on our wrists by our phones. I felt a Pebble recently - so heavy! - and the one thing I didn't want to do was put it on my wrist.

    I can't blame anyone for trying something new. Any of these devices could have been big hits. But the reality factor doesn't seem to be the main thing. Look at Apple's hits: the iPhone was a phone, the iPad was a mobile YouTube client. They had clear reasons to get the thing even without developers coming up with new stuff. The glass had no real purpose all along.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 17 2014, @03:32PM

      by cykros (989) on Monday November 17 2014, @03:32PM (#116758)

      Oculus Rift is nowhere near as useless as Glass, unless you're writing off video games (a multibillion dollar industry) as entirely useless. Not that it doesn't have other uses (they're being used militarily by one of the Scandinavian countries anyway as a means of providing better visibility from the inside of a tank), but with gaming alone it absolutely is delivering the kind of immersive gaming that people have been craving for decades at this point, especially when paired with some of the next gen controllers on the market with accelerometers and interesting form factors, and perhaps an omnidirectional treadmill, so instead of holding down an analog stick when you want to run, you...well, RUN.

      That you can get everything I just mentioned above for a total of hundreds of dollars LESS than the cost of Google Glass probably doesn't help with Glass's adoption rate.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:17PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:17PM (#117337) Journal

        Remember in the days before smartphones, there were all these standalone devices to do IMs or Email or whatever else? Then smartphones came and all of that was one device. Hell even MP3 players have largely fallen to smartphones.

        Glass is the Peek of augmented reality. Largely DoA, more people wanting to hack the thing than actually use it. But the general idea will be back. The concept isn't a failure -- I'd bet it will be wildly successful -- it's just not ready yet.
        Oculus Rift is the flip phone in this analogy.

        In a few years you'll buy one device that combines the two. Immersive, 3D augmented reality. Wonder if kids one day soon will be playing Call of Duty overlaid on their own neighborhood streets? Hell, that just might be the killer app.

  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Sunday November 16 2014, @09:33PM

    by arslan (3462) on Sunday November 16 2014, @09:33PM (#116503)

    I wonder, if this tech came out say 5 years ago when everyone was still oblivious to the NSA spying and it was all just relegated to conspiracy theorist crackpots, whether this gadget would have fare better. The NSA probably would have loved it..

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:02PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:02PM (#117327) Journal

    So, does this mean I'll be able to pick one up real cheap soon?

    It's a self-contained device normally, right? Can I pull the sim card and tether it to my phone via Bluetooth or Wifi?

    Can I create custom voice commands?

    What I'm getting at is...can I buy a cheap Glass now that nobody wants one, and transform it into a Jarvis style interface for my home automation system?? Was just dreaming about that a couple days ago. That would be sweet. I don't even need any AI in the thing, just a way to program specific responses to specific commands. Or even just to forward those commands directly to a web interface. Was thinking of seeing if Amazon's new voice assistant stick could do it, but Glass would be even better...

    These things run Android, right? Is there a Cyanogenmod build yet? :)

    This is fantastic. The future is now...and it's on clearance!

  • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday November 19 2014, @03:46PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Wednesday November 19 2014, @03:46PM (#117718)
    It escaped on a Segway, and the two were last seen in the company of an Nokia N-Gage, headed in the direction of the Island of Misfit Toys.