The New “Google Glasses” Ad: Some Version of Hell

Google’s “augmented reality” glasses are upon us, complete with stylish company codename (“Project Glass”) and Orwellian rhetorical judo:

“People I have spoken with [i.e., Google employees] who have have seen Project Glass said there is a misconception that the glasses will interfere with people’s daily life too much, constantly streaming information to them and distracting from the real world. But these people say the glasses actually free people up from technology.” —Nick Bilton, Bits blog

Thanks be to Google technology for saving us from technology, through the same “let like be cured by like” principle that has made homeopathy a staple of Western medicine.

The ad below depicts the wonders of an entire day experienced with at least one mediating layer of Google-intrusion. Now you, too, can enjoy friendship by tracking your friends’ movements around the city, contemplate art by photographing it instantaneously and moving on, and savor a romantic sunset with a one-square-centimeter hologram of your girlfriend. Best of all, you can enjoy a bookstore by honing in predator drone-style on a single title—Ukulele in a Day, naturally; you’re a busy man—and absorbing its lessons without ever sitting down to read it:

I have nothing against fun gadgets or, for that matter, sensory overstimulation (one of the main reasons to live in a city to begin with), but this video makes me want to curl up on a prayer mat in a Buddhist monastery. It’s the single most effective anti-advertisement in recent memory; actually wear these things in a bookstore, and you’d better deploy the feature that shields you from glaring ironies.

[Image courtesy Project Glass, via Gizmodo.]