April 2013
By striving for “natural and effortless,” gadgets like Google Glass are actually more awkward and cumbersome than simpler technologies:
The assumption driving [technologies like Google Glass] is that if you embed the interface–the control surface for a technology–into our own bodily envelope, that interface will “disappear”: the technology will cease to be a separate “thing” and simply become part of that envelope. The trouble is that unlike technology, your body isn’t something you “interface” with in the first place. You’re not a little homunculus “in” your body, “driving” it around, looking out Terminator-style “through” your eyes. Your body isn’t a tool for delivering your experience: it is your experience. Merging the body with a technological control surface doesn’t magically transform the act of manipulating that surface into bodily experience. I’m not a cyborg (yet) so I can’t be sure, but I suspect the effect is more the opposite: alienating you from the direct bodily experiences you already have by turning them into technological interfaces to be manipulated.
via Dave Pell
The surprising (but also not surprising at all) answer is here.
Kottke finds a collection of less than subtle cell tower disguises from photographer Dillan March. A sample:
