Sergey Brin Says Using a Smartphone Is 'Emasculating' 325
An anonymous reader writes "While speaking at the TED Conference in California earlier today, Sergey Brin seemingly tried to set the stage for a world where using Google Glass is as normal as using a smartphone. What's more, Brin went so far as to say that using smartphones is 'emasculating.' Brin said that smartphone users often seclude themselves in their own private virtual worlds. 'Is this the way you're meant to interact with other people,' Brin asked. Are people in the future destined to communicate via just walking around, looking down, and 'rubbing a featureless piece of glass,' Brin asked rhetorically. 'It's kind of emasculating. Is this what you're meant to do with your body?' Is wearing futuristic glasses any better?"
Another reader sends in an article that also muses on our psychological connection to our devices. Or, as he puts it, the "increasingly weird and perhaps overly intimate relationship we have with our gadgets; the fist we touch when awake, the last at night. Our minds have become bookended by glass."
My mind has bookends? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about Brin, but my e-masculinity is e-normous. Bookends help hold it all in.
Doesn't it really all come down to (Score:5, Funny)
The size of your screen?
The FIST we touch when awake ? (Score:1, Funny)
I don't think you want to know what touches my fist when I awake.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Or trying to hold a conversation with someone who's ignoring you and reading Slashdot on their glasses?
Sergey is a wuss (Score:4, Funny)
Sergey just doesn't get it. My Android phone is a big swinging phallic symbol, especially when it does those 3D maps.... iPhone toting hipster chicks never fail to notice. Got plenty of mileage out of that, opposite sex wise. Sergey just doesn't know how to hold it.
This cartoon explains it best (Score:4, Funny)
This "Joy of Tech" cartoon explains what will really happen with Google glasses:
The Reality of Google Glasses [tapastic.com]
Sergey, can't you go away now? (Score:4, Funny)
For me, he is well past his sell-by date. Can't he buy some remote island and cocoon there?
Re:What a bizarre statement (Score:4, Funny)
You're being hysterical [wikipedia.org].
OR ARE YOU??
Re:My mind has bookends? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Doesn't it really all come down to (Score:5, Funny)
Only people with small screens say that!
Re:Speelchecking (Score:4, Funny)
Fun fact: when Google introduced Wave, they announced that it had superior contextual spell checking, and could (for example) correct "your" vs "you're". I tried plugging in that poem (on Docs) to see what would happen, and...
...it recommended changing "have" to "halve". And that was it.
Wow.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
There's a great defence when going out on a date.
"Looking down at your cleavage? Please what kind of person do you think I am! I was watching porn!"
Re:Looking for the meaning of emasculating (Score:2, Funny)
You should try Mandroid - for the vigorous hetrosexual!
Re:Regardless of what you think of smartphones... (Score:5, Funny)
The great thing about Google Glass wearers is that a combination of traffic and natural selection will limit their numbers.
Re:My mind has bookends? (Score:2, Funny)
What's a bookend?
What's a 'book'?
Re:Doesn't it really all come down to (Score:5, Funny)
I am so going to write an app for this. Overlaying naked bodies on top of the people you're actually talking to. Great!
You: Oh Hi, Grandma, Grandpa...
Grandma: Honey, you look kind of sick. Are you feeling all right?
You: Let me just turn this off...
Re:The fist we touch ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Oh come on. We know you were actually reading slashdot on your date. Noone's going to believe the porn story.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
No one's even going to believe the date story. :)