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10 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM | NOVEMBER 2013 | VOL. 56 | NO. 11

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The Communications Web site, http://cacm.acm.org,features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACMcommunity. In each issue of Communications , well publishselected posts or excerpts.

Jason HongPrivacy andGoogle Glasshttp://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/167230-privacy-

and-google-glass/fulltextGoogle Glass, the wearable headsetcomputer that is just starting to trickleout, has seen a lot of press, much ofit negative on the issue of privacy. Assomeone who has studied mobile com-puting and privacy for about a decade,I thought it would be useful to examine why there has been such negative sen-timent, looking at peoples concernsfrom two different perspectives, andsee what lessons can be drawn. (Fordisclosure purposes, Google has fund-ed my research several times, and willbe sending my colleagues and I severalunits of Glass for research purposes).

Lessons from the UbiquitousComputing ProjectLets start out by rewinding back to1991, when Ubiquitous Computing was

tive news articles, with titles like The

Boss That Never Blinks, OrwellianDream Come True: A Badge That Pin-points You, and Youre Not Para-noid: They Really Are Watching You.

I suspect there were two reasons why there was a backlash. First, thePARC researchers had not built anykinds of privacy protections into theirsystem. While they knew privacy wasa concern from the start, they did nothave good ideas for how to addressthe problems. Furthermore, they hadto devote a lot of effort on just mak-

ing the technologies even work in therst place. However, when journalistsasked the inevitable questions aboutprivacy, the researchers did not haveany good answers. To some extent,this scenario is playing out in the ex-act same way for Google Glass. Manypeople are asking reasonable ques-tions about privacy, and I have notheard any solid responses yet abouthow those concerns will be addressed.

Second, there was an unclear valueproposition for end users. The PARCteam was comprised mostly of peo-ple from technical backgrounds, and when talking with journalists, the dis-cussion usually centered on how thetechnologies worked rather than whatbenet they could offer people. Inter-estingly, the narrative seemed to shift when the researchers started framingthings in the form of Invisible Com-puting, talking about how these sys-tems could support people as they goabout their everyday lives. Google isdoing better on this front, by pushingthe fashion aspects of Glass, by hav-

rst introduced to the world at large.In the seminal paper The Computerfor the 21 st Century, Mark Weiser pre-sented a grand vision in which one daycomputation, communication, andsensing would be enmeshed in theeveryday world, and could be used toseamlessly support us in our daily lives.

Weiser led his team in developingnew form factors for computation atthree physical scales: tabs, pads, andboards. They also developed early formsof location-based services and context-aware computing, based on wearablebadges that could be used to pinpointones location inside a building. Whilethis vision may seem like old hat now,one has to keep in mind that this work was started only a few years after therst Macintosh came out, and mobilephones were still bulky affairs that were yet to be popular.

The researchers at PARC were, byand large, very enthusiastic about thepotential of ubiquitous computing.However, the popular press was decid-edly not. There were a number of nega-

DOI:10.1145/2524713.2524717 http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm

Considering PrivacyIssues in the Contextof Google Glass Jason Hong ponders why there has been so much negative presscoverage of Google Glass with regard to privacy, consideringthe issue from two different perspectives.

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NOVEMBER 2013 | VOL. 56 | NO. 11 | COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM 11

ing some concept videos of what Glasscan offer, and by having lots of non-developers try out the system. How-ever, Google still has a long way to goin conveying what value it can actuallyoffer today to everyday people.

This notion of the value proposi-tion has been seen in the success andfailure of many groupware systemsas well. Jonathan Grudin, a scientistat Microsoft Research, long ago ob-served that those who do the work inusing a groupware system have to bethe same as those who get the bene-fits, otherwise the system is likely tofail or be subverted. My privacy corol-lary is that when those who bear theprivacy risks do not benefit in pro-portion to the perceived risks, thetechnology is likely to fail. Right now,

the implicit narrative in the popularpress is that many people could besurreptitiously monitored by users ofGoogle Glass at any time, and do notperceive any kind of value in return.Unless this perception is changed, itis likely there will continue to be nega-tive perceptions of Glass outside ofthe core of early adopters.

Expectations of Privacy ChangeThe second perspective I will use forthinking about Google Glass and pri-

vacy is that of expectations.One of my favorite papers about ex-

pectations is by Leysia Palen, an HCIresearcher at the University of Colora-do, Boulder. In 2000, Palen presenteda paper at the Computer SupportedCooperative Work conference look-ing at the behaviors and practices ofnew mobile phone users. One nding was that these new users were not par-ticularly good at predicting what theirown attitudes and behaviors would bea month after getting their rst mo-bile phone. For example, before theygot their mobile phone, many par-ticipants reported being annoyed atpeople who used their mobile phones while driving or for casual chat in pub-lic places like restaurants and movies.However, just a few weeks later, manyof the participants were exhibitingthose same behaviors. Another inter-esting nding was that participants who had more exposure to mobilephones through friends or colleagues were better at predicting how they would be using phones.

Many other technologies havefaced similar changes in expectationsover time. Warren and Brandeis fa-mous denition of privacy as theright to be let alone came about inpart because new cameras in the late19th century made it possible to takephotographs in just several seconds,invading the sacred precincts of pri- vate and domestic life. Kodak camer-as fared no better on the privacy frontin their early days (as noted in TheKodak Camera Starts a Craze on thePBS.org website):

The appearance of Eastmans cam-eras was so sudden and so pervasivethat the reaction in some quarters was fear. A gure called the camera endbegan to appear at beach resorts, prowl-ing the premises until he could catch fe-

male bathers unawares. One resort feltthe trend so heavily that it posted a no-tice: PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO USETHEIR KODAKS ON THE BEACH. Oth-er locations were no safer. For a time, Kodak cameras were banned from theWashington Monument. The HartfordCourant sounded the alarm as well,declaring that the sedate citizen cantindulge in any hilariousness withoutthe risk of being caught in the act andhaving his photograph passed aroundamong his Sunday School children.

Similarly, in the book AmericaCalling , sociologist Claude Fischerdocumented the social history of thetelephone. In one of my favorite pas-sages, Fischer observed that at rst,many people actually objected to hav-ing landline phones in their homes,because it permitted intrusionbysolicitors, purveyors of inferior music,eavesdropping operators, and even wire-transmitted germs .

While these examples may seemquaint by modern standards, they rep-resented real concerns that people hadat the time. In fact, it is worth pointingout that many of these same problemsstill exist (inferior music now comesin the form of the Muzak you listen to when put on hold). The main differ-ence is that our expectations of howthese technologies will be used havechanged over many decades, as wehave adapted via changes in our socialnorms and laws.

So there are two points here relevantfor Google Glass. The rst is that we alllack experience with how we might use

wearable computers, and so it is verylikely that most of our expectations willbe off the mark. The second is that ex-pectations can change over time, as welearn to adapt to the technology and itsaffordances, but only if we start to seereal value in it.

It is also worth pointing out thatexpectations can also change quiterapidly and dramatically. Perhaps thebest example of this is the introduc-tion of Facebooks News Feed in 2006.Before News Feed was rolled out, youcould only see a persons status up-dates by going to their individual pro-le pages. What News Feed did was ag-gregate all of those updates in a singleplace. When News Feed was rst madepublic, peoples initial reactions werepredominantly negative, and often

viscerally so. Many Facebook groups were formed denouncing News Feed,and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergeven went so far as to publicly respondto all of the negative press. Facebookstuck to its guns and continued topush News Feed. In the course of just afew months, a lot of the criticism diedout as people saw value in News Feedand became used to it. Now, several years later, I seriously doubt you couldnd someone who would want to giveup News Feed.

Now, this does not mean peoplesprivacy concerns always change in the way you want, or the way you expect.There are also plenty of examples where products were killed or fea-tures rolled back due to serious priva-cy concerns. My main points here arethat we all have little experience with wearable computers, expectationsof privacy can change, and perceived value is a major factor in driving thatchange. However, there remains a very big gap in the communitys un-derstanding of the best ways of miti-gating these kinds of privacy issuesup front, and the best ways of manag-ing and designing for those changes. All I can say for sure is to buckle yoursafety belts, because Google Glass is just one of many of these kinds of bigchanges in computing we will likelysee in the future, and it will be a wild,scary, crazy, and exciting ride.

Jason Hong is an associate professor at Carnegie MellonUniversity.

2013 ACM 0001-0782/13/11 $15.00

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