According to Sascha Segan, who didn’t get picked to have Google Glass, Google Glass is racist:
Does anyone who isn’t a white man have Google Glass?
This is starting to get disturbing. Since Google Glass demo units started appearing a few weeks ago, proud Google Glass users have been spewing selfies all over the Internet. And except for the hired help in Google’s demo videos, every single Google Glass owner I’ve heard a word from appears to be a middle-aged white male, usually with some receding hairline action going on there.
Apparently the more diverse Google Glass clientele stays far away from Segan. And with navel-gazing like this, who wouldn’t?
I imagine that men and women, in the aggregate, may have some different opinions on the use of gaze, what they’re looking at, and how it feels to be looked at. I’m not going to assume all of those opinions are the same. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that the experience of being female in our society is something that shouldn’t be ignored as Google Glass coalesces, and we men should be able to step back and let women speak for themselves. If no women are wearing and developing software for Google Glass, we have a problem.
Yes, I’m sure that Google Glass will bounce off your face as soon as it detects estrogen.
Does this man hear himself talk?
Obviously, Google didn’t set out to be sexist or racist here. Google Glass only went out to developers at I/O, who signed up and volunteered. That’s a self-selecting group. However, if Google doesn’t have any female or non-white developers, it should probably do some outreach. (Yes, female and non-white software developers exist. I even know some.)
Or maybe, Google developed a product, marketed it in a completely diverse way, and had a random lottery for people to put down $1500 to buy it—the absolute most reasonable thing to do.
“Outreach” is a bullshit word for “I’m left out!” It reveals more about the person calling for outreach than about a real problem.
Sounds more like Segan’s sour grapes that he didn’t get Google Glass than anything.
When racism becomes tossed around as foolishly as this, it distracts from the real meaning of the word—every single time.
