Pooling, privacy, policies and power: Google GlassGoogle Glass is a new technology that is expected to be completed next year. They are glasses that you can wear that essentially record everything you see. The glasses transmit this data to Google, which then shows the wearer relevant ads based on their surroundings. Additionally, the glasses take photos at five-second intervals. These photos are the property of Google (Keen 2013). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Andrew Keen, a British-American author and Internet entrepreneur, is strongly against this technology. He says one major problem is that, for this product as well as others, Google has not widely announced its recent changes in privacy settings that allow Google to pool our data for advertising purposes. Furthermore, Google does not offer an option in its policy to allow users to opt out of Google sharing user information (Keen 2013). I share Keen's concerns and believe that Google Glass and Google's new policies represent a radical change in our already tech-heavy society. Just like Keen says, I too am worried that this is another big step towards the world of Big Brother becoming a reality. I feel that privacy is decreasing dramatically in the digital world. I'm already shocked when I'm on Facebook and ads pop up that are incredibly relevant and specific to me, like ads for my job. My entire internet history is somehow compiled to find out what I'm interested or involved in, and my Facebook profile tries to suggest products for me to purchase based on this information. The same goes for Youtube. I don't have a Youtube account, but every time I open the website, it automatically recommends songs and videos to me based on music genres or types of videos I commonly view. I can't imagine how much power Google would gain over its users if Google Glass shared everything users see with Google. David Lyons explains this form of power very well: “In modern societies people are increasingly observed and their activities documented and classified with the aim of creating populations that conform to social norms. Knowledge of what happens is therefore intrinsically linked to power” (Lyon 1994: 26). In Google's case, they observe people through the eyes of the same people who choose to buy and wear Google Glass. Everything that the user – and therefore also Google – sees, Google documents and uses in its information and data store. Google is “creating populations that conform to social norms”; they are investigating to see what the average person is like; they are finding social norms. And then Google uses the knowledge of this information for its own profit, literally, by personalizing its own advertising, which in turn primarily targets Google's data providers. This sharing of information with Google and advertising companies is comparable to government surveillance and making our world “readable”. “State simplifications such as maps, censuses, cadastral lists and standard units of measurement represent techniques for grasping a broad and complex reality; for officials to understand aspects of the whole, that complex reality must be reduced to schematic categories. The only way to achieve this is to reduce an infinite series of details to a set of categories that will facilitate summary descriptions, comparisons and aggregation” (Scott 1998: 77). In other words, the State wants to make the.