Google Glass - A First Impression

This past Thursday evening I picked up my Explorer edition of Google Glass. I was lucky enough to have my #ifihadglass tweet chosen to receive the chance to pay an arm and a leg to get them. Needless to say, I did choose to pony up the cash, and on Thursday evening I walked home with my brand new piece of technology dangling off of my right temple. Since first impressions are often strong, but can be misleading, I chose to wait until I had used them for a few days before writing my thoughts. So here they are:

On "Wealth Inequality In America"

There’s been a viral video that’s been circulating the internet recently called Wealth Inequality In America. It’s actually been published for quite some time, but it’s crossed my plane of vision a few times in the past few days. While I don’t believe that the content is wrong (in fact, it is actually quite right), I believe that the point the video makes and how it makes it are both misleading. The video tends to imply some nefarious plot to keep the poor down. But in reality, all it is showing is the natural tendency for any system of sufficient complexity to trend towards having a power-law distribution.

The Grass Is Always ... Browner?

As you can probably tell, the title of this post is based off the common saying “The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side.” I’ve always been amazed by this saying, because while we can find countless cases of it being true, we can also find countless cases of it being completely and utterly false. Take smart-phones for instance. People are quite dogmatic about which they choose, and they believe that the grass is definitely not greener. This is something that’s bothered me for a while. But yesterday, I think I’ve made a cognitive leap towards understanding why it works for some things and not others…