90 percent of Americans won't wear Google Glass, survey says
A survey by Bite Interactive has people chewing over Google Glass and largely distancing themselves from it. Their biggest fear? Social awkwardness.
I had always thought Americans were willing to try something new -- at least once.
This sense of adventure often explains the nation's predilection for naivete, war, and forgiveness.
So I had imagined that from Alaska to New York, there were people desperate to adorn their faces with the new intellectual's makeup: Google Glass.
And yet, despite the fact that pioneers like Rep. Michele Bachmann have already been game enough to pose in them, ordinary Americans still seem to be feeling resistance.
This knowledge comes to me from a survey performed by Bite Interactive, a company that claims to understand our new mobile life.
Its results declared that only 10 percent of Americans would definitely, certainly, how exciting, wear Google's spectacles of the future.
As Mashable reports, the resistance felt by many of the 1,000 surveyed -- even if Google Glass were priced at well below the current $1,500 -- consists of not wanting to make, well, a spectacle of themselves.
The phrase used in this Google Glass Adoption Forecast was "social awkwardness."
Less-polite phrases with similar meaning have already been concocted by various humans. Some contain the word "hole."
In essence, people seem concerned that they will cease to be people. Or, as Joseph Farrell, EVP of operations for Bite chewed it to Mashable: "At best, they see a Glass user as someone who prioritizes information access over a personal connection with others."
There are those who would say that this sentiment absolutely describes some of the senior management at Google, a company that has been known to create products that seem rather geared to, well, its own employees.
I want to offer optimism, but first let's allow Farrell to continue his thought: "At worst, they (real people) fear social sleights of hand: researching topics, recording video, or Googling a person in mid-conversation. Overall, what Glass offers is a combination of high social rejection with features the average person simply doesn't value over their current smartphone."
But wait. Don't these people know that smartphones are emasculating? Sergey Brin says so. The whole point of Google Glass is to make you more of a man.
Yes, even you, madam.
This is where the greatest challenge for Google Glass lies: getting people to change their views of what truly is masculine and stylish -- and therefore not socially awkward at all.
It'll surely be easier to get over the fact that someone is filming you surreptitiously, if they're wearing something so fetching that it gives them that cool, Lee Majors or Joe 90 sort of look.
I feel sure that the Tom Ford Google Glass Edition will be seen at New York Fashion Week very soon.