"How Your Privacy Hysteria Killed the Smart Glass Revolution 12 Years Ago. Are You Ready to Take Responsibility for This Loss?"

Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz about smart glasses finally becoming "mainstream."

But for some of us, the real "future" arrived—and was tragically murdered—over a decade ago.

1. 2014: When the "Future" Truly Arrived at Coachella

Twelve years ago, in April 2014, I was transfixed by a specific video.

It was a first-person record of the euphoria at Coachella—the world’s premier music festival—captured through Google Glass by a senior editor at TIME magazine. (The photo of Coachella at the top of this article was actually taken with Google Glass.)

It wasn't a "recording" made by holding up a smartphone and peering through a monitor. It was a "shared experience"—capturing the energy of the artists exactly as the audience saw it. If you watch the Google Glass promotional videos from back then, you'll see what I mean.

At that point, voice control, navigation, translation, and point-of-view filming were already perfectly implemented. The "gadget factor" and the sense of excitement were immense.

"The future is finally here."

As someone who was already a die-hard live-performance recorder, I was certain of it. But that door was brutally slammed shut by the vulgar collective hysteria of people who weren't even there.

2. The Disease of "Self-Consciousness": The World Doesn't Care About You

The moment Google Glass appeared, a global chant of "invasion of privacy" erupted. People feared being recorded without their knowledge by a wearable device.

But let me be clear: "The world has zero—absolutely zero—interest in you."

What the person at Coachella wanted to capture was the overwhelming fever of the stage in front of them and the "visual freedom" expanded by technology.

The "privacy" cried out by those allergic to new devices wasn't a noble right; it was nothing more than delusional self-consciousness. It’s the laughable arrogance of thinking, "I am the center of the world, and someone is always targeting me."

Such an opinion isn't worth a single bit of data.

Back then, users were branded with the derogatory term "Glasshole," suspected of surreptitiously filming their surroundings. This social phenomenon led to bans in movie theaters, bars, and casinos.

Ultimately, Google halted consumer development in 2015. It was effectively crushed by the privacy-hysteria faction.

3. The Ultimate Double Standard: Is the Smartphone "Innocent"?

What’s even more ridiculous is the fact that the world was already overflowing with cameras called "smartphones."

At festivals, tens of thousands hold up phones, official stream cameras roll, and TV broadcasts film the crowd. On any street corner, people film Vlogs and upload them to social media without a second thought for the pedestrians in the background.

In a world where this "mutual exposure" is the norm, why were glasses-type cameras singled out as "creepy" or "a breach of etiquette"?

People tolerate it if you hold a device and strike a "filming pose," but scream "voyeurism" if it’s the natural gaze of smart glasses. They turn a blind eye to street-side smartphone filming while framing an unknown technology like smart glasses as the "enemy of privacy."

This incoherent double standard killed a civilization.

4. A Loss for History

Looking back, history repeats these tragedies. When the dogma of a "motionless Earth" was prioritized over the scientific progress of heliocentrism, humanity was forced into centuries of stagnation.

Modern "privacy extremists" are exactly like those medieval clerics.

Brandishing the modern bibles of "ethics" and "manners," they threw a "Visual Industrial Revolution" into the gutter for ten years. If Google Glass had been allowed to evolve legitimately, smart glasses would be commonplace by now, and our visual experiences would have reached a different dimension.

If smart glasses had gone mainstream a decade ago, we wouldn't have people posting hypocritical "I prefer to burn the image into my eyes rather than film" comments online—comments usually born out of annoyance at the distracting glow of smartphone screens at concerts.

Smart glasses aren't intrusive like phones are.

5. Are You Ready to Take Responsibility for This Cultural Loss?

The futuristic perspective that a "pro" like the TIME editor tried to pioneer at Coachella in 2014 was ultimately buried in the dark by the noise of the masses.

Valuable footage was hidden away in closed spaces just to avoid friction with self-important busybodies. This is an unforgivable loss for all of humanity.

I’ll say it as many times as it takes: Your tiny sense of privacy isn't worth stopping the evolution of the human race.

The moment you step outside, you are caught on dashcams and security cameras; you are a background extra in a stranger's smartphone photo. That is the reality of the "public" in the modern age.

To those self-conscious people who can't face that reality and only bare their fangs at new technology: You are the ones who stopped the clock of humanity for ten years.

Are you prepared to take responsibility for obstructing the progress of smart glasses?

Twelve years ago, as someone who embraced the future immediately—I already have.