TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: It's cool and fashionable ... and it may be rude. It's Google Glass, the wearable computer. Users get stares, but those being seen get antsy. Since the Glass can record and share pictures, video and sound, some fear they'll be robbed of their privacy ... especially in private places. Thomas Farley is writing a book on high tech etiquette.
THOMAS P. FARLEY, MANNERS COLUMNIST, NEW YORK POST: "I think there's a lot of curiosity right now about Google Glass. Obviously, it's in its initial rollout so not many people have it. We don't see it out on the streets yet. But people know it's coming, so there's lots of curiosity about how to act as a wearer but also for the person who's in the presence of a wearer."
REPORTER: Here are some etiquette tips so you don't get banned as a visual voyeur. Take the bathroom, for example. Wearing it there or anywhere where cameras aren't welcome like locker rooms is a no-no as shown in this Mashable video.
MASHABLE VIDEO: "What's up? ... This isn't what we mean by livestreaming."
REPORTER: Google can put the world's library of data right in front of your eyes. But don't use that to be a know-it-all blowhard, advises Mashable's editor-in-chief, Lance Ulanoff, who has used these glasses.
LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, MASHABLE: "You can say, 'Google, what's the price of a hamburger in France?' Boom. It would give you that information, and so you could either seem like the smartest person at the party or the world's most annoying person."
REPORTER: Is there a word for those kind of people?
LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, MASHABLE: "We're calling them 'glassholes'."
REPORTER: And by all means, don't wear it on a date.
THOMAS P. FARLEY, MANNERS COLUMNIST, NEW YORK POST: "Where it get to be a little more of an intimate ... you're out on a date, I wouldn't be wearing them on a date, no way, no how. You're gonna scare that date away in about two seconds flat."
REPORTER: Wearers draw glances wherever they go. The best way to put people at ease: take them off and let them wear it for themselves. These are, after all, powerful instruments. As Spiderman's Peter Parker said: with great power comes great responsibility.
VOCABULARY
British English speakers may be wondering why they shouldn't wear the Glass in the 'bathroom'. It's a question of vocabulary: Americans use the word 'bathroom' for what we Brits call the 'toilet'.
