One of the more troubling technology stories to come out of the past week is the assault on Sarah Slocum, a San Francisco-based tech enthusiast and writer, who was apparently targeted because she was wearing Google Glass in a bar.

Like many incidents of this nature, the exact account of what happened is a little fuzzy. Slocum said she was merely showing friends how the connected headset works when other bar patrons began hurling insults her way. One witness told local media she was "running around very excited," which annoyed some of the people around her. But it's revealing that Slocum has publicly come forward with her account, while the people who confronted her have not.

"I walked up to the bar, and they had seen me showing [Glass] to the other bar patrons," Slocum told Mashable. "They were shielding themselves like I was recording. If I had done that with a phone, they wouldn’t have reacted that way."

The encounter puts the social implications of Google Glass and wearable technology under a microscope. Although no one is defending the assault and Slocum has many supporters, some have reacted negatively toward Slocum and Glass itself, saying "Glassholes" shouldn't wear the headset in public, ostensibly because it's rude to record someone without their approval or even imply that you might be.

The antisocial camera

Putting aside the legality of such an act (which isn't really in question, considering what the paparazzi have been doing for decades), it's hard not to admit that the armchair quarterbacks have a point. Aiming a camera at someone who hasn't granted permission to take their photo — explicitly or implicitly — is an inherently hostile act. I'd wager there isn't a soul on the planet whose reaction isn't "WTF?" when a camera is unexpectedly pointed at them.

Think of how different your bar conversations would be if everything that was said was recorded. All those politically incorrect jokes and comments that we probably don't even really mean would be saved for posterity, potentially reaching millions of eyeballs if they were ever shared on the web. It would be a nightmare; social interaction would fundamentally change, and for the worse.

The thing is, this is pretty much what's happening now. Surveillance cameras are so common that it's highly unusual for a place of business not to have them. What you're doing, at least indoors, is being recorded, constantly. In fact, the piece of evidence that may end up leading to criminal charges in the Glass assault is a recording from a surveillance camera at the bar where it took place. The same people who were apparently annoyed that a person may have recorded them with Glass were actually being recorded the whole time.

Is that a mere ironic twist, or is there a subtler distinction? It's certainly common knowledge that when you're in an urban area, you're continually under the watch of surveillance cameras. Yet people still go about their business and feel generally free to behave as they please (within reason), accepting that being surveilled is just part of modern life.

Does Google Glass change that equation? And how? Certainly, adding one more camera to the mix is negligible, but the device suddenly puts a face on the act of surveilling. Now the camera is right there in front of you, not in some tucked-away corner. And there's the watcher, wearing the device on his or her face. Would we be as nonchalant about public surveillance cameras if the people watching the feeds were standing right next to us?

Here's where Glass wearers would (rightly) correct me: Unlike surveillance cameras, Glass isn't recording all the time, and it's fairly obvious when it is. So not only is Glass much less of a part of the "surveillance state" than it's sometimes made out to be, but it's actually a lot more transparent to the subject than almost any other kind of recording device, including cellphones (and this thing).

"The way that i see it, at least in my experience using Glass, it’s not a device that you constantly have on record," says Slocum. "You’re not just walking around with a constant feed. You wouldn’t want the footage — it’d be crappy footage."

State of surveillance

Over the past few years, as smartphone cameras have proliferated and improved, and sharing photos and videos online has accelerated, the world has gotten more comfortable with having its picture taken. It's certainly possible that incidents like the recent assault will fade away as wearable cameras become more common, and the whole ordeal may have had more to do with San Francisco's murky class warfare between the so-called Tech Elite and "regular" citizens, anyway.

But I'm not so sure. As a technology, Glass makes image capture even more effortless and instantaneous than cellphone cameras did. Camera phones may have turned everyone into amateur paparazzi, but at least the badge is in your pocket. Glass puts it right on your face, for everyone to see.

There's something to be said for that kind of transparency. But socially, we don't always want transparency. It's sometimes better to go with the massaged truth ("Sure I'll take Glass off") rather than face reality ("There are six other cameras pointed at you right now") just to make the situation comfortable for all.

For Glass to reach the level of social acceptance of smartphones — and that's possible — there needs to be a shift in how we think about being recorded. Do we accept that a wearable camera like Glass is barely a drop in the suveillance bucket that we're immersed in all day, every day? Or will wearers of Glass and other smart glasses be asked to take off their gadget in many situations where camera phones are allowed in, just as I was earlier this week?

The future of wearables — and wearable cameras — is inevitable. It's just a question of whether or not we want them in our faces.

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