Larry Brinkin
2014-04-30 07:40:03 UTC
Sarah Slocum is a piece of shit.
Sarah Slocum loves her Google Glass. She wears the gadget on her
face for more than 12 hours a day and enjoys showing others how
to use it.
With the wink of an eye she can take a picture, or use her voice
to command it to record video. The device is, she says, the
future.
So it was with some shock that she discovered there are those
who disagree. Rather forcibly in fact. On a recent outing to a
bar in San Francisco, the 34-year-old technology writer says she
was attacked by people who told her F--- Google!, accused her
of killing this city and ripped the hi-tech gear from her head.
The incident has become a touchstone for a wider debate in San
Francisco, where a section of the otherwise tolerant, liberal
and peace-loving population appears to have had enough of the
inexorable march of technology.
Bars and coffee shops have begun putting up signs banning Google
Glass devices. Special buses that take employees to work in
nearby Silicon Valley have been picketed. Hundreds of
demonstrators recently gathered outside Twitters headquarters
to protest about tax breaks for the company.
And, most of all, there is anger over spiralling rents and
evictions as young tech workers colonise previously low-income
areas.
Miss Slocum is one of several thousand explorers across the
world road-testing Googles latest gadget. As with any late-
night bar fracas, there are conflicting accounts of what
happened at 1.30am in Molotovs, a dimly lit, cash only bar.
But she insists she was not recording anyone or invading their
privacy, simply demonstrating the device to some interested
patrons, when some other customers began rolling their eyes.
She said: A few minutes later ... they cursed at me. I started
feeling threatened. At that point I decided I was going to turn
on the camera and start recording this hateful, threatening
behaviour.
Then a guy and a girl charged me. The guy started waving his
hands and trying to grab the Glass. I couldnt believe they were
behaving that way. All I could do was say, 'Im recording you.
Im recording you. They were calling me the B-word.
After a hiatus, someone threw a dirty bar rag at her, she said,
and a woman came over and said: Youre killing this city.
Curses were exchanged and, according to Miss Slocum, a man
ripped the device off her face and ran out of the bar with it.
She pursued and grabbed him, regaining the Glass after a scuffle.
What was perhaps more telling than the incident itself was the
reaction after she detailed her encounter on Facebook and said
it constituted a hate crime.
There was some of the sympathy one would expect, but many blamed
her for having taken a recording device into a bar in the first
place.
In the days that followed, a series of bars and coffee shops
banned the device. At The Willows, which is popular with young
technology types, a sign in the window shows the Glass with a
red line though it. Our patrons have expressed concern with
being recorded while enjoying themselves, it reads. One
customer said: The Google Glass is extreme tech. You dont know
youre being recorded. People want some privacy.
The furore follows another divisive controversy in San
Francisco, that of its Google Buses, which has pitted
technology workers against residents of traditionally low-income
areas such as the formerly bohemian and artistic Mission
district.
Giant, air-conditioned, internet-equipped buses with tinted
windows now glide past the thrift stores and second-hand book
shops there, taking workers to their jobs 30 miles away at
companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple and Yahoo.
Watching them go by, long-time residents see a visible reminder
of the one percenters in their midst as they are forced to
rely on a more rickety, century-old public transit system. It
has led to protests, bus tyres being slashed and stones hurled.
Signs have been taped to the vehicles reading F--- off Google.
A recent study found the average passenger on these buses is a
30-year-old man earning more than $100,000. But when The
Telegraph visited a pick-up point in the Mission at 7am, the
people didnt look very happy about it.
A line of workers stood against a wall attempting to look
inconspicuous, wearing earphones and staring determinedly down
at their smartphones in silence.
The question Excuse me sir, do you work for Google, are you
getting on the bus? elicited the wary response: Er, Im very
sorry, I dont feel comfortable talking about it. Even
anonymously? No.
One employee eventually broke ranks but still declined to give
his name. He said: This a real problem and theres a big
internal dialogue going on in our companies about what to do,
whether to make the buses look different, and also about rent
control. The free market people dont agree with rent control,
but someone put a brick through one of the bus windows recently
so theyre worried.
You have all these nerds who grew up feeling fairly victimised
and now they are in positions of extreme privilege and wealth.
But theyre getting picked on and a lot of them feel like
theyre right back at high school again being bullied.
People are upset.
Tony Robles, who runs a Mission housing advocacy group for the
elderly and disabled, and who has been involved in peaceful
protests against the buses, said: Do you honestly think I want
to get up at 6am and chase a bus? Its reached boiling point.
Were seeing the rise of the tech-washed digital human.
This insulated world they live in is creating a lot of
resentment with long-time residents, the people that contribute
culturally to our city. Mr Robles said the technology workers
were aloof and like shadows but the main problems were
caused by mean-spirited speculators buying properties and
evicting long-term tenants, so that rents can be raised
astronomically.
In San Francisco, 23.4 per cent of residents are below the
poverty threshold, according to a recent study. In December
alone, rents went up by 10.6 per cent. In the Mission, a two-
bedroom apartment recently went on the market for $10,000 a
month, which probably had the regulars at Molotovs spluttering
into their $2 beers.
Google, whose motto is Dont be evil, knows it has a problem
and is determined to make San Francisco love it again. Last week
it donated $6.8? million to the city, which will allow
underprivileged children to ride public buses free of charge for
the next two years.
Miss Slocum believes differences will be resolved. Im really
excited about the time were living in, she said. Every day
there is some new invention thats going to dramatically change
our lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10685
059/San-Francisco-divided-over-being-epicentre-of-the-internet-
age.html
Sarah Slocum loves her Google Glass. She wears the gadget on her
face for more than 12 hours a day and enjoys showing others how
to use it.
With the wink of an eye she can take a picture, or use her voice
to command it to record video. The device is, she says, the
future.
So it was with some shock that she discovered there are those
who disagree. Rather forcibly in fact. On a recent outing to a
bar in San Francisco, the 34-year-old technology writer says she
was attacked by people who told her F--- Google!, accused her
of killing this city and ripped the hi-tech gear from her head.
The incident has become a touchstone for a wider debate in San
Francisco, where a section of the otherwise tolerant, liberal
and peace-loving population appears to have had enough of the
inexorable march of technology.
Bars and coffee shops have begun putting up signs banning Google
Glass devices. Special buses that take employees to work in
nearby Silicon Valley have been picketed. Hundreds of
demonstrators recently gathered outside Twitters headquarters
to protest about tax breaks for the company.
And, most of all, there is anger over spiralling rents and
evictions as young tech workers colonise previously low-income
areas.
Miss Slocum is one of several thousand explorers across the
world road-testing Googles latest gadget. As with any late-
night bar fracas, there are conflicting accounts of what
happened at 1.30am in Molotovs, a dimly lit, cash only bar.
But she insists she was not recording anyone or invading their
privacy, simply demonstrating the device to some interested
patrons, when some other customers began rolling their eyes.
She said: A few minutes later ... they cursed at me. I started
feeling threatened. At that point I decided I was going to turn
on the camera and start recording this hateful, threatening
behaviour.
Then a guy and a girl charged me. The guy started waving his
hands and trying to grab the Glass. I couldnt believe they were
behaving that way. All I could do was say, 'Im recording you.
Im recording you. They were calling me the B-word.
After a hiatus, someone threw a dirty bar rag at her, she said,
and a woman came over and said: Youre killing this city.
Curses were exchanged and, according to Miss Slocum, a man
ripped the device off her face and ran out of the bar with it.
She pursued and grabbed him, regaining the Glass after a scuffle.
What was perhaps more telling than the incident itself was the
reaction after she detailed her encounter on Facebook and said
it constituted a hate crime.
There was some of the sympathy one would expect, but many blamed
her for having taken a recording device into a bar in the first
place.
In the days that followed, a series of bars and coffee shops
banned the device. At The Willows, which is popular with young
technology types, a sign in the window shows the Glass with a
red line though it. Our patrons have expressed concern with
being recorded while enjoying themselves, it reads. One
customer said: The Google Glass is extreme tech. You dont know
youre being recorded. People want some privacy.
The furore follows another divisive controversy in San
Francisco, that of its Google Buses, which has pitted
technology workers against residents of traditionally low-income
areas such as the formerly bohemian and artistic Mission
district.
Giant, air-conditioned, internet-equipped buses with tinted
windows now glide past the thrift stores and second-hand book
shops there, taking workers to their jobs 30 miles away at
companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple and Yahoo.
Watching them go by, long-time residents see a visible reminder
of the one percenters in their midst as they are forced to
rely on a more rickety, century-old public transit system. It
has led to protests, bus tyres being slashed and stones hurled.
Signs have been taped to the vehicles reading F--- off Google.
A recent study found the average passenger on these buses is a
30-year-old man earning more than $100,000. But when The
Telegraph visited a pick-up point in the Mission at 7am, the
people didnt look very happy about it.
A line of workers stood against a wall attempting to look
inconspicuous, wearing earphones and staring determinedly down
at their smartphones in silence.
The question Excuse me sir, do you work for Google, are you
getting on the bus? elicited the wary response: Er, Im very
sorry, I dont feel comfortable talking about it. Even
anonymously? No.
One employee eventually broke ranks but still declined to give
his name. He said: This a real problem and theres a big
internal dialogue going on in our companies about what to do,
whether to make the buses look different, and also about rent
control. The free market people dont agree with rent control,
but someone put a brick through one of the bus windows recently
so theyre worried.
You have all these nerds who grew up feeling fairly victimised
and now they are in positions of extreme privilege and wealth.
But theyre getting picked on and a lot of them feel like
theyre right back at high school again being bullied.
People are upset.
Tony Robles, who runs a Mission housing advocacy group for the
elderly and disabled, and who has been involved in peaceful
protests against the buses, said: Do you honestly think I want
to get up at 6am and chase a bus? Its reached boiling point.
Were seeing the rise of the tech-washed digital human.
This insulated world they live in is creating a lot of
resentment with long-time residents, the people that contribute
culturally to our city. Mr Robles said the technology workers
were aloof and like shadows but the main problems were
caused by mean-spirited speculators buying properties and
evicting long-term tenants, so that rents can be raised
astronomically.
In San Francisco, 23.4 per cent of residents are below the
poverty threshold, according to a recent study. In December
alone, rents went up by 10.6 per cent. In the Mission, a two-
bedroom apartment recently went on the market for $10,000 a
month, which probably had the regulars at Molotovs spluttering
into their $2 beers.
Google, whose motto is Dont be evil, knows it has a problem
and is determined to make San Francisco love it again. Last week
it donated $6.8? million to the city, which will allow
underprivileged children to ride public buses free of charge for
the next two years.
Miss Slocum believes differences will be resolved. Im really
excited about the time were living in, she said. Every day
there is some new invention thats going to dramatically change
our lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10685
059/San-Francisco-divided-over-being-epicentre-of-the-internet-
age.html