What their need is is for you to have a computer on your face, not for you to be able to do X, Y, and Z better.

It's not to liberate you from your screen.

They want you to be a constant source of data, not only a constant source of data in terms of how you are ingesting the world when you wear this technology, but also the extent to which you would be in constant

communication with AI. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us,

media partnership with The Nation magazine.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Chris Gileard.

Chris is the co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute

and the author of the forthcoming book, Luxury Surveillance, that will hopefully be out next year.

As I'm sure you've seen, all of the major tech companies seem to have decided that smart glasses are their next big thing.

Meta is rolling out its new display glasses in partnership with Luxottica.

You know, it has its raybans and now it's Oakley's.

Google has this new partnership for Android XR with Warby Parker.

Apple is apparently working on some smart glasses and, you know, there are plenty of other

companies doing this as well. They seem to have decided that this is the moment to push to get

screens in front of our faces, constantly, not just on our phones, but right in the lens of the glasses that so many

people wear day in and day out. And I don't know about you, but to me, this is a pretty

dystopian vision of the future. And it's no surprise at all that they're trying to finally

make the smart glasses happen. And of course, using generative AI as part of the justification to do that.

And so when I was thinking about who I wanted to talk to, to understand more about the wider

implications of this push by the major tech companies, by the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Sergey Brins of

the world, I can think of no one better to talk to than Chris Gilliard.

Chris has been on the show in the past, of course.

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