Timo Arnall

hautepop:

Google Glass is hauntological.

The notion of hauntology (Marx, Derrida) explores the idea of the “past inside the present” - the ghost of the dead father. A nostalgia or mourning for futures and utopias we once believed but that are now lost to time. Also, the haunting of a concept by that which is missed, or that which escapes representation.

With Glass, time is indeed out of joint, and what it is haunted by is the future. The future son who watches that childhood video, or the gathering of friends who witness that skydive, beers in hand congratulating. The anticipation of another viewing - because that is the logic of why record? - and yet a future viewing that will never happen. Glass is going to produce a hell of a lot of wobbly home video and not-framed photographs, tending-to-infinite records that no-one will ever view. We weren’t even in the moment properly, as it happened, because Glass foregrounds the narrator inside our heads.

That’s what we need bots and algorithms for, to watch the videos we can’t watch ourselves and to tell us what’s important in the moments we weren’t concentrating on when they happened.