<nettime> Regarding Sergey Brin's statement that smartphones are 'emasculating'

["Andrian Georgiev" <a@thelevel.co>]

Sergey Brin: Smartphones are 'emasculating'

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57571612-94/sergey-brin-smartphones-are-emasculating/

Maybe these pictures tell a bigger story. Itâs safe to assume that Brinâs  
role at Google is âlimitedâ to overseeing development of new technologies.  
Just look how different his photo is from the uniform style of the rest of  
Googleâs leadership  
(http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/).

This makes me think that Brin does not go through Googleâs PR team before  
making public remarks such as smartphones are âemasculatingâ. He speaks as  
a genuine engineer.

Perhaps this is done on purpose. Google lets Brin speak privacy-defying  
futuristic stuff in order to check how people feel about self-driving  
cars, digital glasses, etc. Itâs not hard to imagine the following  
feedback loop â Brin conveys what he thinks are the benefits of Google  
glasses over current mobile devices -> Google observes whether people  
worry about privacy implications -> Google scales down its vision and  
ships a product with less uncanny features. Repeat. And everytime Google  
iterates, an additional inch of the original vision is gained.


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