Glass and Bars

Would you ever wear Google Glass into a bar? Can you even imagine the repercussions that might follow?I f you’re unfamiliar with Glass, as it’s called for short, it’s a set of glasses—sometimes prescription, sometimes not—that come with a little visible camera affixed. Glass can read your email, take videos, take photos, Google stuff for you, and in the not-too-distant future, instantly recognize faces at bars and tell you whom you’re talking to. Ok, first of all, no one wants to be recorded in a bar with a camera or internet phone services. People go to the bar for a reason and sometime things do not turn out the way they are supposed to and you end up with a night that you would much rather forget. But throw in Glass, and it is a whole other animal. Someone might think that it is funny and post it somewhere. You can see where this is going. But can we be honest? Facial recognition is going to be the saddest prospect of all. Because while bars can be places to make deals and break them, make out and break up, one of their primary lures is meeting people, sometimes people in whom one has a romantic interest. And Google Glass marks the end of mystique.

Universality

If Pythagoras had not lived, or if his work had been destroyed, someone else eventually would have discovered the same Pythagorean theorem. Moreover, this theorem means the same thing to everyone today as it meant 2,500 years ago, and will mean the same thing to everyone a thousand years from now — no matter what advances occur in technology or what new evidence emerges. Mathematical knowledge is unlike any other knowledge. Its truths are objective, necessary and timeless. What kinds of things are mathematical entities and theorems, that they are knowable in this way? Do they exist somewhere, a set of immaterial objects in the enchanted gardens of the Platonic world, waiting to be discovered? Or are they mere creations of the human mind?This question has divided thinkers for centuries. It seems spooky to suggest that mathematical entities actually exist in and of themselves. But if math is only a product of the human imagination, how do we all end up agreeing on exactly the same math? Some might argue that mathematical entities are like chess pieces, elaborate fictions in a game invented by humans. But unlike chess, mathematics is indispensable to scientific theories describing our universe. Another interesting part of this whole conundrum is that a lot of the computer science, technology, and communication services that we use now is based off of the math. If the math that is "universal" can be used then what of the things that it is used for?