Sergey’s Android-gynous Moment

Google cofounder calls smartphones “emasculating” while wearing goofy Google Glass.

By David Talbot

February 28, 2013

We’ve heard plenty of speculation about Google’s “Glass” computer headset. But at the TED conference today, Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, finally revealed its true purpose: restoring strength and perhaps even manhood.

While wearing the nerdy headset, the man behind the spectacular growth of Google’s Android operating system for smartphones despairingly revealed the latter technologies’ awful toll. Smartphones, he said, were “emasculating.”

“Is this the way you’re meant to interact with other people? Is the future of connection just people walking around hunched up, looking down, rubbing a featureless piece of glass?” He added: “It’s kind of emasculating. Is this what you’re meant to do with your body? You want something that will free your eyes.”

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Glass lets you take pictures and videos or conduct Internet searches, whose results are displayed in your peripheral vision. But it may not be available before 2014 (see “We Still Don’t Know What Google Glass Will Be Like to Use”).

BoingBloing Blogger Rob Beschizza suggested a rebranding of Google’s smartphone OS: “Introducing Mandroid, Google’s remasculating new operating system. Discover Gun Whisky Cologne Cigar Beard, the new version of Mandroid.”

Brin added: “My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all—the information would just come to you as you needed it.”

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