14 DAY TRIAL // Things out in San Francisco are getting ridiculous as another Google Glass wearer was assaulted this weekend.
On Friday, there was a protest in San Francisco against a Google employee who had evicted several tenants after moving into a house in the area. Two reporters from Business Insider went there to cover the event and after things wrapped up, they were walking through the city.
After writing the story in a nearby coffee shop, they got ready to go and Kyle Russell put on Glass without thinking twice. The device wasn’t even turned on when a random individual put his hand in Russell’s face, yelled “Glass” and grabbed the device.
They chased the person for a while, recovered the dropped device and eventually filed a police report.
The reporter was basically mugged in the middle of the street just because he was wearing a Google device. As he himself points out, things have reached a point where anything associated with Google has come to represent gentrification in San Francisco.
The city has been taken over by protests against Google’s busses that take employees to the company’s HQ in Silicon Valley, eventually leading to software companies having to pay to use the city’s bus stations.
Regardless, these types of conflicts are not reason enough to destroy someone else’s property.
Back in February, another person wearing Google Glass was attacked and robbed in a San Francisco bar. Sarah Slocum is a tech writer and business consultant. At the time of the incident, she was in a bar showing her friends how Google Glass worked.
Google itself has suggested that members of the Glass Explorer program should try to educate those around them about the things that Glass can and cannot do.
Someone tore the device off her face and ran off with it, making this incident pretty similar to what happened to Russell. Another person from the assailant’s group told Slocum that people like her who enjoyed tech were the ones destroying the city.
Slocum pursued the attacker and got him to hand back the $1,500 device. Although she got the costly device back, her purse, cell phone and wallet were taken from her instead.
She too filed a complaint with the police, although this doesn’t seem like it’s going to put a stop to violent acts against more tech-oriented people in San Francisco.