Google Glass attack: tech giant accused of 'killing' San Francisco

A late night attack on a woman wearing Google Glass tech has become emblematic of anti-technology backlash in Silicon Valley

Google Glass attack: tech giant accused of 'killing' San Francisco
Sarah Slocum who on a recent outing to a bar in San Francisco, was attacked by people who told her "F*** Google", accused her of "killing this city", and ripped the hi-tech gear from her head

Sarah Slocum loves her Google Glass. She wears the gadget on her face for more than 12 hours a day and enjoys showing others how to use it.

With the wink of an eye she can take a picture, or use her voice to command it to record video. The device is, she says, “the future”.

So it was with some shock that she discovered there are those who disagree. Rather forcibly in fact. On a recent outing to a bar in San Francisco, the 34-year-old technology writer says she was attacked by people who told her “F--- Google!”, accused her of “killing this city” and ripped the hi-tech gear from her head.

The incident has become a touchstone for a wider debate in San Francisco, where a section of the otherwise tolerant, liberal and peace-loving population appears to have had enough of the inexorable march of technology.

Bars and coffee shops have begun putting up signs banning Google Glass devices. Special buses that take employees to work in nearby Silicon Valley have been picketed. Hundreds of demonstrators recently gathered outside Twitter’s headquarters to protest about tax breaks for the company.

Protesters hold signs while demonstrating in front of the Twitter Inc. headquarters in San Francisco, California, U.S. (Bloomberg)

And, most of all, there is anger over spiralling rents and evictions as young tech workers colonise previously low-income areas.

Miss Slocum is one of several thousand “explorers” across the world road-testing Google’s latest gadget. As with any late-night bar fracas, there are conflicting accounts of what happened at 1.30am in Molotov’s, a dimly lit, cash only bar.

But she insists she was not recording anyone or invading their privacy, simply demonstrating the device to some interested patrons, when some other customers began rolling their eyes.

She said: “A few minutes later ... they cursed at me. I started feeling threatened. At that point I decided I was going to turn on the camera and start recording this hateful, threatening behaviour.

“Then a guy and a girl charged me. The guy started waving his hands and trying to grab the Glass. I couldn’t believe they were behaving that way. All I could do was say, 'I’m recording you. I’m recording you’. They were calling me the B-word.”

After a hiatus, someone threw a dirty bar rag at her, she said, and a woman came over and said: “You’re killing this city.”

Curses were exchanged and, according to Miss Slocum, a man ripped the device off her face and ran out of the bar with it. She pursued and grabbed him, regaining the Glass after a scuffle.

What was perhaps more telling than the incident itself was the reaction after she detailed her encounter on Facebook and said it constituted a “hate crime”.

There was some of the sympathy one would expect, but many blamed her for having taken a recording device into a bar in the first place.

Google Glass (Rex)

In the days that followed, a series of bars and coffee shops banned the device. At The Willows, which is popular with young technology types, a sign in the window shows the Glass with a red line though it. “Our patrons have expressed concern with being recorded while enjoying themselves,” it reads. One customer said: “The Google Glass is extreme tech. You don’t know you’re being recorded. People want some privacy.”

The furore follows another divisive controversy in San Francisco, that of its “Google Buses”, which has pitted technology workers against residents of traditionally low-income areas such as the formerly bohemian and artistic Mission district.

Giant, air-conditioned, internet-equipped buses with tinted windows now glide past the thrift stores and second-hand book shops there, taking workers to their jobs 30 miles away at companies such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple and Yahoo.

Watching them go by, long-time residents see a visible reminder of the “one percenters” in their midst as they are forced to rely on a more rickety, century-old public transit system. It has led to protests, bus tyres being slashed and stones hurled. Signs have been taped to the vehicles reading “F--- off Google”.

A recent study found the average passenger on these buses is a 30-year-old man earning more than $100,000. But when The Telegraph visited a pick-up point in the Mission at 7am, the people didn’t look very happy about it.

A line of workers stood against a wall attempting to look inconspicuous, wearing earphones and staring determinedly down at their smartphones in silence.

The question “Excuse me sir, do you work for Google, are you getting on the bus?” elicited the wary response: “Er, I’m very sorry, I don’t feel comfortable talking about it.” Even anonymously? “No.”

One employee eventually broke ranks but still declined to give his name. He said: “This a real problem and there’s a big internal dialogue going on in our companies about what to do, whether to make the buses look different, and also about rent control. The free market people don’t agree with rent control, but someone put a brick through one of the bus windows recently so they’re worried.

“You have all these nerds who grew up feeling fairly victimised and now they are in positions of extreme privilege and wealth. But they’re getting picked on and a lot of them feel like they’re right back at high school again being bullied. People are upset.”

Tony Robles, who runs a Mission housing advocacy group for the elderly and disabled, and who has been involved in peaceful protests against the buses, said: “Do you honestly think I want to get up at 6am and chase a bus? It’s reached boiling point. We’re seeing the rise of the tech-washed digital human.

This insulated world they live in is creating a lot of resentment with long-time residents, the people that contribute culturally to our city.” Mr Robles said the technology workers were “aloof” and like “shadows” but the main problems were caused by “mean-spirited speculators” buying properties and evicting long-term tenants, so that rents can be raised astronomically.

In San Francisco, 23.4 per cent of residents are below the poverty threshold, according to a recent study. In December alone, rents went up by 10.6 per cent. In the Mission, a two-bedroom apartment recently went on the market for $10,000 a month, which probably had the regulars at Molotov’s spluttering into their $2 beers.

Google, whose motto is “Don’t be evil”, knows it has a problem and is determined to make San Francisco love it again. Last week it donated $6.8  million to the city, which will allow underprivileged children to ride public buses free of charge for the next two years.

Miss Slocum believes differences will be resolved. “I’m really excited about the time we’re living in,” she said. “Every day there is some new invention that’s going to dramatically change our lives.”