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. It’s safe to assume that Brin’s role at Google is ‘limited’ to overseeing development of new technologies. Just look how different his photo is from the uniform style of the rest of Google’s leadership (http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/).
This makes me think that Brin does not go through Google’s PR team before making public remarks such as smartphones are ‘emasculating’. 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. It’s not hard to imagine the following feedback loop – 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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