What mattered at that time was not good enough. But yes, it is absolutely true that old VGA cameras are being replaced with HD ones. The prices on those went down a lot. One should expect a typical street camera to stream an HD video in a few years. Some already do, as you point out.
I don’t know why you’re so concerned about google glasses and so dismissive of smartphones and helmet cams, they’re the same thing.
There is a big difference in how they are used. If a stranger walks up to me and raises a smartphone, I know that he is filming me. If a stranger is wearing GG then I don't know what he is doing. Maybe he is taking a photo, or maybe he is checking his Twitter feed. Mass use of GG has potential to mask the videotaping, as if everyone with a smartphone has to walk with his phone in a filming position. (Naturally, nobody does that, and that's why smartphones are not a concern.) Videotaping of others is not a human right.
You ARE being filmed when out in public, period.
Perhaps; but why to allow MORE of the same? One of a hundred carries a flu virus today; you meet one of them. Your chance to get a virus is 0.01. What would you say if ten out of hundred are sick? Fifty? All of them? This doesn't help you at all, so why to promote it? What is the greater public good that is achieved by everyone filming everyone? Or, perhaps, it is just a game? But other people are not playthings for GG aficionados.
It is NOT a universal spy device, it does NOT stream video to the mothership, those are quite simply lies.
Perhaps; but that's how it was sold, and that's how it is perceived. There are streaming applications for a smartphone, as we discussed above. There are face recognition services for GG and smartphones, even though Google is already afraid of the backlash.
What mattered at that time was what they WANTED us to see.
There’s no difference in how they are used. GG are JUST an interface for the phone, NOTHING MORE. The guy walking to you with his phone MIGHT be filming you, or he MIGHT be texting his girlfriend, or he MIGHT be playing Candy Crush. And the guy walking up to you with GG has all the exact same mights. There is no actual difference between the two.
Because you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. People aren’t going to give up their phones or the things they can do with them. Everybody doing their recording has what they consider to be a good reason for it. And it’s not our place to tell them otherwise. This isn’t the flu, that’s a bad strawman. GG are just like phones.
No that is NOT how they marketed them. That’s how paranoid luddites decided they worked, and it is quite simply a bunch of lies. The glasses are only in communication with the phone. The phone CAN be in communication with various places, but that again is no different than every other smartphone on the planet, they can ALL be in constant communication. And they can ALL run facial recognition software so that when you take pictures of your friends everybody can be tagged on Facebook. Google isn’t afraid of any backlash because all the backlash is from people that are making crap up and fail to understand it is JUST AN INTERFACE FOR THE PHONE. The glasses can do NOTHING that you can’t do with the phone and no glasses. So EVERYTHING you’re afraid of them doing was possible (and being done) before the glasses.
That’s the point you keep fleeing from. All the things you started fearing when the glasses came up were ALREADY HERE. Had been for years. And if all the google glasses in the world wind up in the dump tomorrow ALL those things you fear will STILL BE OUT THERE. We are in the post privacy world, period. Have been for a long time. It’s nice you finally noticed, but it’s silly for you to blame the glasses that are nothing more than the latest interface for a surveillance world you’ve been living in for most of the century.