Unquestionably, this week’s Pick of the Issue is Gary
Shteyngart’s sublime “O.K., Glass.” It’s about Shteyngart’s experience as a
Google Glass Explorer. Google Glass is a futuristic computer – a sort of
wearable smart phone (Shteyngart describes his Glass as “a pair of
shale-colored architect’s glasses with parts of the frame missing”). It
interacts with the Internet via voice commands initiated with the magic words,
“O.K., Glass.” Shteyngart won a Twitter contest run by Google to be among “the first
batch of Google Explorers” (“@Shteyngart You’re invited to join our
#glassexplorers program. Woohoo!”). “O.K., Glass” brims with delightful surreal
reality:
A pink light comes on above the right lens. He slides his
index finger against the right temple of the glasses as if flicking away a fly.
The man’s right eyebrow rises and his right eye squints. He appears to be
mouthing some words. A lip-reader would come away with the following message:
“Forever 21 world traveler denim shorts, $22.80. Horoscope: Cooler heads
prevail today, helping you strike a compromise in a matter you refused to budge
on last week.”
“O.K., Glass. Google translate ‘hamburger’ into Korean.”
“Haembeogeo,” a gentle, vowel-rich voice announced after a
few seconds of searching, as both English and Hangul script appeared on the
display above my right eye. Since there are no earbuds to plug into Glass,
audio is conveyed through a “bone conduction transducer.” In effect, this means
that a tiny speaker vibrates against the bone behind my right ear, replicating
sound. The result is eerie, as if someone is whispering directly into a hole
bored into your cranium, but also deeply futuristic. You can imagine a time
when different parts of our bodies are adapted for different needs. If a bone
can hear sound, why can’t my fingertips smell the bacon strips they’re about to
grab?
A few days later, I Glass out. I film a line of tourists
waiting for Shake Shack burgers in Madison Square Park. I record an inane Fox
Sports reporter on a nearby bench trying to guess the favorite sports team of
an office worker: “You’re a vegetarian with yellow toenails and no tattoos and
you drink whiskey and you like Jay-Z. Are you a Yankees fan?” As she ends the
interview and gets up to leave, the Fox reporter’s mic wire gets caught in the
bench and I record her toppling over. At Chelsea Market, I snap a photo of a
man shorter than me. Then a gent carrying an oversized steamed lobster. I duck
into the Biergarten at the Standard Hotel and take a picture of a plate of
currywurst for a German-food-loving friend. “Mmm, currywurst,” I say, adding those
words as a caption to the photo I’m about to send. “Mmm, curry vs.” is how
Glass interprets my caption.
“O.K., Glass” is endlessly quotable. It’s close to
perfection. I enjoyed it immensely.
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