As privacy experts nearly predicted, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened: A woman was reportedly attacked in San Francisco Friday night for wearing Google Glass in a bar.
According to CBS, tech writer Sarah Slocum was showing a friend how to use the glasses-mounted computer at the popular San Francisco dive bar Molotov's. Slocum was reportedly recording scenes from the bar when she was approached by two women and a man who started an altercation and pulled the glasses from her face. Slocum said she recovered the glasses, but her purse and phone were stolen.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, someone told Slocum that she and her tech friends were "destroying the city."
Slocum recounted the incident on her Facebook page:
Google Glass has caused privacy concerns around the globe. In San Francisco, however, the product's presence may remind some residents of a different problem: how the nearby tech industry has fueled class strife in the region. A new study by the Brookings Institution found that the city had the second highest ratio of wealth inequality in the nation. Protesters recently blocked a Google bus, claiming that the company and its employees were contributing to the city's growing separation of wealth.
At Molotov's -- a dive bar with cheap drinks and Yelp reviews raving that "there are no yuppies here" -- this sentiment can be keenly felt.
"The crowd at Molotov's is not a tech-oriented crowd for the most part," said one witness to KPIX. "It's probably one of the more punk rock bars in the city so it's not really Google Glass country."
When asked if he was suggesting that Slocum should have been victimized, the witness replied, "Of course not, no one should be. But a level of tact in that sort of establishment might have behooved her."
Another witness agreed.
"I think everybody was just upset that she would be recording outside of a bar this late with obviously embarrassing behavior going on around her," he told KPIX. "[The patrons were] insulted that someone thinks it's ok to record them the entire time they're in public."
Slocum reportedly has video of her assailant on her Google Glass and has turned it over to police.