Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Wednesday described his misgivings with smartphones, saying that using them makes him feel less manly.
During a speech at the TED Conference in Long Beach, Calif., Brin called smartphones “emasculating.”
“You’re standing around and just rubbing this featureless piece of glass,” Brin said of smartphones, according to CNET. Brin talked about his company’s head-mounted device, known as Google Glass, that has been set up to compete with smartphones.
From CNET:
Using Google Glass requires a fair bit of rubbing as well, and the prototypes have fewer hardware features than most phones. But Brin said they improved on smartphones in certain ways, particularly in having a camera ever-ready to start snapping pictures. (The same camera is also the source of the most serious privacy concerns raised by Glass.)
Brin said the ideal search technology would surface information before a person had to ask for it, and that he has been working on the problem for 15 years.
“This is the first form factor that can deliver that vision,” Brin said.
During the last two years Google has made significant strides in making Glass more comfortable and attractive, Brin said. The original version was “like a cell phone strapped to your head,” he said.
