Unrelenting internet human Robert Scoble recently declared that, as one of Google's Glass "Explorers," he would never take the headset off, except to let strangers try it. Today he posted this picture. "You thought I was kidding," he wrote alongside it.
Scoble is an indiscriminate evangelist; he embraces virtually any new technology with inhuman enthusiasm. This makes him useful as a sort of reductio ad absurdum product processor: he takes a new service or thing and gives himself to it, both testing it and inadvertently demonstrating the logical conclusion of its creators' visions.
This photo of a drenched middle-aged man recording himself as he screams into his shower mirror,* then, may the purest expression of the Google Glass concept yet (and perhaps of Scoble, too).
It may also be the first defining photo of the early wave of wearable electronics. Scoble has a knack for starring in iconic, micro-era-defining photos, by the way. In retrospect, this widely shared photo wasn't just absurd, but foretold an all-consuming Apple mania that American consumers and investors are just now shaking:
If you want to see the future of consumer technology, it's wise to keep an eye on people like Scoble. He is, by the nature of what he does, almost always wrong. But these occasional expressions of his id, whether they're opportune press photos or borderline not-safe-for-work posts on Google Plus, are some of the most useful media artifacts in modern tech history.
In other words, welcome to the future.
Scoble clarifies in the comments: the photo was taken by his wife.