But the truth is, his experiment with Google Glass made me realize how comparably social mobile phones are. As much as there’s a brief against phones as a zombie drug that causes us all to ignore the world, in reality, they are something people frequently share with others. When you take a photo, you can hand it over for inspection. When you Google a Wikipedia page, the person you’re with can peer over your shoulder to read it with you. People gather around phones to watch YouTube videos or look at a funny tweet together or jointly analyze a text from a friend. With Glass, there was no such sharing — and as Clive points out, because you often can’t tell whether someone is using it at all, it becomes your own private Panopticon. Even when it’s not on, you assume it is, and then it snubs you. When he was out, he kept sending me pictures of the kids, but to see them, I had to log in to Google Plus. Look, I’ve been spoiled by digital convenience. Just take a photo on your phone and text me the darn thing.