Social Pressure Triumphs Again

by Logan Albright
Nov. 13, 2014

Google Glass is basically dead.

The innovative technology from the largest, most exciting tech firm out there was supposed to usher in a brave new world of wearable computers, revolutionize communication and take humanity the next step down the inevitable road towards cyborghood.

It was also, if you listened to a different set of sources, going to destroy any hope of privacy, wreck our attention spans, cripple inter-personal interaction, undermine trust, and basically ruin society forever.

But it hasn't done any of those things. Instead, it has quietly collapsed into irrelevance. Why? There can be no doubt that Google Glass represents a remarkable achievement in technology. Early adopters were positively giddy over this leap into the future. But in practice, despite all the perks of a personal computer you can wear like a set of glasses, concerns over civil liberties and social etiquette have turned actually using Google Glass into a far from pleasant experience.

PC Magazine reports that early adopters experienced intense resistance from their friends, family and colleagues who viewed use of the device as unbearably rude. Some people even experienced having the glasses forcibly snatched off their faces. The result, unsurprisingly, is that suddenly no one is so keen on buying a product that will turn them into a pariah. Good.

The remarkable thing about all this is, in spite of all the civil liberty and privacy concerns, no governments had to become involved to kill Google Glass. No regulations had to be passed, no lawsuits, no new legislation and no executive orders. Instead, a potentially privacy-invading technology was shut down purely through the force of public opinion.

This is a great example of what Hayek referred to as spontaneous order. The critics of laissez-faire always insist that government is necessary to guard against private companies that would seek to abuse their power, that without government, society would collapse into a ruthless dog-eat-dog, Mad Max-esque stew of anarchic chaos. But examples like this teach us that order is not only possible, but likely, under a system that involves purely voluntary transactions.

In fact, social pressure has been long recognized as a way of punishing misbehavior and of maintaining orderly communities. As I've noted before, a popular custom in England was once to drive troublemakers out of town with a cacophonous parade of shame known as "rough music." The idea that the state is necessary to micromanage social relations is a relatively new one.

Man is a social animal. The need for the admiration and approval of our peers is a fundamental part of what makes us human. Social pressure, therefore, represents a peacekeeping system far stronger than mere physical violence.

The Google Glass fiasco illustrates the fragility of the alleged power of private companies. Introduce a product people don't want, or that they see as dangerous, and all the money in the world can't turn it into a success. Google has experienced similar difficulties with Google+ (the little social media network nobody loved), and Jeffrey Tucker has made this point elegantly by pointing to the declining sales of Coca-Cola in an increasingly health conscious world.

It is heartening to those of us who believe in liberty and voluntarism to see the private market so swiftly and effectively shut down a bad idea like Google Glass, without any need for government intervention. If only the broader public could see that the same model can work in almost any situation, we might soon find ourselves in a very free world indeed.
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Logan Albright is a writer and economist in Washington, DC.