John Humphrys said he is not a Google Glass convert . Here is a sentence I never thought I’d write. I am at the cutting edge of technology. Scoff as much as you like — and those who know me best will scoff the most — but the photograph accompanying this article provides some of the proof. It shows me wearing Google Glass — and only the privileged few can claim to have done that. Privileged? That’s a matter of opinion. I’ll address later the question of whether this particular piece of technology is, as Google claims, going to change the world, or whether it’s just rather pointless. But the fact is, I’ve tried it and you almost certainly haven’t, and I’m rather pleased with myself. Childish, maybe, but there it is. Not so long ago I’d have sneered at it. I was rather proud of being the very last journalist in the BBC newsroom to abandon his ancient typewriter for a computer — and it was not my choice. I came in one morning to discover that it had gone. My boss had had it removed and he personally escorted me down to the basement of TV Centre and ordered me to spend the morning being taught to use a computer. I hated it. Typing, for me, was as much a therapeutic as a creative process. I loved the buzz that came from hammering the keys as the deadline for the Nine O’Clock News drew nearer and I hated the delicate computer keyboards. If you were less than gentle with them, they broke. That was probably the beginning of my hostility to computer technology. When mobile phones made their first clunky appearance, I remember chairing a conference and agreeing with one of the expert speakers who said confidently they would never catch on because people would simply be too embarrassed to be seen appearing to talk to themselves in the street. Remember how we used to call them ‘poser’ phones? As for carrying one around, why would I want to do that? When texting arrived I wrote an article in these pages regretting the damage it was doing to the English language and I could see no reason to type out a message laboriously on a minute keyboard when you could make a quick call instead. Well, I’ve been converted — up to a point. I have not become a happy-clappy evangelist waving my arms in the air and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ whenever the latest smart phone hits the shops. I am still profoundly irritated when the eyes of the person I’m trying to have a conversation with flicker to their phones just in case a new message has popped up — or when they talk long and loudly into them on the quiet coach of a train. The broadcaster was trying the Google Glass on Channel 4's Gadget Man presented by Richard Ayoade . So, not quite a Damascene conversion. But I do carry a mobile and use it for emails and apps  and photos and, yes, I text  pretty regularly. I am about to abandon my ancient answer-phone system — if only because I have grown to hate the voice of the woman who tells me so imperiously when I am trying to retrieve messages that I have entered the wrong pin and I can see perfectly well that I haven’t. I often read newspapers online and books on a tablet and I wouldn’t dream of spending hours slogging around shops to buy a lawnmower when it takes a couple of clicks on my laptop. The positive explanation for my conversion is technology works. The internet saves you time and money, and all those fears about being robbed blind if you dared risk putting your credit card details on a website proved pretty much unfounded. I love being able to carry dozens of books wherever I go and choosing what to read without needing an extra suitcase. It’s nice not getting lost in a strange city (well, not so often) because an app can give me a map, and how did we manage without search engines? All these benefits have been obvious for years, but the real reason for my own ‘conversion’ is, I think, a negative one. The fear factor has gone. This may seem perverse given so many of us complain endlessly about the tyranny of the mobile and how you will be turned into a block of salt if you are ever more than 18  inches away from yours. Every sentient parent worries about their children becoming slaves to their tablets, wasting their lives playing idiot games or, much worse, becoming victims of those monsters who stalk social media websites. The arms of the glasses is a touch pad and the wearer can scroll through text by sliding their finger along it . But the reality is that we are perfectly capable of controlling computer technology rather than allowing it to control us. To blame the mobile for the way society has changed is a bit like blaming the 19th-century inventor Henry Bessemer, who made cheap steel possible, for the Blitz. Mobiles are tools. Very useful tools, but that’s all they are. It’s not the fault of the Bessemer furnaces that bombs were made: it’s ours. And it’s not the fault of the internet that children are exposed to vile images or sexual predators. It’s the fault of the people who peddle the filth and, ultimately, our own fault for letting them get away with it. One answer, as this newspaper’s campaign has helped show, is more rigorous policing and much greater pressure on the internet service providers. As for those who spend their lives tweeting and then complain about being insulted, there’s no law that says you have to read the stuff. As a journalist, I think Twitter is a great way of finding out very quickly what lots of people think about lots of subjects, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a running commentary on my own boring life. Those who do the most complaining about the tyranny of technology are, I suspect, always the earliest of the  so-called early adopters. They are the people who must have the latest high-tech gadget the moment it appears and then must show the world they have it by using it. To ask whether they really need it is to miss the point entirely. Humphrys said he prefers his smart phone to Google Glass and said it does the same things . In my own case, when I started carrying a mobile I thought I was being terribly clever by keeping my number secret. I regarded it as a portable phone box: terrific for making calls when I was away from home, but I was damned if I’d be at everyone’s beck and call wherever I was at whatever time of day or night. That was stupid — and not only because once you call them they’ve got your number. The answer was obvious. Switch off. If they want to contact you, they send a text. And if you want to be contacted, you reply. Perfect. Which takes me, finally, to those funny specs I’m wearing in the photograph. Mine were supplied by the people from the Gadget Man programme on Channel 4 who were trying to tempt me to take a rather more adventurous approach to technology. To complete the story of my technological conversion it would be nice if I could say: ‘Yes! Just what I’ve always wanted: a tiny computer built into my glasses.’ The glasses are fitted with a miniaturised camera and web browser that displays digital information on a tiny screen in front of your eye. The arm of the headset is a touch pad. By sliding your finger up and down it, you can scroll through the text. Tapping the arm acts like clicking a computer mouse. Obviously there’s no keyboard, so you tell the glasses what you want them to do — they have a microphone, a tiny speaker and motion sensors to respond to head movements. And the image and the sound are surprisingly clear. The glasses are fitted with a miniturised camera and web browser that displays digital information on a tiny screen in front of the wearer's eye . So I’m a fan? I’m afraid not. I did feel slightly foolish wearing them, but you’d expect to get some odd looks if people see you talking to your glasses. So I asked my youngest son, who is in his teens and therefore really is at the cutting edge, what he thought about them. He said he’d feel rather silly wearing them on the street, too. Maybe that will change when (if) everyone has them. But there are other, bigger problems. I’m uneasy at the thought that the wearer can be videoing you without your even being aware of it. There’s the question of safety, too. I don’t fancy the idea of someone doing 70 in the outside lane of the motorway and watching a movie with one eye. The boss of Google says, as you might expect, that he wears his all the time. I think that’s scary. I don’t want to look into the eyes of someone and wonder whether they’re looking back at me or whether they are in an electronic world from which I’m excluded. But Google Glass is undeniably clever. You tell it to take a picture and that’s what it does. You ask it to give you directions or the weather forecast or show you a film or even translate something into other languages and it appears before your very eyes — or, rather, eye. Terrific. But I’ve already got something that does all that. It’s called a smart phone. And I’ve grown to like it.
The broadcaster and journalist said he is not a convert to Google Glass .
Although 'clever' he writes that it does the same things as his smart phone .
Wearer feels 'slightly foolish' and Humphrys believes there is a safety issue .
John Humphrys is on Gadget Man on Channel 4 at 8.30pm next Monday.
John Humphrys said he is not a Google Glass convert . Here is a sentence I never thought I’d write. I am at the cutting edge of technology. Scoff as much as you like — and those who know me best will scoff the most — but the photograph accompanying this article provides some of the proof. It shows me wearing Google Glass — and only the privileged few can claim to have done that. Privileged? That’s a matter of opinion. I’ll address later the question of whether this particular piece of technology is, as Google claims, going to change the world, or whether it’s just rather pointless. But the fact is, I’ve tried it and you almost certainly haven’t, and I’m rather pleased with myself. Childish, maybe, but there it is. Not so long ago I’d have sneered at it. I was rather proud of being the very last journalist in the BBC newsroom to abandon his ancient typewriter for a computer — and it was not my choice. I came in one morning to discover that it had gone. My boss had had it removed and he personally escorted me down to the basement of TV Centre and ordered me to spend the morning being taught to use a computer. I hated it. Typing, for me, was as much a therapeutic as a creative process. I loved the buzz that came from hammering the keys as the deadline for the Nine O’Clock News drew nearer and I hated the delicate computer keyboards. If you were less than gentle with them, they broke. That was probably the beginning of my hostility to computer technology. When mobile phones made their first clunky appearance, I remember chairing a conference and agreeing with one of the expert speakers who said confidently they would never catch on because people would simply be too embarrassed to be seen appearing to talk to themselves in the street. Remember how we used to call them ‘poser’ phones? As for carrying one around, why would I want to do that? When texting arrived I wrote an article in these pages regretting the damage it was doing to the English language and I could see no reason to type out a message laboriously on a minute keyboard when you could make a quick call instead. Well, I’ve been converted — up to a point. I have not become a happy-clappy evangelist waving my arms in the air and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’ whenever the latest smart phone hits the shops. I am still profoundly irritated when the eyes of the person I’m trying to have a conversation with flicker to their phones just in case a new message has popped up — or when they talk long and loudly into them on the quiet coach of a train. The broadcaster was trying the Google Glass on Channel 4's Gadget Man presented by Richard Ayoade . So, not quite a Damascene conversion. But I do carry a mobile and use it for emails and apps  and photos and, yes, I text pretty regularly. I am about to abandon my ancient answer-phone system — if only because I have grown to hate the voice of the woman who tells me so imperiously when I am trying to retrieve messages that I have entered the wrong pin and I can see perfectly well that I haven’t. I often read newspapers online and books on a tablet and I wouldn’t dream of spending hours slogging around shops to buy a lawnmower when it takes a couple of clicks on my laptop. The positive explanation for my conversion is technology works. The internet saves you time and money, and all those fears about being robbed blind if you dared risk putting your credit card details on a website proved pretty much unfounded. I love being able to carry dozens of books wherever I go and choosing what to read without needing an extra suitcase. It’s nice not getting lost in a strange city (well, not so often) because an app can give me a map, and how did we manage without search engines? All these benefits have been obvious for years, but the real reason for my own ‘conversion’ is, I think, a negative one. The fear factor has gone. This may seem perverse given so many of us complain endlessly about the tyranny of the mobile and how you will be turned into a block of salt if you are ever more than 18  inches away from yours. Every sentient parent worries about their children becoming slaves to their tablets, wasting their lives playing idiot games or, much worse, becoming victims of those monsters who stalk social media websites. The arms of the glasses is a touch pad and the wearer can scroll through text by sliding their finger along it . But the reality is that we are perfectly capable of controlling computer technology rather than allowing it to control us. To blame the mobile for the way society has changed is a bit like blaming the 19th-century inventor Henry Bessemer, who made cheap steel possible, for the Blitz. Mobiles are tools. Very useful tools, but that’s all they are. It’s not the fault of the Bessemer furnaces that bombs were made: it’s ours. And it’s not the fault of the internet that children are exposed to vile images or sexual predators. It’s the fault of the people who peddle the filth and, ultimately, our own fault for letting them get away with it. One answer, as this newspaper’s campaign has helped show, is more rigorous policing and much greater pressure on the internet service providers. As for those who spend their lives tweeting and then complain about being insulted, there’s no law that says you have to read the stuff. As a journalist, I think Twitter is a great way of finding out very quickly what lots of people think about lots of subjects, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a running commentary on my own boring life. Those who do the most complaining about the tyranny of technology are, I suspect, always the earliest of the  so-called early adopters. They are the people who must have the latest high-tech gadget the moment it appears and then must show the world they have it by using it. To ask whether they really need it is to miss the point entirely. Humphrys said he prefers his smart phone to Google Glass and said it does the same things . In my own case, when I started carrying a mobile I thought I was being terribly clever by keeping my number secret. I regarded it as a portable phone box: terrific for making calls when I was away from home, but I was damned if I’d be at everyone’s beck and call wherever I was at whatever time of day or night. That was stupid — and not only because once you call them they’ve got your number. The answer was obvious. Switch off. If they want to contact you, they send a text. And if you want to be contacted, you reply. Perfect. Which takes me, finally, to those funny specs I’m wearing in the photograph. Mine were supplied by the people from the Gadget Man programme on Channel 4 who were trying to tempt me to take a rather more adventurous approach to technology. To complete the story of my technological conversion it would be nice if I could say: ‘Yes! Just what I’ve always wanted: a tiny computer built into my glasses.’ The glasses are fitted with a miniaturised camera and web browser that displays digital information on a tiny screen in front of your eye. The arm of the headset is a touch pad. By sliding your finger up and down it, you can scroll through the text. Tapping the arm acts like clicking a computer mouse. Obviously there’s no keyboard, so you tell the glasses what you want them to do — they have a microphone, a tiny speaker and motion sensors to respond to head movements. And the image and the sound are surprisingly clear. The glasses are fitted with a miniturised camera and web browser that displays digital information on a tiny screen in front of the wearer's eye . So I’m a fan? I’m afraid not. I did feel slightly foolish wearing them, but you’d expect to get some odd looks if people see you talking to your glasses. So I asked my youngest son, who is in his teens and therefore really is at the cutting edge, what he thought about them. He said he’d feel rather silly wearing them on the street, too. Maybe that will change when (if) everyone has them. But there are other, bigger problems. I’m uneasy at the thought that the wearer can be videoing you without your even being aware of it. There’s the question of safety, too. I don’t fancy the idea of someone doing 70 in the outside lane of the motorway and watching a movie with one eye. The boss of Google says, as you might expect, that he wears his all the time. I think that’s scary. I don’t want to look into the eyes of someone and wonder whether they’re looking back at me or whether they are in an electronic world from which I’m excluded. But Google Glass is undeniably clever. You tell it to take a picture and that’s what it does. You ask it to give you directions or the weather forecast or show you a film or even translate something into other languages and it appears before your very eyes — or, rather, eye. Terrific. But I’ve already got something that does all that. It’s called a smart phone. And I’ve grown to like it.
John Humphrys said he is not a Google Glass prefers his smart phone to Google Glass and said it does the same things . In my own case, when I the Gadget Man programme on Channel 4 who were