It’s Ascension Day. A quiet Thursday when the country slows down just enough to let your thoughts catch up with your actions. And mine are racing faster than my EV charging from plug #2. Because today, I want to talk about something personal.
Something paradoxical. Privacy.
Here I am, live-logging again. My smart Ray-Bans capturing the world from the tip of my nose. My voice memo app catching my mind’s rambles. And somewhere in between, a creeping realization: the illusion of privacy has long left the building.
My wife runs her own firm, and her office is at home—meaning her business address is also our private address. So even if I never posted anything online, the map to my private life is already one click away. A quick Google search and boom—our location, our names, our companies, it’s all there.
Then there’s this podcast, the Technosoof, which by law requires a registered address for complaints about the newsletter we send out.
That address? Mine. Public again.
You can argue: why make it easier? But let’s face it—AI doesn’t need easy. It needs available. And available, we are.
UX Meets EV Meets Meta
So here I am again. CarPlay on, Siri cueing up UB40 (don’t judge), and my car prepping its battery because I dared to ask it to. Mercedes AI doing its thing—preconditioning the battery for optimal charging, factoring in charger availability, and integrating route efficiency.
I use the built-in navigation not because I don’t know the way, but because it prepares the battery for fast charging and shows charger availability.
UX wins again. I like how the navigation overlays still allow you to see the map behind it. You don’t lose context while gaining guidance. That’s what good design does. It respects your mental map while building on it. Unlike some UX nightmares where the interface feels like a Russian nesting doll of guesswork.
And yet, while the UI is intelligent, the screen itself is still dumb. Just a terminal. All the brains are in my phone, in my apps, in my cloud-connected ecosystem. And now—in my glasses.
Journailing: From Audio to Augmented
This is where it gets real. Or surreal.
I’ve been journaling via voice for almost a year now. Voice memos, transcribed, storified via GPT. But now I’m going visual. Meta Ray-Bans record my surroundings, giving context to my musings. A quiet glance at a UX quirk. A jaywalker disrupting flow. The moment the charging light turns green.
These aren’t just recordings. They’re memory anchors—breadcrumbs in the timeline of my life, like the exact moment I looked up and realized my car was smarter than the street signs. These clips are more than media; they’re micro time capsules.
And they’re vulnerable.
Because that very same clip showing my admiration for Apple CarPlay might also reveal I was speeding. That background reflection might accidentally expose a credit card. That slow pan might catch a passerby’s face.
- Is that legal?
- Ethical?
- Should I blur it?
Does intention matter when algorithms don’t see nuance?
The Paradox of Presence
Here’s the punchline. I live-log for memory. For legacy. For meaning. But I might also be leaving a breadcrumb trail that others can follow—or weaponize.
Could I get fined for filming while driving, even hands-free? Could authorities use my own footage to issue a speeding ticket? Could someone claim a privacy violation because my glasses caught them in the corner of a frame?
Maybe. Maybe not. But here’s the paradox I can’t shake: to be truly present in the modern world, you almost have to stream it. And by streaming it, you risk being less present—or more scrutinized.
But maybe that’s the new normal. Maybe live-logging is not just about archiving thoughts, but confronting the layers of modern presence: physical, digital, legal, emotional.
And on this Ascension Day, as the world pauses and lifts its gaze, I find myself not just ascending into thought, but descending into awareness—staring directly into the eyes of the present.
Through smart glasses. Via dumb screens.
And hopefully, with eyes—and mind—wide open.
What's on your mind?