404 — Social media exec attacked in S.F. for being "glasshole" is more about income inequality than privacy

The recent incident in SF, when a social media consultant was attacked in a Haight Ashbury bar for being a "glasshole" and allegedly violating people's privacy rights using her Google glasses, and this story about folks attacking Google buses are less about technology, and more about the growing disgust people feel about income inequality and the 1%. Providing Google employees with a convenient commute means rents in these neighborhoods are increasing drastically, and locals don't like being outbid and pushed out by twenty-something engineers -- especially when they act like glassholes.

Woman: I was attacked in S.F. over Google Glass

By Kurtis Alexander

In what may be the latest backlash against San Francisco’s tech industry, a woman was reportedly taunted and robbed this weekend in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood for donning Google Glass — the cutting-edge eyewear seen as a revolution in either cool convenience or geeky creepiness.

According to friends and the victim’s Facebook page, Sarah Slocum, a tech writer and business consultant, was in a Haight Street bar Friday night demonstrating how the new device works when someone tore it off her face and ran off with it.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin introduces Google Glass at the company’s annual developer conference last month.

One person with the assailant told Slocum that her and her tech-type friends were “destroying the city,” Slocum says. She pursued the attacker — who eventually relinquished the Google Glass, Slocum explained. But another person with the assailant took her purse, cell phone and wallet during the pursuit.

Slocum filed a report with police, she says, but officials on Monday said they were not aware of the incident.

Over the past year, the tech industry has been the target of several protests, perhaps most famously the “Google Bus” blockades. Demonstrators complain that high-paid tech workers are flooding working-class neighborhoods and driving up living costs while destroying local diversity.

Google Glass, basically a small, head-mounted computer with a screen and camera, is still in its development phase and not available to the public at large. However, a limited number of insiders and researchers have been given access to the device.

Anticipating that the gadget would draw public ire, Google published an etiquette guide for Glass users earlier this month in an effort to stem concerns about privacy and anti-social behavior.