Don’t attach your car’s Lyft mustache to your face and offer “rides.” Dan Winters
Before there was Google Glass, there was the DynaTAC. Released by Motorola in 1984, this early handheld mobile phone weighed nearly 2 pounds and cost $3,995. It was for suspendered Gordon Gekko-ish masters of the universe. It was for dicks.
Back then, Motorola predicted that using a cell phone would eventually seems as normal as “checking the time on an electronic watch.” They were right, and now our phones are so integrated into our lives that it's almost rude not to have one.
Glass is the DynaTAC of wearable computing. Between the in-group tiered rollout and the $1,500 price point, Glass is an in-your-face marker of social class—a symbol of self-importance that suggests the wearer has too much money and too little fashion sense—and that's caused a backlash. It's been banned from restaurants, a woman was assaulted for wearing Glass inside a San Francisco dive bar, and a group called Stop the Cyborgs is campaigning for Glass-free zones.
So for now, wear Glass only when the technology it will eventually supplant is heavily prevalent. Tech conference where 75 percent of the people are on a laptop or cell phone? Yes. Dive bar? No. (Exception: situations when you can use your Google Glass subversively, like to capture police brutality.) Over time, as Glass gets less elitist, you can loosen up the restrictions.
Once wearables become truly ubiquitous, the etiquette will reverse itself: The things we do with smartphones will seem intrusive, and the passive efficiency of wearable cameras and communication devices will be a mark of politeness. Waving screens around to capture the newlyweds kissing will seem as rude as calling someone when a text would have sufficed. With our hands freed up, gestures will flourish. We'll all become a little Italian, with subtle, elegant sign language for everything. I'm on a call … OK to take a pic? … Sure I want to hook up. Let's run an immunocompatibility check.
It'll still be a while before you should wear your Glass to a dive bar, though. —JONATHON KEATS
You wouldn't hesitate to stiff a cabbie who ran up the meter—but that four-buck loss doesn't have much long-term impact. In rideshare services like UberX and Lyft, ratings are forever, and poor marks can get drivers kicked off the road. So make ☆☆☆☆☆ your default, the equivalent of a 20 percent tip. Average ratings hover around 4.9, so anything less than perfect can haunt your chauffeur. To warrant ☆☆☆☆, something minor but significant went wrong. A one-star ding might temporarily deactivate a driver's account, but blacklisting requires a follow-up investigation. At ☆☆☆ and below, you really start hurting a new driver's chance of survival. Consider asking how long they've been driving, then decide if the problem might improve (like subpar city knowledge) or is unlikely to change (rudeness). Go with ☆☆ for erratic driving or belligerent behavior—then use the apps' feedback boxes to detail exactly what went wrong. And save ☆ for the worst trip of your life. Substantiated one-star ratings are grounds for firing, and all these firms have zero-tolerance policies for drugs and alcohol, so leave the evidence in the comments box. (And remember to tuck and roll if you have to bail out midfare.) —BO MOORE
In the ostentatiously casual tech world, the difference between “effortless cool” and “not even trying” is in the details. While Silicon Valley women are subject to the same fashion rules as their counterparts elsewhere, the exact way Valley men underdress says a lot about who they are. —KYLE VANHEMERT
ENGINEER
UX DESIGNER
BIZ DEV
Thanks to tablets and new FAA rules you can now watch The Walking Dead from gate to gate. But should you? The person in the adjacent seat might be the sort who takes offense at anything racier than Dancing With the Stars, a show notably lacking in rotting flesh and beheadings.
The answer: It's fine. Coach class isn't a Puritan church service, and you shouldn't feel ashamed about watching video with a little bump-and-grind. Your real concern is noise. “The biggest complaint we get about electronic devices, by far, is that they're too loud,” says Shawn Kathleen, a veteran flight attendant who runs a blog called Rants of a Sassy Stew. We're pretty good at keeping our eyes to ourselves while flying, but not so much our ears. So while an occasional flash of buttocks is fine, make sure that nothing audible (movie, music, or personal chortle) disturbs your neighbors.
The “images good, noise bad” maxim will also serve you well once cell phone service is allowed at altitude. Texting will be fine, but talking will be an offense punishable by feeding your bowels to the undead. —BRENDAN I. KOERNER
Dan Winters
You're at a friend's house and feel the urge to toke on your ecigarette. Don't ask, just light up. Vaping is about as intrusive to your hosts as chewing gum or a bold perfume. You wouldn't ask before spraying on the Sex Panther, right? Of course not. And science is on your side, in terms of your habit's harm to those around you. A study published in the peer-reviewed Nicotine & Tobacco Research concludes that the nicotine levels in secondhand ecig vapor are about 10 times lower than what's in exhaled cigarette smoke. And the mist contains no ash or tar or anything like that. Plus, there's hardly any smell.
True, you'll be emitting a little bit of propylene glycol, an ingredient used in stage fog. But while the science is out on what the stuff will do to you if you smoke a ton, it's not going to do anything to your friends.
The need to ask, in this case, is anachronistic. Your friends will be plenty miffed by your silence, but that's OK. You protected them from having to give overt approval to a questionable habit. Only a jerk would put their hosts in a position like that. —NICK VERONIN
For most people, low-cost genetic sequencing makes getting your personal DNA profile a no-brainer. But the real value is in everybody else's genetic data. A mutation that suggests a higher risk of kidney disease doesn't mean much on its own—but a family member with the same mutation and active disease means you should be monitored. So bite the bullet: Ask your relatives to get their DNA sequenced.
Sure, it might be awkward to grill Aunt Mabel about her chromosomes, but here's the upside: She can learn more about her disease risk, and you get to factor her mutations into your own health calculations. Think of it like any other medical data, says Jennifer Hoskovec, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors: If you'd inquire about your aunt's diabetes, then As, Cs, Gs, and Ts are all fair game. —BRET STETKA
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