These Google Glass Early Adopters Will Warm Your Heart

In a shameless attempt to win skeptics over, Google has included the betterment of penguins, firemen, and veterans among the first uses for Google Glass in public. Of the 8,000 initial recipients of the futuristic winners from Google's #IfIHadaGlass campaign, the company has chosen to highlight six people and their projects, all of which happen to be very heartwarming. The list of recipients mentioned in a Google release includes Anthony Brown, a San Francisco zookeeper who will use the glasses to give the world his first-person look at feeding the penguins at his zoo. Penguins! Even the most skeptical of us can't argue with that. Of course, if animals don't appeal to your sensibilities—which, this is the Internet, so of course they do—Sarah Hill pledges to pass around Glass to aging veterans at her Missouri VA hospital so they can visit war memorials. Shannon Rooney will take her grandma on a trip to Japan; Max Wood will improve fire safety; David Moriarty will improve patient-doctor interactions. The message here seems to be: Glass isn't going to ruin the world, as expected, but make it better. Don't be evil; do good, and with weird computer glasses! It should be noted that a lot of this good can be done without the weird computer glasses. 

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Of course, just because these winners got all emotional on their applications doesn't mean that the real world uses will reflect these stated missions. Nor do these six people speak for the 7,994 other extra early adopters of the gadget. At least some of the so-called "Glass communities" and "societies" on Google+ will give us a chance to see these things in action and how they're really used by the first wave.