Smart Glasses - Phase 4 in Transition from Democratic Liberalism Towards Neurocratic Determinism

Abstract

This essay positions that smart glasses and comparable AI-enabled eyewear could become a catalytic technology in the transition from democratic liberalism toward Neurocratic Determinism. The argument builds on two earlier essays by these authors concerning the decline of Western liberal democracy and its possible evolution toward a speculative Hollow Absolute. It identifies four movements: the fracturing of shared narratives of social purpose; the fracturing of self-determination through algorithmic platforms; the extension of algorithmic surveillance into embodied visual perception; and an eventual internalisation of self-moderation. The essay distinguishes the present capabilities of Ray-Ban products and emerging display-enabled devices from speculative claims about universal adoption or total surveillance. Empirical research on camera glasses, bystander privacy, algorithmic surveillance, impacts, facial recognition, smartphone self-regulation, and privacy calculus supports several mechanisms of the argument while not proving durable psychological transformation. Baudrillard’s account of simulacra and hyperreality is used as an interpretive lens: algorithmic systems (transformer based large language models) first construct predictive representations of the self, while glasses may extend those representations into the subject’s perceptual relation with the world. The resulting danger is not crude mind control but alienation experienced as liberation, in which convenience, safety, enhancement, and assisted perception encourage the subject to regulate itself and others. The essay proposes a psychosomatic dualism: the individual, at an extremity, would be moderated from within by algorithmic systems and from without through the visual extension of those systems. Such an extremity, if realised, would fundamentally transform classical epistemic sovereignty, intentionality, and authentic expression. The conclusion proposes testable hypotheses and counterpoints, including data sovereignty, digital human rights, public-interest infrastructure, and the right to unmonitored presence.

Keywords