not to become a walking surveillance device / info mine.

This is really where everyone should nope the fuck out. Sadly, it probably won’t pan out like that.

Gibson was so incredibly close to prescient on this one. With this kind of tech, we’ll have actual “gargoyles”, but all the data makes a pit-stop at a corpo database where it can be mined for value, before it ships off to the CIA:

Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; there getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculater pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.

https://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/kawstretch.html

but where’s the profit if you aren’t constantly recording data for them 24/7? What, you expect them to just make a product that functions well at what it was advertised to do?