Wearable Technologies coming to some clothing near you
A few years ago whilst researching and generating ideas for the National Geographic Channel’s futures based TV shows ‘Future Matters’ I discussed the idea of what I then called ‘WEs’ or Wearable Electronics. I mentioned that this was a substantially different approach than portable electronics, which is what most mobile phones and laptop computers were at that stage – useful electronic devices that you could carry around with you to perform a series of functions. WEs were embedded into your clothing, they quite literally became a part of what you were. And now it seems that MIT have taken a giant step towards creating the world’s first truly embedded wearable technology as showcased at TED recently
They’ve dubbed it a ‘sixth sense’ style of unit and as you can see in the link below, it provides a level of functionality and automatic data engagement that is fast and impulse like. This differs substantially from mobile phones that enable you to provide access to information provided you deliberately apply them to that purpose. The MIT unit is, well light years ahead by comparison.
As someone who hasn’t been tied to a mobile phone of any description for the best part of 6 years, this is the type of unit that might get me to re-engage with the disruptiveness of mobile phone technology.
Pattie Maes’ from MIT, provides the presentation, giving a great wrap to her student Pranav Mistry (someone whose brain I’d very much like to meet) who devised the current model. The unit combines a projector, phone, camera and mirror and brings my thinking of WE’s much closer to reality.
I think that the ‘Sixth Sense’ metaphor might actually do this technology a disservice. To me it is more about ‘extended consciousness’ – something that can finally break the neural limitations as cited in Miller’s ground breaking paper ‘The magical number 7 (+ or – 2)’ which showed how for most people, the most amount of conscious information we can hold is seven, plus or minus two pieces of information. This has the potential to rapidly speed up and have available to us, far greater volumes of potential useful and important information right before our eyes.
You can watch the presentation here at this link
As co presenter of the ‘Future Matters’ series with the National Geographic Channel back in 2004, I discussed the idea of Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing. At that stage, 3D printers were like very large office photocopiers and the better ones had starting prices of around $150,000. I stated that in the near future, people…
Read More >In tracking shifts across the world and across industries, the rise of Crowdsourcing continues to unleash some amazing innovations in products and services. Importantly it is exposing the capability gaps that even large organisations have. Simply put, the ‘crowd’ is always going to be bigger than your business or organisation. But to tap that latent…
Read More >Allow me to flag my bias from the outset – I’m tinged green. My shade of green recognises that my actions can contribute to a cleaner or more polluted world and that overall, I’d prefer the cleaner version. There’s a huge amount of data that shows that as a species we haven’t been looking after…
Read More >The burgeoning shift in the manufacturing sector has been coming for a touch over a decade and has, I would suggest, now reached your front gate. A whole confluence of factors that include 3D printing, Crowdsourcing, home engineering and freescale Idea Generation leveraging social funding approaches means that EVERY single aspect of manufacturing as we…
Read More >Futurist Jack Uldrich has posted an item to his website looking at Ten Trends shaping Government today. Although each item is arguable and may be context specific depending on ‘which’ Government you’re looking at, it’s a good overall take suggesting things to do with data, the interenet, crowdsourcing and the like. However I think Jack…
Read More >Sir Paul Nurse has ‘weight’ when it comes to science. His position is the head of The Royal Society in the United Kingdom and in an address in Melbourne he suggested that we need to keep politicians away from scientists: “It also emphasises the need to keep the science as far as is possible from…
Read More >I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to call 2013. After saying 2011 would need to be the International Year of Resilience (much still needed) and 2012 the International Year of Problem Solving I’m thinking now that Crowdsourcing (the idea of seeking assistance beyond your own capabilities from the ‘crowd’ often through social media)…
Read More >There’s lots of talk about ‘next big things for 2013’ right now, just as there has been in past years. Rather than join the cadre of prognosticators, trend experts and (not so) disguised salespeople laying claim to knowing about what ‘will’ be for the coming 12 months, I offer an alternative approach – here’s five…
Read More >Here it comes, the 21st of December 2012 – the last known recorded date on the Mayan Calendar and for years people have wondered why the Mayans never got around to extending beyond 2012. What did the Mayans know that we didn’t and should we be thinking about opening our Christmas presents early this year?…
Read More >As a Strategic Futurist I love a good scenario like the rest of us in the futures community. And where I choose to diverge from many in my field is in the pragmatic applications of futures and foresight thinking. Scenarios left as ‘what ifs…?’ are at best, theoretical. All of my clients and most of…
Read More >