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
China’s Gift to the world, the #CaronaVirus is not yet as severe as what the US gift to the world (Spanish Flu) was, and still signs are clear that disruption to normality is the key theme. In that the light, the Australian Football League (AFL) need to plan for crowd free rounds. Because that’s…
Read More >Potential Impacts of the Carona Virus will cascade across the globe. With deaths on track to climb quickly now that it has reached epidemic proportions of infection, the fat tail extends to the corporate sector. With whole areas of China on lock down, factories are shuttered and with it, Multinational and local firms who’ve…
Read More >Five days ago I tested positive for Covid. Here’s a bit of what the story has been like so far Tuesday was spent moving on of the offspring out of their rental property in country Vic and back down to Melbourne’s suburbs. A hot day of heavy lifting and a fair bit of driving. By…
Read More >Decision making is an interesting field of inquiry. I’m about three months in to a long term contract with an organisation working on enabling its people to be more effective and the thought that keeps popping into my head is ‘Start with the End’ When you start with the end in mind (know your desired…
Read More >There’s a little problem with food production in the world that not many people want to talk about. About half the world is being starved to death whilst we are seeing a spike in obesity due to over-consumption of food. The strange thing about that issue is that both ends of the food consumption divide…
Read More >My most recent long term client contract had me specialise in Employee Engagement, something I’d done consistently at the Senior and Middle Managers level. But this client need was across the board and at a time when major changes were occuring. With a previous survey of their staff in two states and across three…
Read More >Great to see some quality collaboration between the City of Casey and City of Greater Dandenong aimed at addressing or tackling Social Issues and importantly bridging the divide between ‘our area’ and ‘their area’ artificial boundaries. Well done to both Councils Here’s the oveview of what they’re doing. This one looks to be an…
Read More >Most people who’ve been involved in planning and strategy development will have heard of VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Emerging out of the US War College in 1987, it’s come to be more widely used by consultancies aiming to at least ‘sound smart’. But that’s not the main problem with its usage Instead…
Read More >In short – ‘No’. In days of yore manufacturing data meant jobs being done, employed people being paid, sales being made. But with robotics and off-shoring in many parts of Australian manufacturing, it’s no longer the value indicator it once was. In the US it is an even less reliable indicator because in the…
Read More >I’ve writen a fair bit over the years about the need to move futures thinking out of a theoretical approach and into a more applied model. Recently I’ve come off a 6 month project working with the Asian Productivity Organisation, an entity that brings together 20 member countries and their core government policy…
Read More >