Wearable Computers

We have come so far with technology that we will soon be wearing it. In class, we talked about watches and an actual dress that makes us and technology become one. According to the European Union, "for mobile workers, the goal is to replace traditional interfaces, such as screen, keyboard or computer unit, by speech control or gesture control, without modifying the applications." (pictured below) The project was named WearIt@Work (http://www.wearitatwork.com/), and is currently being tested in four different fields including aircraft maintenance, emergency response, car production, and health care. This is just one of the many things that are currently in the works in wearable technology.

Another type of wearable technology comes in the form of a watch (pictured below), but it's use is far greater. It measures a person's stress level through several sensors that gather information about the user and the environment. It will ask questions and transmit answers to a central computer to reveal correlations between environmental factors that may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. This study is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. With using technology to study humans, are we going to be able to answer the question: what causes certain health problems? Is it worth the money if it helps us to live longer, or is it pointless because of how badly we treat our bodies anyway? How far is technology going to go in saving our lives?

How about transforming a phone to becoming "an angel on your shoulder?" Alex Kass and his team from the Accenture Technology Lab in Palo Alto, California is working on the Mobile Personal Services platform (the angel) "capable of running a number of personal coaching applications to help someone be more effective both at home and on the job." The first module has been designed for salespeople as they interact with co-workers or sales contacts. The salespeople wear a handset in combination with wearable sensors and a personal area network employing Blue tooth, as well as connecting to servers to do the heavy analytics lifting. With technology doing the work for us, are people going to be as smart 100 years from now as they are today, or is technology just going to destroy our minds? Will we even have to think in the future? The use of calculators has stopped several people from knowing how to do simple math. Is the advances of technology, such as "an angel on your shoulder" to find information for you, going to do the same thing in other area of our lives?

Pictures and information found at: http://www.redwoodhouse.com/wearable/ and http://www.wearitatwork.com/

Super Phone

As I sit here typing at the last possible second, I'm simultaneously trying to find something interesting to write about, and looking out of the corner of my eye to see if the Fedex truck is here yet. I'm waiting on my new mobile phone to arrive. Some might call it an obsession, but gadget lust is a way of life for me. Its the new Google phone; the Nexus One. Google calls it a "super phone", but most of us what probably prefer to leave it in the established realm of smartphone.

From what I've read, this little thing is pretty amazing. It has been interesting to study the history of the computer while simultaneously researching a tiny computer that I'll be carrying with me everywhere. Based on clock speed alone, the processor in this phone, at 1 GHz, is significantly more powerful than the first desktop computer my family had. Significantly more powerful. It makes me think back to the days of our first home computers in the late 80's early 90's. Pre-internet, at least commercial internet, pre-cellphone, pre-netbook, pre-navigation. And it wasn't that long ago!

Moving forward, I can only imagine what I'll be carrying around ten years from now. Ten years ago I got my first cellphone, a giant Nokia. It made calls, and that's it. With the exponential growth of technology and processing capabilities, I look forward to the new sources of technological wonder that will continue to fuel my gadget lust well into the 21st century.