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Wearable Technology Fashion Show
jlouderb writes "I know, it's been done before. But at the recent CTIA show I stumbled onto a wearable computing fashion show. It was weird. I had my camera and filched a copy of the show script. Combined together, you get a bizarre pastiche of scrawny models attempting to make phones, notebooks, video cameras and more into fashion statements. Just too surreal for words."
strap on vibrators ?
"I need a new pair of pants, my other ones have a virus!"
I don't know if it's just me, but doesn't the first model in the set of pictures (Nomad Augmented Vision System) look like some random Borg like creature with her headset and red-eye?
Semi-starved models flounced around the runway sporting mobile (and not so mobile) gear, accessories and smart clothing.
I realize that women have been getting into the geek market lately (with the iPod-mini, various games, etc) but man, I really don't see how this fashion show was giving me any inkling of how this stuff would look on ME.
90 pound models wearing sheer clothing and silver head gear, helmets, and carrying large backpacks isn't exactly what I think works.
Show me people dressed in t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Show me men/women dressed in business suits.
is the alienware machine. I wonder if they'll give me linux preinstalled...
I'll have you know I've been wearing a VAX since the mid 70s.
Mobile power computing AND a good daily workout.
Beep beep.
Unlike so many of the "wearable fashions" of the past, these at least look like clothing that normal people might wear. Nice models too.
What's your favorite.
A legitimate reason for cameras in shoes, besides for taking upskirt pictures. Technology rules!
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
After looking at those pics, I say this article deserves nothing but pithy or sarcastic replies.
Fashion all too often seems like the opposite of tech.
Tech is all about having things that work (or ought to work). Form follows function, and the coolest things are the things that function best. Appearance is strictly secondary for any knowledgable user (which is probably the sticking point here).
Whereas fashion is all about things that are nonfunctional. The most fashionable things are the least practical ones, at least as far as the fashion pundits are concerned.
Doesn't surprise me that the fashion people are trying to add a fashion element to tech, though I can't help but think that its doomed. Form and function are too closely linked.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Wire Girl (designed by Gabriele Semeco) represents our bodies chained to our wired technology. Thought I was reading a new strongbad email for a minute.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
and in other news, SCO has announced that it is extending its lawsuits to cover clothing that contains technology that may somehow be infringing on SCO's intellectual property.
The technology, not the models.
Just kidding.
You don't load this page for the article.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
I don't suppose that you've ever heard of Steve Jobs then?
What's your favorite distro? Tell em here.
While this iPod jacket from Burton is probably not bizarre pastiche enough to make the fashion show, I'd say it's a practical example of Wearable Technology.
Wearable computing is a technology that simply hasn't come to maturity yet. Things need to get smaller. But as some further down this page have done lets look at the possibilities.
First, realize that the human body isn't designed to support any large quantity of hardware where most of the sensory organs are clustered, consequently we have to seperate the display from the CPU. The torso is an ideal place to put this sort of thing, both for weight purposes and for its relitivly easy access for the user (try typing on your head sometime).
As for applications, the possibilities are limitless. I'll stick to Augmented Reality for most of my examples.
1.) Imagine a surgon with a system capable of integrating the data from Xrays, CAT scans, and other probes on the fly and displaying that data in real time, actualy altering the view of the patients body. This amounts to fewer head movements, faster surgeries (particularly key in an ER), and fewer mistakes. This same principal can be extended to an auto mechanic, or any number of other occupations.
2.) Tired of lugging your laptop, cellphone, PDA, etc around? Meet the ultimate virtual office. A pair of MEMS projectors mounted on a pair of sunglasses traces the "office" in 3d onto your retinas. Tracking systems (much like those allready in use today) track the movement of your fingers in relitive position to your body. By tracking these movements the user can type on a non-existant keyboard and navigate a 3d "desktop" in real space. Metaphors provide interfaces for important applications. Integrate an audio device with this and you can easily move your entire office to the bench in the park without anyone being the wiser.
It doesn't take a lot of immagination to work out how this could be an amazing application. Yes, right now it looks like a bad cross between C3P0 and a Electircal Engineering project gone awry. Nonetheless, in 10 years you'll probably see it integrating into the lining of a designer series of jackets, sunglasses, and hats worn by every trendy highschool and college kid in the country.
This is a great excuse to post a nice slideshow of some hot babes. Great job.
It provides a great break to the workday, right around lunchtime.
Oh, and the new technology is nice too.
I'd like to defrag that!
Steve Mann as one of the models? I hope so. Unless, of course, they wanted people to actually _wear_ the tech ;-)
I also reply below your current threshold.
"The JoyDress is integrated with flexible vibrapads that vibrate by programmed impulses from a thin, user-controlled command pad connected by tiny wires. It enhances the feeling of body consciousness with pleasant sensations that energize feelings, stimulate blood circulation, and give you a gentle massage."
Just imagine. Hacked to run linux, wireless LAN, etc, etc.
"form follows function" is a central bauhaus tenet - I've got a bauhaus-styled watch and car, and you've probably seen these chairs. It is a fashion, it is functional, and in my eye, it's beautiful.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The MicroOptical BV-1 video glasses I mean...
"bizarre pastiche of scrawny models attempting to make...fashion statements." Sounds like my high school.
I can see it now...scrawny models wearing skin tight latex jumpsuits emblazoned with the Ninnle Linux logo! Tight enough to show off their nether lips.
Are those breast implants or armor plating (blue bikini)???
Now that's wearable technology in action.
Everyone knows only fat, white, spotty nerds buy those gadgets. They should get Philip Seymour Hoffman to model them, or Linus.
Now the geeks will have the best fashion sense.
NOT!
A form-fitting, hand-controlled, twenty-first century navigator, this device manipulates the Internet?s visual data field as the user moves through three-dimension cyberspace with the ease of air typing. Your desires are communicated via beams of light as optical reflectance ushers in a new era in human interface.
Oh, baby, you got it all! Beam me your desires and we'll navigate through 21st century cyberspace together.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Now a real "wardrobe malfunction" could *REALLY* wreck your day...
Everyone of those models, no matter how attractive, still looked like a dork with all those gadgets straped to them. It looked just like any other geek gear. Things like this will take a giant step forward when designers stop trying to make a PDA look cool, but instead, hide it in a Gucci handbag. Then they'll sell like hotcakes.
I thought the "JoyDress" had a button hidden on it that, when pressed, caused the dress to break apart and fall to the ground.
Sub-etheric vibrations? Ectoplasmic vibrations? Good vibrations?
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
You gotta love the gold chick. The wire chick loks pretty bummed though.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That could be potentially embarrassing, no?
That redhead certainly gets me glowing.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
If you think the pics look funny now, just wait 50 years. It will be the equivalent of a 60's mod girl with a reel to reel strapped to her ass.
Baby, you can assimilate me anytime.
notice any technology? I just saw some fine looking women (and some guy but i skipped over him quick). It's amazing how they can get hard ware to blend in these days!!! (I did notice the alienware laptop, but thought it was a purse at first... oops, girls like that don't carry laptops though, they have minions to do that, or something)
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
It's possible that everyone who posts to this thread will actually RTFA (or at least look at the pictures) for a change.
Years ago when invited to a Canon Computer show at the now out of business Fashion Cafe in NYC (Naomi Campbell was there) Canon attempted to create a fashion show out of their hardware.
Among the notable and memorable features were:
A woman that was dressed in about 200 sewn together Canon CD's.
A guy rollerblading with an open working laptop in one hand and CD's in the other (on a 3 foot wide ramp 4 feet from the floor)
And finally a model balancing (probably painfully) and Canon inkjet printer on her head and power cord dangling behind her.
People - Computers are not a fashion statement...
my tradeshow class at GSU visited the show and from what I could tell the show was really just an event thrown together to attract more visitors. It wasn't reallyment to present a well thought out vision of the future or anything simular. It was really just a publicly stunt. A fun one though.
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
The folks at the Eckert Mauchly Corporation in Philadelphia (makers of the UNIVAC computer) staged all kinds of stunts like this.
They once had a woman in a Maidenform bra pose next to the UNIVAC for the "You Never Know Where The Maidenform Lady will show up next" ad campaign.
Also many then famous celebrities posed with the UNIVAC like Angie Dickinson, Pat Boone, John Wayne and others.
She's a fembot.
my jacket keeps segfaulting so ive gotta stay in and recompile it
You can do better, we know it. Let me get you started.
I'd like to mount her filesystem.
I'd like to fsck that.
I'd love to probe those ports.
etc.
do not read this line twice.
add backdoors to the software...
Achille Talon
Hop!
Great! Now I can run Gnome on my underpants. I just need to figure out what an underpants Gnome is good for. Perhaps I should forward it all those misdirected emails I keep getting about enlarging my penis?
'Cause you never know when you'll run into a supper hot, bikini clad hottie who wants to play a head to head game of Counterstrike, while sipping Pina Colada's at the Sandal's beach
WURD!!
The best part of it all is the looks on all the geeks' faces in the crowd (when you can see them)....they're obviously not used to seeing beautiful and/or scantily clad women in person ;).
I belong to the ______ generation.
I was at a hockey game the other night, and overheard two stunningly gorgeous early 20s girls who had just been hired as phone reps (a waste really) for a tech company say to each other, "I guess what they said to us about being nice to geeks, because you'll end up working for one, was true."
I wanted to tell them they had LOTS of other career choices, some of which paid very well, but they may not like the job hazards. I didn't, of course. it would have been a sexist and demeaning thing to say, although probably appropriate.
This story reminded me of that, and what i am seeing generally. "geek cool", generation Y with thinkgeek.com shirts on. It's really prevalent when I visit the San Jose / SF area, but it's spreading out. I saw a VJ on one of those also-ran MTV wannabe stations wearing a perl shirt. I saw Carson from "Queer Eye" wearing a Einstein shirt.
It's just not fathomable even 10 years ago, that there would have been a 'Tech TV', all computers, all day station, and a good looking woman would be doing a story on the latest fedora distro. When I saw that, I had this 'the future has arrived' zeigeist moments. Now I feel old.
Btw, I know I'm going to get flamed out of the ballpark for this, so let me just adjust my firesuit...
it may just be me. but the only technology i'd probably ever consider wearing is a watch.
i don't always want to be contacted, so no phones.
i don't always want to know what i have to do, so no pdas.
i don't always want to be a geek, so no computers.
just a watch. so i know when it's time to contact people on my cellphone regarding our latest appointment and todos listed on my pda, then meet up with them and bring my laptop for presentations and jotting down notes.
just a watch. thank you.
Wearable computing is a technology that simply hasn't come to maturity yet. Things need to get smaller. But as some further down this page have done lets look at the possibilities.
First, realize that the human body isn't designed to support any large quantity of hardware where most of the sensory organs are clustered, consequently we have to seperate the display from the CPU. The torso is an ideal place to put this sort of thing, both for weight purposes and for its relitivly easy access for the user (try typing on your head sometime).
As for applications,
Gives new meaning to the recently coined phrase, "Wardrobe malfunction."
Check out MVIS. I believe they had a few prototypes in the fashion show, but they are actually shipping wearable products for mechanics... cool!
Lib.BENCH the only site you'll ever need!
I have looked and looked and looked, and golly I haven't seen any wearable computing equipment on those girls.
Are you sure? Maybe I need to take another look....
Cool-looking wearable devices have been made. But these aren't it. Gaultier's 80's styles would have been a better base to work from. Gadgetry fit better with punk style.
With today's more conservative styles, a phone divided into a locket, an earring, and a base unit, using Bluetooth to tie the components together, would have more fashion potential. Small earring speaker, locket microphone. Choice of big, clunky wristband with screen ("sports phone") or handbag-carried base unit. It would be nice to eliminate the base station, but the battery is the limiting factor there. Add a jewelry box which inductively recharges the units placed inside it, and you have a product with fashion potential.
All you need are those exploding belgian Nokia batteries.
You're _SO_ hot baby, you're on fire! Yeah baby, Yeah!
Wearable tech has come a long way in the last few years, and I attribute it largely to the success of MP3 players like iPod, and the trend toward hands free cell phone attachments. I don't think wearing music earphones everywhere you go was really all that socially acceptable for a long time - sure when you were exercising or whatever it was fine, but it was rare to see someone just walking around a store with them on. And when I got my first cell phone a few years ago, I used an early earbud/boom mic combo almost exclusively out of both convenience and early fears of EM radiation. People made fun of me all the time for this! But now as I walk around the campus of a major university, half the thousands of undergrads I see everyday have their heads plugged in to one or the other. Now that it has become socially acceptable (dare i say - cool?) to adorn yourself with electronics, the move is really on to advance this market. Ideo may have jumped the gun a few years back with one of the first showcases of wearable tech, but they had the right idea.
...I know what you *really* want to look at... http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/product_hmd_micro optical_products.htm ...hmmm...
Why oh why must they keep referring to centrino powered computers as powerful? They even went so far as to say that one of the centrino powered laptops was one of the world's most powerful. What crap! I test laptops out for performance to recommend to customers which laptops to use for our simulation software and I have not EVER recommend centrinos yet.
The JoyDress is integrated with flexible vibrapads that vibrate by programmed impulses from a thin, user-controlled command pad (...)
Baby, I can hack into your dress, and program impulses to make you feel like you've never felt before. I can make it vibrate and give you sensations you never thought possible -- pleasure you only dreamed about. Do you know what it means to be a woman ? Do you know just how many "multiple" means -- and how far I can lead you ? Come on now, naughty, open up that telnet connection...
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
They're literally going to sue the pants off people.
My wearable hot baby is out of town you insensitive clod! On another note, I carry around my Tungsten C, my iPod, my Z600 and sometimes even my Dell notebook. I would love to have the same functionality "built into my clothes". Btw, those Microvision Imagic Display Glasses (Picture 12) has been talked about since 8 years back (at least), nice to finally see a prototype. First time I heard about them, they were going to use laser. I wouldn't want to be a beta tester for that...
You can look at the pictures and then try to find the gadget. It usually went like this for me :
"Woah, nice!"
"Oh, she's holding a phone."
This picture looks like a good concept. After beating up that guy for looking way better then me (see : Fight Club), I can mug him of that expensive gadget.
If Microsoft gets involved, would some poor woman show up at an event only to discover the gizmo attached to her dress has malfunctioned and she's wearing a Blue Skirt Of Death?
... But I know what I... excuse me, my pant's are ringing...
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
The i-pod jacket, mentioned in another post, looks useful - skiiing is aimed at folks with disposable income to start with, and their gear is trendy.y board.php keypads embedded into jackets - even if it's just volume up/down and power on/off. Maybe toss in a phone pad, IF you can have the rcvr and spkr built into the collar without dorky stuff in your ears.
I'd like to see more use of stuff like http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/a_sheeptacular_ke
I own a scott e-vest, after removing all the tags he put on it, it is a fairly good looking jacket, with plenty of pockets. http://scottevest.com
The upcoming model with solarcells that snap on the epaulettes (no joke) looks a little doubtful.
and there is the jacket with a flashlight built into the forearms, but unless you are winter hiking, it is a non starter.
Three days ago, I was trying to untangle a spool of bare wire used for thermocouples. By the time I got through, I had enough pieces to wire my pants. With a little luck, I might even get tangled up with someone like #15.
Normally I just get a short circuit.
Going to take them a week of showering to feel clean again after having sunk so low in their careers to be modelling wearable computers to a room full of pasty geeks.
Companies don't sell products, they sell images of what you will become if you own the product. Smater, faster, stronger, cooler, etc...
They sell dreams. The product is just the vehicle.
-- All views expressed in this post are mine and do not
-- reflect those of my employer or their clients
Well, maybe as a fashion statement, but not as wearable technology. As a boy, I could not imagine that the "Dick Tracy" wrist watch two-way radio (think cell phone) would ever become a reality. My first radio was a "wrist radio" with earphones and a trailing wire antenna - Back in 1956. Again not much of a fashion statement, but really was the envy of my friends.
What kind of fashion show doesn't have models with bare breasts? And if those models pass for "scrawny", you must live in the land of the cow-woman.
Is it me or are you right on the money with No. 18? hehehe
The JoyDress is integrated with flexible vibrapads that vibrate by programmed impulses from a thin, user-controlled command pad connected by tiny wires. It enhances the feeling of body consciousness with pleasant sensations that energize feelings, stimulate blood circulation, and give you a gentle massage.
Some of them are. #3/19 almost looks like a real geek girl tho (uncharacteristically attractive for a model - perhaps she isn't one).
I can do without the bared breasts if it's going to be someone like #4 - scary breast implant scars and all.
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/quote
The JoyDress is integrated with flexible vibrapads that vibrate by programmed impulses from a thin, user-controlled command pad connected by tiny wires. It enhances the feeling of body consciousness with pleasant sensations that energize feelings, stimulate blood circulation, and give you a gentle massage.
I bet it will be fun when slashdot articles talk about worms that travel through cell phones, ohh wait! they do!
Im fine with my linux PDA
I wanted to see a woman wearing a windows media player chastity belt w/ digital rights management.
In the future, real h4x0r$ won't infiltrate )your b0x, they will infiltrate your wife's box!
If I hadn't chosen computer science as a major, I would have gone into fashion design. I like people who dress with style and I try to do it myself (or at least I have been told so). And here is something that I would like to share with my fellow slashdotters: please do not encorporate anything electronic into your clothing. Same goes for tappered jeans, shirts that say "Drunk Chicks Dig Me" and socks with sandals.
Seriously, do not clip your cell phones, pages and other electronic devices to your belts. It will not make you look cute or geeky; you'll look like a total nerd and good luck getting a date ( a real date, not some 16/f/CT hot cheerleader that you talk to on IRC) with that. People seem to forget that despite everything new that comes out every year, the coolest things are still the basics. Take nice comfortable jeans, suede loafers and a nice cotton t-shirt for example. Whit shirts and black suits seem never go out of style as well. As long as you dress comfortably and not sloppy, you'll do fine. If you do not know what to get, go to a store that sells stuff that is fairly decent and modern clothing. Get a nice shirt and a pair of linen pants -- feel comfortable. If you're in doubt, ask you female friends for an advice; trust me, they know what they like in men. Also, remember you can pull anything -- well almost anything -- off (I mean it) as long as you're confident enough.
The basics are here to stay for longer than any of the dresses that require a chip update every six months. Personally, I think that clothing and technology do not mix for various reasons. That's my $0.02.
Imagine being able to change the color of your clothes on the fly. Imagine being able to display movies/images on your clothing. Obviously there would surely be some annoying advertising uses, but if you could make conductive clothing so that you could put a pocket harddrive in say....your pocket, and have it connect to your sleeve where a small screen appears near your cuff, it could be quite useful. Imagine putting on your Bluetooth wireless headphones and watching TV in the bathroom (ok...porn). Or imagine in the somewhat more distant future a cell phone that displays live video to your sleeve or something. Once we get to TRULY wearable computing, you can enjoy watching many clunky devices disappear from your ensemble. I know some like this, but seriously, I hate carrying around 5lbs. of gadgets around all the time.
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