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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."
"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.
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.
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".
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.
Just kidding.
You don't load this page for the article.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Yup...it's called the JoyDress.
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.
"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
Are those breast implants or armor plating (blue bikini)???
Now that's wearable technology in action.
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); }
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.
Sub-etheric vibrations? Ectoplasmic vibrations? Good vibrations?
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
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.
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...
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.
add backdoors to the software...
Achille Talon
Hop!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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