Slashdot Mirror
MIT Media Lab Fashions
robyn217 writes "At MIT's Media Lab, researchers are developing fashion accessories on which patterns and designs can change according to the wearer's whim, and fashion prints can be shared virally via wireless communication. This technology will be a real boon for fickle New York City baseball fans at the Subway Series in the future (they can simply flip a switch to change from a Mets to a Yankees jersey."
How long until someone got a mod to have naked fashion?
Please stop entering code 2,2,7,6,6,4
Imagine a viral goatse fashion hack
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
A virus makes people appear naked? Nude patch for reality?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It's a freaking PDA screen showing through a hole cut in the bag. The Media lab keeps getting lamer and lamer.
Journal Entry - 8 August 2017
Got to work at 8:30. Pradesh, my cubicle-mate arrives ten minutes later, muttering Hindi obscenities. He's wearing plaid pants in a pattern so garish that it would make a Scotsman commit suicide.
"Yo, Prad. What's up with the slacks? You rent Braveheart IV last night?"
"Good gracious, no," he repies. "Someone hacked my pants on the No. 6 train."
We spent most of the morning doing a system restore on his trousers. Got them rolled back to pinstripes just before lunch.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
...this'll make it a lot easier for people to sell themselves as add space.
I thought MIT was a leading technology school. How come we keep seeing this lame crap coming from them? OMG, I twisted some cat5e into a pony and had a fashion show. Or, I cut a hole in a bag so my PDA would show through. Aren't these best and brightest supposed to be working on cool things like figuring out how to mass manufacture a fabric with OLEDs? Stop posting this crap.
Going AC here since I know folks with MIT degrees.
According to the laws of war if you are fighting out of uniform and you are captured you are considered a spy and not a soldier and do not get pow status. They have status very similar to unlawfull combatants. This is a reason lot of commando raids are done by people wearing uniform even though the raid would be easier to do if you could just be dressed as the enemy. So my question is why not use this kind of material to create a uniform which matches the enemy's uniform and if you think you are about to get captured flick a switch and switch to full uniform. Voila you are no longer an unlawful combatant and rather a POW
**Life is too short to be serious**
Does this hint at the possibility of 24bit truecolour mexican waves?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
That'd likely be grounds for prosecution in certain countries, namely the United States. It's a well known fact that boobies are a prime cause of terrorism. You don't support terrorism, do you?
This technology will be a real boon for fickle New York City baseball fans at the Subway Series in the future (they can simply flip a switch to change from a Mets to a Yankees jersey.
Okay... PLEASE. As IF there are New Yorkers that root for BOTH teams at once.
It's always confirmation bias!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Real fashion statements are made in fabric cut and silhouette. Women's fashion is dependent on a constantly changing outline. Men's fashion might benefit, but even in a man's suit there is some variation between designers and from season to season. Changing the color and pattern is kind of useless when you've been wearing the same shirt for a week. If it get's cold, your windbreaker can't color change into a parka and scarf. I figure this has limited use in fashion design, but plenty of use as adaptive camoflage.
Urbanhermes defines a communicative fashion framework that would ultimately consist
I have this idea of a robotic housemaid that can also tune my car and cure cancer. Can I get a post on slashdot?
It's pathetic how anything that MIT can conjecture automatically makes it news.
A teddy bear that's also a 100mbit switch? OMFG what innovation!
I know some of the older school media lab guys and even they are getting tired of the "news" they see in Tech Briefs etc.
Please, give it a rest and treat the rest of us like we're not damned fanboys of anything MIT does. It's a good school that does some great science but it's not some flaming oracle.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
You could not have picked a worse analogy than the 2 baseball teams in NYC. While there are a number of frontrunner bandwagon fans there, they are few and far between as compared to a place like Dallas or Los Angeles. No self respecting Met OR Yankee fan would be caught DEAD wearing the other team's jersey. It appears as though your lack of fashion sense is only exceeded by your complete inability to gague quality-of-life issues re. sports in the Big Apple.
How lame is this? They're prototype is a zaurus in a plastic see-through pocket from the outside.
Much like Hot Coffee and the Oblivion Skins the "Naked Fashion" is already implemented underneath. Commenting out the "fabric" will result in an change in rating.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
An I'm with stupid T-shirt that always points to the specific stupid you mean.
What an exciting and entirely appropriate use of technology.
Frankly I was wondering why this hadn't been done yet.
This kind of radical thinking is sure to keep MIT right at the top for years to come.
Boy am I glad we crawled out of the ocean, fought off fucking cave bears and developed huge brains because this is truly the culmination of all our hopes as a species.
Look on and be humbled by our own magnificence, people - this is our finest hour:
We can wirelessly change clothes!!!
fashion prints can be shared virally via wireless communication.
How long before a "kick me" virus gets loose?
Much more useful than using it for some no good punk teen with too much money..
No, you will NOT be able to switch from a Yankees Jersey to a Mets Jersey in the flip of a switch. That would violate intellectual property rules.
But you'll be able to do things ALMOST as cool. For a low payment of $2.50 per use, your fabric will connect to a AT&T mobile fabric pattern access point, from which you will be able to download AWESOME patterns which include all your favourite TV stars, American Idols, and Pop Starlets. "Locked" fabric will be rented to you at discounted prices in exchange for 2 year contracts costing roughly $200. Fabrics will be locked to only allow patterns from the manufacturer you bought it from. You will not be able to upload patterns from your computer to your fabric. You will not be able to share patterns with your neighbor.
Enjoy your high-tech clothing of the future.
-Laxitive
I should probably submit a shameless plug for some of the related work that our collaborators in Colorado are working on:
An LED tank top playing Conway's Game of Life and an extensive guide on do-it-yourself sewing circuits. Very nerdy, and very cool. The idea here is that you can have computationally enhanced stuff available for people doing craftwork. They have a lot more awesome stuff, but you'll have to click around for it.
I don't think so. Ever see some of the syntax highlighting schemes some Vim users have come up with?
Stephen
This technology will be a real boon for fickle New York City baseball fans at the Subway Series in the future (they can simply flip a switch to change from a Mets to a Yankees jersey.
Anyone who needs a jersey to switch from Yankees to the Mets doesn't deserve either.
but the inventors are not thinking this through... Have you seen what some people wear with 'regular' materials? Anyone ever want to kill the person that thought "hmmm, spandex will look good in XXXXlarge canary yellow" ???
Have any of you seen what gets worn at high schools? (no, I'm not a pervert) but there are groups of people that would take self expression to an entirely unexpected new level if they could change it before getting caught...
Have you ever seen the gay pride parades? Mardi Gras? Imagine that in the mall or your local TGIF's on occassion. If clothes could make it look like the wearer was naked, but not be, more people than you think, and certainly people you wouldn't want to, will think its fun to do so.
Not that I think such innovations should be held back, but there are some serious consequences to our laws and society with the introduction of such things... and trust me, the judiciary is NOT ready to deal with it, whether it is innovation or change, they are not prepared to deal equitably with either.
Just what do law makers do with someone that creates a virus that makes little girls clothes go transparent? There are some serious things to think about with technology, and UNFORTUNATELY, our law makers have NO CLUE what to do with it other than react like they were born with the patriot act in their mouths (or pick your preferred orrifice).
Yes, I'm paranoid... at least when it comes to anything that requires law makers and politicians to have common sense and good humor.
sigh...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This sort of reminds me of the special fabric Ozymandias developed in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" (which was used by Rorschach for his mask).... although in that case, I think the fabric just randomly changed patterns, it didn't provide a way to control what patterns were being shown at any one time. It does seem like the Rorschach-style mask would be pretty simple to do with this though, all you'd have to do presumably is set it up to randomly change patterns.
~~~ For instance, a T-shirt could be solid blue one day and striped the next, she said. ~~~
all i need is the smelly nerds at work wearing the same tshirt (albiet with different colors/patterns) all week...
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
What does it say about you when you wear a t-shirt with a Nike swoosh on it?
I'd rather see people walking around, freely exchanging memes on their shirts instead, something more complex than a band name or an athletic wear logo. Ideas, slogans more profound than "just do it". That would be a nifty way to exploit new technology to facilitate human communication in ways that haven't been as widely experimented with until now.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I, on the other hand believe they are on the right track. You have to realize the group of ppl who are responsible for this project even admitted themselves as said in the article the prototype was somewhat "simplistic". This for them is a proof of concept to perhaps do a bit of research see if ppl would adopt such a technology. Once they've got their things going and perhaps some ppl convinced about their idea ready to invest they could buy some of these babies. Erik
> researchers are developing fashion accessories on which patterns and designs can change according to the wearer's whim
It has already been developed, by Philips Research in the Netherlands, with the possibility to modify the patterns on your textiles e.g. by bluetooth or GSM.
People think I rewear the same clothes too much, but I revel in private satisfaction as I don a completely clean outfit every day.
Note that I do not associate and individually number my socks; I try to buy enough indentical pairs so that it doesn't matter if I mismatch them occasionally. Thus they still wear fairly evenly.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
picture a schlong, outline on bluejeans, emerging from the 'zipper'
and that reaches to the kneecaps,
and swings from left to right as the individual walks....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
it was in a dream a few months back. though it was a sofa that could be changed, it had a 1" square grid that could be changed. still upon waking i wrote it down.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
MIT = More Irrelevant Technology.
Where they brow beat the students into coming up with oulandish (and usually fugly), unbuildable designs so that they can "hone their art."
A million monkeys...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The older guy turns away; his windbreaker says the same thing.
Hiro turns around in the middle of the gangplank. There are twenty crew members in plain sight all around him. Suddenly their black windbreakers all say, MAFIA. Suddenly, they are all armed."
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Dressed in a green and white striped shirt.. no wait, a blue and grey striped shirt...no wait... a red and white stripe shirt.. OMG it's Waldo!
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Excellent, I'll be able to read hot chicks blogs off their chests without looking like I'm staring at their boobs.
/. is psychic.)
(How appropriate, the image word so that I can post this is "sexist". Thus proving
The logo should switch automatically depending on which
side of the Chicago. Can you see the the scene, riding the
El and all the jerseys switch from Cubs to Sox?
Check out the posters sig and the authors first name? Correlation? Nawww...
Insert obligatory chant here: Yankees suck! Yankees suck! Yankees suck! Yankees suck!
insert sig here
If you had used "ppl" one more time, I would have tracked you down, and instructed you on the use of vowels.
I can see it now -- Apple licenses the patent (if there is one), and opens an iClothes store where you can download the latest fashion for $.99.
smacks of irony.
...I obey the laws of physics....
Farewell Horizontal?
You know, as someone who knows the media lab relatively well and has worked there for quite some time,, I have to say that when most "hardcore" geeks come into the place, they just don't get it.
The Media Lab was never really about "whoa, let's make this hot new cutting edge technology that will knock the socks off of everyone for the sake of making cutting edge technology." I have found that more often than not, while a good bit of the technology that the media lab uses can be bought online, what really makes the Media Lab special is the community and the professors who know what trends to look out for. Many of the professors there are forward-thinking and while it may look like their research is totally bogus, there is actually some idea in there that is interesting to someone, perhaps a sponsor?
That brings me to my next point. While the Media Lab is attached the MIT, it gets nearly no money from MIT. The bulk of the money that the Media Lab makes is from sponsors. Sponsors pay the lab for rights the IP of the various research groups. As Negroponte has pitched to perspective sponsors time and time again, the Media Lab is about "messing up" in the most interesting and thought-provoking ways. My point in all of this is that because the Media Lab relies on sponsors, a good portion of the projects are flashy and fun, and these are the only ones that get covered by the press, really, because your normal neighbor doesn't really care too much about sensor networks, common sense AI, economics, or nanoscale cantilevers. I mean, the list of "cool, geeky, pushing the frontier tech" goes on, but you don't really hear much about it in the press because most people on the street don't really care.
It should also be made clear that many of the groups work on things that everyone says is irrelevant now, but they will find in a lot of what they see around them in ten years. For example, the work that software agents did is essentially what you see on Amazon and Buy and all the rest for finding what things you might also be interested in. To be honest, I don't know the history of the work of the lab to go on listing everything, but I remember looking at the work from News in the Future and seeing that the stuff from there is also pretty ubiquitous.
Lastly, at some places, technology is an ends and a means in itself. At others, technology's just a means to some interesting ends. At some places, new technology is just a tool used to help implement an idea one has. I think that deserves some thought.
In short, while there is a lot of flash that comes with the projects at the media lab, two things should be remembered: a) tech isn't always the root of good research (as someone with firsthand experience, trying to make good tech the focus removes the focus from the real heart of the research), and b) sponsor-funded. Also, that at the Media Lab, many groups are more concerned about making things that people want, people will use, and things that people will find useful and cool versus just the pushing the envelope on some hot new tech frontier (we can leave that to Mitsubishi Labs and IBM, which happen to be the kinds of places that ML students go to start careers when they graduate).
This is just some food for thought.
Preferably in Fenway Park. ;)
Nope, it's not. For a moment there, I thought that well-dressed MIT geek had selected a virtual slide rule--a Pickett and Eckel Eye-Ease Yellow Ten-Inch Log-Log Duplex Decitrig Slide Rule--to be virtually dangling from his belt.
And I was wondering what other dangly things were available as display choices.
That yellow strap is way more eyecatching than whatever it is we're supposed to be looking at.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Anyway, I can see this being similar to the way people purchase/load things on to personalize their cell phones. I'm sure if this thing becomes as mainstream as the ringtone/wallpaper industry for cell phones, you'll be able to find a $5 dongle on ebay and some open source software like bitpim that will allow you to upload your own patterns, download your purchased patterns to your computer, and then share them with your friends.
Here's what I don't get... People already have the ability to be creative and wear a wide variety of things. But most people end up resorting to plain old conservative "what everyone else is wearing" types of clothes. So how does this "techno fashion" fit in? I already have the ability to change my shirt from red to yellow. It's called my closet.
has media lab done anything truly useful? this looks like an ego trip by a bunch of highly paid academics.
Switching jerseys at an NYC Subway Series would instantly trigger the "human sacrifice" portion of the show.
There's a reason "New Jersey" doesn't have an MLB team.
--
make install -not war
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
For instance, a T-shirt could be solid blue one day and striped the next, she said.
Then dingy, then splotchy, then stiff, then . . . then self-aware.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
at lease he knows ppl are reading his comment :D
A word of warning - if you have a metal detector, be very careful near the beaches. Back in the late 70s, I found an unexploded German bomb about three inches below the surface of an unsurfaced beach car park. (I reported it to the police - after carrying it to the house I was staying in, as I wanted to wash it off to get a better look. Ah! Those were the days!)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)