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Wearing a Computer at Work
Roland Piquepaille writes "The European Union has funded an ambitious project related to wearable technology. The project, named WearIT@work, will end in one year and invested funds are expected to exceed 23 million euros. The goal is to replace traditional interfaces, such as screen, keyboard or computer unit, by speech control or gesture control without modifying the applications. This wearable system is currently being tested in four different fields including aircraft maintenance, emergency response, car production and healthcare."
I wonder what the health issues might come out of this? Some of the 'wearable' monitors I have read about require a type of constant light flashing directly into the eye at a much closer range than the traditional monitors. I would love to have a very portable computer, but I also value my eyesight, especially since I have slight retinal decay.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
Imagine you have an intelligent assistant able to find any information you need, whenever and wherever.
Imagine a TERRORIST has an intelligent assistant able to find THE WHEREABOUTS OF EVERY SMALL AMERICAN CHILD, whenever and wherever, and that assistant will help them SET THE AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN ON FIRE WHILE DEFECATING ON AN AMERICAN FLAG.
I got a catholic block.
We already have devices designed for the mobile workforce, and they are called smart phones and PDAs and they get better every year with corporate research that doesn't cost tax payers anything.
Why should the EU be funding research for the corporate world?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Who can say CANCER?
it's ironic isn't it, how the MIT girl who did this same thing, sans functionality, was arrested on the terrorist hoax device clause.
they find some way to keep people using the interface from viewing pr0n. Especially if any of the gesture-driven controls they're contemplating get implemented.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Can you imagine using Emacs with this?
In my experience, voice recognition is overrated. I'll be impressed when someone develops software that can isolate and identify any single person's voice. Mind you, whoever designs that software will make billions. Imagine the potential uses... *Taps chest twice.* "Computer! Red alert!"
... we have the technology. The 23 Million Euro Man.
Why on earth is the EU funding something like this? Do they really think they'll do a better job sorting this sort of thing out than private industry?
expandfairuse.org
Why can't we have filters for submitters? We have the option to filter posters, why isn't such a simple thing available in this great day and age?
Try to go to an airport in the US wearing this stuff and you will probably be arrested/tasered for being a "terrorist".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If you need a primer on the implications of wearable computing, read Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (who is known for popularizing the Singularity concept.
He's a math & computer science professor, and writes technically savvy sci-fi that wins Hugo awards.
Just one example: give people the ability to invisibly send and read text messages, and you get something that looks just like Mental Telepathy. And this is just the surface! What if those invisible gestures and heads-up display contact lenses also let you Google something almost as fast and effortlessly as you can say the word? And for you nay-sayers, search existed before Google -- why did Google make things so much better? Research existed before the web & web search, why did the web make things so much better? Because if you cross certain thresholds in speed and accessibility, the quantitative difference becomes qualitative! Once searching for something becomes as easy as saying it, the very concept of *knowing* something changes. (Books already take us part way there. I "know" how to build a compiler. But if I couldn't reach for my copy of the "Dragon Book" I'd be awful lost!)
Piquepaille, as gay as Christmas holly--surely he must perform special "favors" for Zonk and friends. It's the only logical explanation for the overt favoritism shown toward this bozo's nocturnal submissions.
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive---you merely had to brush the panel with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hands in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."
~Douglas Adams: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Chapter 12~
since wearing technology to an airport has been demonstrated to be a bad idea.
FAIL
...are filing suit as we speak.
Who did buy them anyways? Comcast? it's a hard name to google.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Do they realize the current state of speech recognition? Once pocket computers (on-host or via low-latency WiMAX'ish connection) can do speaker-independent natural language processing, a bit of machine learning (support vector machines?), and some grammar-free event-driven verb-object controls, then we will have a real interface. EyeTap.org is an interesting concept though.
My, what a big Hard Drive you have? What size is it?
That link is even more pathetically transparent than the goat.cx on the google domain.
23 million euros? That's like what, $100M? Research in third-world countries is hot these days - send it off to the old U.S. of A. and get more bang for your buck, er, euro.
Why does someone need to investigate this every few years? There's enough noise in the average cubefarm (where walls don't reach the ceiling)--do we really want to have everyone start talking to their computers too? And touchscreens, gestures, etc.--sure, RSI is bad, but keyboards and mice are flat, you can rest your arms a lot, and they work with more or less natural motions. (It's not a coincidence that a computer keyboard is like a piano keyboard but in two dimensions--you hit different rows by curling and uncurling your fingers.)
I used to have a touchscreen monitor and it was fun to touch the screen to scroll and 'click' on web links by literally touching them but holding your arms out in front of you for any period of time is not easy. I had a tablet PC and holding it, even casually while walking around doing inventory with it and a barcode scanner, was a huge PITA. (Ha--"A" could stand for "arm" in this case.) Looking at the tablet-holding guy brought back all the bad memories: all the fun of walking around with a clipboard, but it's five pounds or so instead of a few ounces. Yeah. Super. Sign me up.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I have been wanting a wearable computer ever since I read about the gargoyles in Snow Crash. Though, for some reason I doubt this will be as cool :(
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What's another word for thesaurus? Onomasticon! They both sound big and scaly.
Though you do have to give credit for the attempt to convince us that part of the link is to mit.edu :P
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
This is for aircraft maintenance not airport maintenance. The difference being that you are working on plane either on a ramp or in the hangar and don't particularly want to carry the entire maintenance handbook library around with you. Note that getting specialised tools through is less of an issue when you use the airport's 'backdoors' for staff as long as you have id to go airside. As a passenger, I would admit that it is another issue.
See my journal, I write things there
Yep, this is just annother plot to get the geeks and nerds out of the house... and into the sunshine!!
signature is pants
Sure we'll have a bunch of dead people in airports for a few years, but it is a small price for the advancement of technology.
Telemaintenance (I think) prior to ~1995 was systems-sensors reporting status of equipment at remote locations.
... I remember .... You can Yahoo/Google "Telemaintenance YYYY" to confirm/learn.
.... Anyway, it is all still very interesting.
..., I ain't got a college degree, I dropped out of high school in 1969, then too the USMC at 17yo, Honorable Discharge at 19yo ... I always think about where education is going for individuals like me (more of US than there was), I mean, look at POTUS Bush ... he is far less educated then most folks I talk to every day, and VPDryDick has more ability to deliver humor/torture/terror than a POTUS-puppet performance. Oh, I do have a GED and over 160SemHrs in many subjects.
Telemaintenance (I think) post ~1996 becomes the wearable wireless computer diagnostic tool-set for telemaintence.
http://www.media.mit.edu/
http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/mithril/
http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/
http://e-science.caltech.edu/
I am an old guy
In ~1996 (I think, I remember) the telemaintenance acronym APES [Avatar Populated Experience/Environment Simulations/Synergy] in a CCT [Collaborative Community Technologies] proposal/paper. Considering present social-web environments, games
For SoA (State of Art), Yahoo/Google ("wearable computer" MIT CalTech hardware software) or ("ubiquitous computing" MIT CalTech hardware software 2007) to confirm/learn.
Nope, I never attended MIT, CalTech
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The goal is to replace traditional interfaces [...] by speech control or gesture control without modifying the applications.
If you can administrate your company's infrastructure by performing Tecktonik dance moves then count me in!
You just got troll'd!
vaporwear? :)
seriously though, this might work for office apps or web browsing or whatnot, but until neural interfaces surface, I can't see anything replacing the keyboard for programming or command-line interface tasks.
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
If they have money like this to throw around, then I don't see why Britain should have to give back our rebate. Still, better spending the money on this, than subsidising French farmers to go on strike.