Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!"
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?
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!)
since wearing technology to an airport has been demonstrated to be a bad idea.
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?
Yes. And US history shows that they are correct: most high tech companies and inventions start out as university research; the private sector merely commercializes it.
Without lots of government funding, there would be no hightech industry.