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Rigging Up Baby
theodp writes "Over at Fast Company, Rebecca Greenfield explores the rise of extreme baby monitoring. 'In the imminent future,' writes Greenfield, 'any curious parent with an iPhone will have access to helpful analytics, thanks to the rise of wearable gadgets for babies. Following the success of self-trackers for grown-ups, like Jawbone and Fitbit, companies like Sproutling, Owlet, and Mimo want to quantify your infants.' Devices connect to a baby via boot, anklet, or onesie, and record heart rate, breathing patterns, temperature, body position, and the ambient conditions of the room. While the breathing and sleeping alerts will calm a lot of parents, Greenfield reports the real holy grail is the data garnered from tracking, which some companies plan to share with researchers.
'We're creating the largest data set of infant health data,' says Owlet co-founder Jordan Monroe."
I know this will probably get lost in the comments but, when my mom isn't home I like to go into her garden, cover myself in dirt, and pretend I'm a carrot.
What, no burp duration or fecal viscosity histograms? Pathetic.
The baby's picture is on the main screen on the phone, the phone mimics/displays all of the baby's vital signs, and gives readings on all baby-related matters... in this way, the device is the baby. However, we're going to depend on the same parent that can't care for the baby itself, to monitor the device that's monitoring the baby? How odd indeed. Maybe they can then sell little baby clothes to put on your iPhone.
Just think of it as a Tamagotchi; but connected to some obnoxious squirmy thing that smells funny, eventually turns into a teenager, does some drugs, and has to be sent to college.
So one can now "be a parent" without having to actually be physically present and not even have to hire a body double? Awesome!
No, these implementations are clearly incomplete, 'Simple Newborn Management Protocol', they say; but it's all read-only. The MIBs look a bit thin, as well.
Until they fix that, you'll still need a supply of excuses for why it's always the junior admin's turn when you need to go poke the thing.
Was the monitoring equipment uncomfortable?
My ex-brother-in-law is a wildlife biologist. He's done a lot of field work. He told a story at Christmas a few decades back. He took his 7 year old son out hiking is some deep woods. Being concerned if something went wrong he put a radio tracking collar on him, just part of the stuff in his lab. I asked him how it worked. He deadpanned, "I hated shooting him with the tranquilizer dart from the helicopter." I almost lost my egg-nog.