IEEE Spectrum June, 2014 - 69

about an inch, summoning a pink rubber
eraser. He erases his scribble. "So I don't
need tool bars-I just change the shape of
my hand," he says. He conjures a tape measure, using his other hand to extend the
tape. Then comes a magnifying glass, a
mouse, a camera.
You might think that touch gestures won't
be very useful when people stop carrying
around screens and sleek wee wearables
become the norm. Not so. "If we're clever
about how we use our fingers, we can actually make interactions on even something
as small as a smart watch really quite powerful," Harrison says. With Gierad Laput, a
Ph.D. student, he has built a smart watch
that users can manipulate mechanically.
Four rice-grain-size sensors, which click
and pivot like miniature joysticks, detect
when you shift, tilt, twist, or depress the
face, providing "all these different degrees
of freedom that let you interact with the
watch in more expressive ways than just
using a touch screen," Laput says. To allow for more expansive interactions, he
suggests, future engineers could put light
projectors into watches or other wearables
such as lapel pins, which would let people
use the space around these devices.
"Could you turn your skin into a touch
screen?" Harrison interjects. "Could you
turn this wall?"
As if on cue, Ph.D. student Robert Xiao
presents a textbook-size box on a tripod.
The contraption, called WorldKit, contains
a digital projector and a Microsoft Kinect
depth camera wired to a laptop. Working
with Harrison and computer-science professor Scott Hudson, Xiao programmed the
system to "explode information on every
surface of the environment," he explains.
He swipes his palm across the wall, triggering a soft yellow glow that trails his hand.
"When I lift my hand up, it's actually a multitouch surface."
"We're painting interfaces onto the world,"
Harrison says. "I could say, 'I want a thermostat here and a calendar there,' or 'I want
this whole wall to be blue.' "
iLLUStrAtion By

MCKIBILLO

whAt could PossIbly go wrong?

Your Body,
Broadcasting Live
Wearable sensors could spill your
innermost secrets
It's already an all-toofamiliar fear. You buy a smart
gizmo or download an Internet
app in hopes it will entertain
you or make you healthier or
your life easier. But then you
wonder: Are criminals hacking
my accounts? Are companies
profiting from a knowledge
of my habits? Is the government collecting my texts
and e-mails?
And if you fret about the
fate of data being gathered
by the smartphone in your
pocket, you'll shudder at
the thought of what could
leak from hardware in your
clothes or on your skin.
Wearables will likely record
not just what you do and
whom you talk to but also the
states of your mind and body,
including your heart rate,

blood pressure, and brain
activity-information you
probably don't want shared
too widely. What if your boss
could measure how focused
you are at work? What if your
spouse could know whom
else you found attractive?
Without reliable security,
clear privacy laws, and simple
user controls, the wearables
generations might have
few secrets left to keep.
People might give up data
unwittingly, lured by cheap
deals and ignorant of the fine
print of privacy policies, says
Jason Hong, a privacy and
security expert at Carnegie
Mellon. Smartphone users, he
points out, are often surprised
that many free apps keep
close tabs on them. He fingers
a few notorious snoops: the
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game Angry Birds, Bible App,
and Brightest Flashlight Free.
"People don't expect these
apps to collect location data,"
he says, but they do. "They
send it out to advertisers."
Records from wearables
such as brain sensors could
also be used in criminal investigations, says Nita Farahany,
who studies the legal implications of emerging technologies at Duke University,
in Durham, N.C. Under U.S.
law, she explains, "you can't
be forced to testify against
yourself, but that doesn't
mean your body can't be used
against you." If prosecutors
can use fingerprints and DNA
to get a conviction, what's to
stop them from using scans
of a suspect's thoughts or
emotional reactions?
The most vexing spies,
however, may be wearers
themselves. Wearables could
allow you to watch yourself
so closely that you will stop
just being you. "Say I go out
to dinner, and I have a great
time," imagines Stephen
Fairclough, a psychophysiologist at Liverpool
John Moores University, in
England. "Then I get home
and my smart watch tells
me I was stressed. I think,
'Was I?' I start secondguessing myself, and it
changes the way I perceive
the experience." If people rely
too readily on computerized
data to analyze their behavior
and make sense of the world,
he worries, "we may stop
trusting our own instincts and
our own feelings."
Many engineers believe
that the technical challenges
of building tiny wearable
machines will be easily
overcome. "The last 50 years
have been about evolving
technology," says Desney
Tan at Microsoft Research,
referring to developments
in electronics that could one
day allow wearables to vastly
extend the abilities of Homo
technologicus. "The next 50
will be about inventing the
human being."
So let's make sure we get
it right. -A.B.

north american

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2014
