IEEE Spectrum June, 2015 - 26

oPinion

technicaLLY SPeaKinG_bY PauL mcfedrieS

EvEr ClosEr to
thE MaChinE

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Thor e au's wa r ning a bou T the effects of technology seems more

relevant than ever in this era of boisterous technological innovation-
an era that seems particularly determined to bring computers and other
"smart" devices ever closer to the people using them, and to generate
new words and phrases that reflect this increased proximity.
The starting point
here is the wearable, a computer designed to be worn, either as an item of cloth‑
ing or as an accessory. The most promising wearable of recent years was Google
Glass, which popularized the smart glasses (or eyeables) industry and brought
glasseslike devices into the mainstream. (An earlier invention was memory glasses,
which included a tiny video camera attached to a wearable that used the video feed
to recognize people as they came into view.) Glass failed mostly because it became
too easy to crack jokes about users being glassed out (that is, having a vacant
look and an obliviousness to their surroundings) and to see Glass as an example of
jerktech, technology that encourages antisocial behavior (such as surreptitiously
photographing or recording people).
If wearing a computer on your face was
a step too far for most people, wearing one on your wrist seems more reasonable,
hence the generally positive reception accorded smart watches (particularly the
Apple Watch), smart bracelets (such as the Microsoft Band), and smart trackers
(such as the Fitbit fitness tracker, the Jawbone UP 24 activity tracker, and the
Trax GPS tracker). There are also fitness and GPS trackers that attach to bicycles,
turning the devices into rideables. In fact, we seem to have a fascination for track‑

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ing our every move, a mania that has
now extended into family wearables,
particularly the ultimate gadget for he‑
licopter parents: the baby wearable.
We've all gotten used to slipping ear‑
buds into place, so would it be such
a leap to upgrade them to something
smarter? Enter the hearable, an in‑ear
computer that's also known as an
earable or a smart ear device. Not in‑
timate enough for you? Then how about
the embeddable, a device inserted un‑
der the skin, or an ingestible, a device
that you swallow (such as a smart pill
that reports how the body is reacting
to its medication). I should also men‑
tion nearables , which become smart
only when a mobile computer comes
into range; awareables , which sense
their surroundings; and there-ables ,
which are present in the spaces we move
through during the day. (I'm indebted
to Hugo van Kemenade for uncovering
many of these terms.)
Many wearables startups are focused
on devices that augment the stuff we wear
every day, especially clothes and shoes.
Hence the buzz around tech togs, par‑
ticularly smart clothes. These include
smart shirts, which monitor your heart
rate, and smart shoes, which count your
steps. In some cases, the actual materials
have electronic properties, making them
so‑called e-textiles (or smart textiles).
A while back I read an interview with
a wearables researcher. This person
has a doctorate from MIT, so you have
to assume she's pretty smart. However,
when asked about the future applications
of wearables, she mentioned "jackets
that tell you what the temperature, baro‑
metric pressure, or smog level is" and
"a baseball hat that tells you the score
of the game." These ideas are so comi‑
cally useless that I had to double‑check
that I wasn't reading the latest issue
of The Onion. If we are on our way to
becoming citizen-terminals, bristling
with body‑mounted gadgetry, if we are
becoming that close to the machine,
then let's hope it's for better reasons
than these. n
illustration by

Greg Mably
http://SPectrum.ieee.orG
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2015
