Wear down opposition
Sean Dodson
Thursday May 15, 2003
It is nearly 40 years since Ivan Sutherland, the man who invented computer graphics, unveiled his head-mounted display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was an extremely heavy, clumsy and uncomfortable piece of technology, but it soon became known as the first computer you could actually wear.
Forty years on, and Sutherland’s display is inspiring a new generation of technological pioneers searching for ever smaller and lighter electronic devices that can be stored or worn on the body somewhat more discreetly.
Last month, Motorola unveiled its Offspring range of future digital assistants. Designed by the award-winning Frog Design of Sunnyvale, California, Offspring is a “family” of wearable devices. There is a pen, a rather bulky wristwatch, a tiny ear piece and a “wearable” digital assistant (WDA), which serves as a hub and storage device.
The whole kit is wireless, save for a thin tethered cord that runs out the back of a pair of goggles into a small battery that can be secreted in a back pocket. The design is only a concept, but Motorola is user testing and plans to market a product based on the design within two years.
The Offspring range might just be a mobile phone by other means, but not one device offers anything like a numeric keypad. Instead, they use a combination of voice recognition and a navigation device that looks a bit like a games controller. The most exciting piece is the pair of goggles. A sleek descendant of Sutherland’s head-mounted display, they look no more futuristic than the sunglasses Darren Gough might wear before he opens the bowling for England.
Motorola is not the only mobile company making wearable technology. In February, during London Fashion Week, Siemens launched a range of electronic jewellery called Xelebri. The pendant-like devices can be worn around the neck or hooked on to clothes. “They are fashion accessories that make phone calls,” explains George Appling, president of the new division. Xelebri will be sold in fashion stores in time for Christmas. There will even be two collections a year, one for spring and one for autumn. “We envisage the scenario where people will own many fashion accessory phones and wear the one that matches their mood, the occasion or their attire,” says Appling. At £250 a pop, you can see why he would.
So do these products mean we will wear computers in the future? We already are. During the war in Iraq, fighter pilots read target information displayed on their visors. In the dark, the infantry wore head-mounted monitors. Most doctors in Baghdad continue to work with pagers attached to their hips. Back home, joggers in the park have started to wear heart rate monitors. One firm is developing a wristwatch that beams data to your doctor. Another is developing wireless sensors for diabetics. And consider that two-thirds of Britons carry a mobile phone with more processing power than a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64.
In the US, a number of corporations are introducing wearable computers to the workplace. McDonald’s is testing wearable tills in 45 stores. The hope is that wearables will reduce “drive thru” queues during peak hours. North West Airlines gives staff similar wearable “check-in” computers. Parcel carriers FedEx and UPS issue package handlers with rings that can scan items while loading and unloading vehicles. In Washington DC, engineers armed with wearables are rebuilding the Pentagon.
But will we ever wear computers like we wear garments? A number of technology and textile companies are already collaborating on this. Smart fabrics that contain screens secreted in a sleeve, thermochronic inks that change colour in response to the fluctuations in temperature of a body, earphones stowed in hoods, watches connected to the internet while email attachments could even be woven into the fabric of your shirt. Far-fetched stuff, maybe, but it is all being developed in research labs from Israel to Indiana.
And the reality could be closer than you think. Consider the product on sale by Finnish company Clothing+. It is a rucksack with a pouch designed for a Nokia mobile phone. You put the phone into the pouch and wear the rucksack on your back. When the phone rings, you just pull a cord attached to the straps and talk. So does carrying a Clothing+ rucksack - or even just using the hands-free console on your mobile - mean you are wearing technology?
Some academics would say you are. They argue that wearable technology is part of a larger evolutionary trend going back more than 700 years. The brief history of wearable computers on MIT’s website traces wearable technology back to 1268, when Roger Bacon wrote the first comment on the eyeglass. Others point to the way clocks were miniaturised first for the pocket and then for the wrist, or cite pagers that have been buckled to belts since the late 1950s.
So what will we wear in the future? Last week, at the Magna Centre in Rotherham, there was an exhibition exploring wearable technology and smart fabrics. In the high-vaulted chamber of a former steel mill, an ensemble of metal shirts, mountain jackets and futuristic “firefly” dresses hung from the ceiling. With everything bathed in red light, the Wear Me! Exhibition looked like Rem Koolhaas had designed a new Prada store for South Yorkshire.
“History is littered with examples where technology and fashion have come together,” explains Andrew Chetty, the exhibition’s curator. Chetty collected work from across the wearable spectrum. Work from prominent designers such as Hussein Chalayan and Corpo Nove was on display, as were prototypes from students at St Martin’s College in London and MIT.
One garment was the Puddlejumper jacket. Designed by Elise Co, a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab, the Puddlejumper is a luminescent yellow hooded jacket. Painted on its surface are several electroluminescent lamps wired to interior electronics. Water sensors are placed on the jacket’s back and left sleeve. When it rains, the lamps light up, creating a flickering pattern that mirrors the pitter-patter of rain.
“I’ve always been interested in fashion,” laughs Co. “At MIT, I started to feel very limited by general computer inputs like a keyboard and things that run on a screen. I started to get interested in things that were much more lightweight and smaller. I liked the idea of devices that could be in spaces that you could touch and pull and interact with in this very physical way.
“I am totally willing to place technology on my body,” she admits. “I see technology as being very enabling, and for me it is an expressive medium. Because of cell phones and Walkmans, people are used to having small devices near their head, and that is opening people up to having technology around their body.”
But the question remains: exactly who wants to wear technology? Apart from fashion designers, interface designers, skiers (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has just launched a wearable avalanche beacon) and rock climbers seeking interactive route guides, the most passionate advocates you are likely to find are professional dancers.
Ghislaine Boddington is the process director at Future Physical, a London-based commissioning agency for dancers working with technology. For the past nine years, Boddington has been working with motion sensor and motion capture systems that enable dancers to influence and change aspects of choreography, such as sound, lighting or video. The dancers wear the sensors, which can influence elements of the stage by their movements alone. More recently, the company has signed a scientific research contract with Xybernaut, a leading US manufacturer of wearables.
“If you put a wearable on a dancer, they will test it to extremes,” says Boddington. “Athletes do, too, but it is often in a more repeated way. Companies are gaining a lot from working with dancers because organisations like ours report back the limitations of their gear. Ultimately, what the pedestrian needs is something that moves freely with the body.”
The prospect of wiring our bodies excites many, but fills many more with fear. It doesn’t help that people in the wearable community openly talk of wearables as being a “pervasive technology” as if it represented no further intrusion into our lives. For many, the wearing of technology could herald a whole new meaning to the term “always on”.
And slick designs from mobile phone companies and innovative textiles don’t mean that mass acceptance of wearables is round the corner. The wearable industry has also been littered with failures. Two years ago, Levi’s failed to sell many of its industrial clothing design jackets, which included a control panel that ran a GSM mobile phone and an MP3 player. And although Nike and Adidas have poured millions into wired training shoes, neither has enjoyed mass-market success.
But what is less in doubt is that people are moving ever closer to their computers. As miniaturisation continues apace, it is likely that in one way or another, technology will be woven into the fabric of our clothes without it looking outlandish or inelegant. There may well come a point where we wear our computers and don’t even notice it.
