Wearable Computers
So there you are, hundreds of miles away from your office in New York in the Negril sun in Jamaica, and you're thinking that you can't wait to jump into your trunks and go bask on the beach where you can check your emails and still manage the office while you're away. How can you manage it? Via the new PC you invested in earlier that week of course, and which you'll finally get a chance to test out. You're thinking that vacation or not, business is business, and you've got to swim with the sharks to stay afloat so that's why you bought the PC.
So you slip out the Xybernaut Mobile Assistant IV and you strap the apparatus to your body--complete with head gear, keyboard strapped to your wrist, cables wrapped around your waist and other contraptions, (and don't forget your bath trunks), all of which you must wear, because afterall, the Xybernaut Mobile Assistant IV is not a fully functioning computer when not completely integrated with you.
Don't believe me, just ask Steve Mann , dubbed the "father" of wearable PC's and the inventor of "WearComp"--a wearable computer, and "WearCam"--an eye camera and reality mediator. He just might tell you (a story I read about), about that time in Boston when he got lost and was able to retrace his tracks by calling up some photos he had sent earlier, to his WWW homepage using his micro camera.
So what about the business man vacationing on the beach in Jamaica? I don't know--perhaps he realized that he would look pretty strange wearing the contraption with his bath trunks or perhaps he found another way to use it. Still, would you take advantage of this new fashion trend--Wearable Computers? I've been thinking about it myself...
(Personally speaking, at first I thought I'd be worrying about bulk--the extra weight it would seem I had gained if I wore one, but then I found out that it need not be that bad, that there's hope for the future--check out Beauty and the Bits, an illustrated fashion show, showcasing some PC fashion trends that people can actually wear in the future, courtesy of MIT Media Laboratory to see what I mean. (Quite funny I thought!). As I understand it, Mann wanted the wearable PC to be incorporated into your dress so that no one else would know it was there. Hmm... Robocop comes to mind...p> The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant for instance, involves wearing a head and eye gear with cables and other apparatus. Ron White, wrote an article describing his experience wearing Xybernaut's Mobile Assistant--I was lucky enough to save the page back when it was published as the linl no longer refers to his article but here's what he said about it:
"The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant IV... is 16 pounds of computer equipment that is the essential first step toward becoming half-human, half-machine." He goes on: "One of the cables connects to a head-mounted XyberView display. A one-inch color LCD display hangs in front of my face; it's actually pointed away from me but is reflected off a concave mirror that magnifies the image to look like the equivalent of a small desktop monitor... With a little practice I can manage my new double vision, "seeing through" the translucent image when I need to do normal tasks, such as avoiding walls, and bringing the display back into focus when I need to do computer tasks. After a half-hour's practice I can actually manage both at once if I don't mind the accompanying schizophrenia".
Well, suffice to say I'm still interested in investing in one--would be nice if I'm on vacation right? I'll let you know what I decide. In the meantime I've been checking out the following sites:
-->>Is the Merger of Man and Machine Ahead?
-->> A Future Where man and machine Merge
