WHEN did you last look at your phone? If you own a smartphone, it was probably just a short time ago. A glance around any commuter train will confirm how captivated many of us are by our digital companions.
So much so that it鈥檚 supposedly taking a toll on our bodies: all this looking down is causing our jowls to grow flabby and our jawlines to droop 鈥� what cosmetic surgeons have 鈥渟martphone face鈥�. You could hardly ask for a better incentive to adopt Google鈥檚 hands-free computer, Glass. Its smart-specs design lets you keep up to date 鈥� and update others 鈥� without glancing at your phone.
Glass is just one of several technologies that will allow us to interact with computers more naturally in the near future. Machines that can understand our speech and gestures are also becoming an everyday reality (see 鈥�Hands up! Do you speak digital body language?鈥�). Rather than checking in with our phones, omnipresent computers will check in on us. This is the next step in the evolution that has already taken us from mainframes to desktops to tablets. It seems the age of ubiquitous computing, or 鈥渦bicomp鈥�, is upon us.
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That鈥檚 not to say the transition will go smoothly. Doubts have been raised about Glass鈥檚 , its , and restricted functionality. Glass may turn out to be too bleeding-edge for . That has happened to Google before: its now-defunct messaging tool Wave was so revolutionary that hardly anyone understood how it was supposed to work.
聯Google Glass may turn out to be too bleeding-edge for of early adopters聰
Neither cost nor design factors will stop the march of wearable computing for long. The emergence of apps from third-party developers should help allay concerns about Glass鈥檚 limited feature set (see 鈥�Google Glass apps show off what headset can really do鈥�), just as the proliferation of apps drove the uptake of smartphones. If Google doesn鈥檛 crack it first time round, it may get there on its second try 鈥� as it did with the smartphone market. And if Google can鈥檛 make an appealing device, 鈥� albeit perhaps taking a very different approach.
The social concerns are harder to overcome. Wearable computers can interfere with human interactions in unsettling ways. Your companion may not like the idea that you鈥檙e surreptitiously checking your messages 鈥� or their background 鈥� over lunch. This might be considered impolite, or even illegal: covertly recording a conversation, for example, may fall foul of European privacy laws.
It鈥檚 easy to overstate such objections, however. We already have social codes governing the use of both sunglasses and smartphones, as well as ingrained attitudes towards those who flout such rules 鈥� like the mild scorn directed at celebrities who keep their dark glasses on at all times. It is easy to imagine using your wearable computer while working, but ostentatiously removing it as a mark of civility when socialising.
Ubicomp may let us interact more naturally with technology, but it can鈥檛 fix everything. (Its developers are already warning that gestural computing has its own physical cost: 鈥済orilla arm鈥�.) Careful design will be critical. Otherwise, ironically, the more invisible computers get, the more intrusive they may become.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淯nwearable computing?鈥�
