Looking at you Through the Glass: The Wearable Technology Tirade
This time next year Rodney, we’ll all be ignorantly paying homage to Charlie Brooker’s insufferable, dual Bluetooth headset-wearing Nathan Barley as we clank awkwardly about the street covered head to toe in a jangling assortment of super-slick Augmented Reality encumbered wearable technological devices, from glasses to pockets to socks and all the rest. You may scoff and roll your eyes and think to yourself ‘this joker again’, but you might be surprised to learn just how close we are to no longer having to move, see or think for ourselves! Here’s why wearable technology is going to change everything. Again.
If you’ve not heard of Google Glass, I highly suggest a chiropractor because it’s got to be bad for your back living under a rock. The search engine giant’s vision of tomorrow is getting clearer by the day, as a world in which our digital lives is perpetually projected onto our eyeballs, overlaying the reality we see with information, news, directions and, yes, adverts is supposedly going to be with us by the end of the year. Shocking, I know.
As a latest news item, you might be interested to hear that you won’t be reading the newspaper with Google Glass. Oh no.
You’ll be listening to it. But, so fervent are Google in their attempts to make sure you’re practically prepared to weld this new piece of tech to your face permanently, there’s no in-ear headset to muffle out the rest of the world, or to awkwardly fumble in and out; Glass will use hearing aid technology to vibrate the muscles inside your ear, allowing you to listen at a reasonable volume, without inconveniencing others around you with your terrible taste in music or baffling and frightening urge to listen to anything Jan Moir has written.
So what else is there on the horizon? You’ll no doubt be fascinated and simultaneously
appalled to hear Google have also teamed up with Adidas to create the Google Shoe. With an accelerometer, gyroscope and of course internet functionality, the shoes will not only relay information of your activity to, say, your Google+ profile, but they’ll also offer words of encouragement when you’re doing well, or motivational phrases when you’re sat about doing nothing. Personally, I think I have enough people informing me I’m lazy without my own shoes joining in for fun.
So what’s going to kick it all off then? Apple will of course, with the much rumoured iWatch. Whilst its potential may appear limited in comparison, wearable technology needs a shoo-in, something simple that everyone will love to get the ball rolling. And everybody loves Apple. And watches. Probably. With reports of the watch being ready for the end of the year, will we see a tidal wave of this new tech surface all at once? Will it be drip-fed? Will the world of advertising, marketing and SEO become intrinsically integrated with this latest technological as has been the case for smartphones and tablets over these last few years? We must wait and see.
