Today’s Wearable Computers Help You Sleep, Not Tweet
Jan 11
NYTimes - [Nick Bilton, of the NY Times,] recently wrote a column about wearable computing, in which he discussed a future in which people will eventually wear glasses and contact lenses with built-in screens, delivering content we can use. It will be like having smartphones in our eyes, but much smarter ones.
Researchers [Nick] spoke with for his column noted that it would be at least 10 years before Facebook updates were being flashed into our retinas in real time. In the interim, though, the first iteration of wearable computers are here, focusing on tracking people’s health.
“I think we are at the very beginning of wearable computing,” said Julia Hu, founder and chief executive of Lark, a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif., that makes a wearable sleep tracking monitor. “You’re starting to see a lot of sensors that track data and then visualize it.” She added, “A big part of the first wave of wearables will be personalizing health and more importantly, making the information relevant for people.” Ms. Hu’s company chose to focus on sleep better because, she said, more than 70 million Americans have a sleeping disorder.
Michael Liebhold, a senior researcher specializing in wearable computing at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a phone interview that health applications made the most sense for today’s consumer-oriented wearables. Rather than offering health care, he said that new wearable devices were aimed at helping to promote wellness by helping people understand health issues before they became problems.
[...] But one wonders if people will actually wear these devices. Although health promoting and sleep monitoring devices may be useful and responsible, they aren’t exactly sexy products for mainstream consumers. And they won’t allow us to send Twitter messages from our eyeballs.
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