"Wearable Technology: So Many Terms, So Little Comprehension"
Madison Maxey is a creative technologist focused on apparel and hardware. As a 2013 Thiel Fellow, her work has been featured in publications like The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. Previous experience includes Tommy Hilfiger, General Assembly, and Nylon Magazine. She currently spends her time computing and designing at The CRATED.
It seems as though entering a new field, learning a new skill, or even making a new friend requires learning a few new vocabulary words that create a conversation around the topic. With that in mind, talking about the emerging field of wearables seems like a conversation about language above all else.
Using the term “wearable technology” has become the quickest way into a journalist’s pitch or an investor’s pocket. While this is an important step towards a less terminal future, wearable technology has become an umbrella term; it rarely provides clarity around the technologies it applies to.
There’s the classic argument that the “good” and “bad” use of words can only be determined by how the word is understood by the listener. Is the term “wearable technology” providing any clarity? Because the ever-famous field of wearable computing is still so nascent (according to some and denied by others), we’re still unpacking the box inside of this term. We’re seeing a merger of fields, meshing designers and fashionistas with technologists, requiring a central language to communicate between aesthetics and hardware.
With this in mind, here’s a quick peek into some of my favorite words, thoughts and definitions (via Wikipedia) around the topic:
Wearable technology: “clothing and accessories incorporating computer and advanced electronic technologies.”
Ubiquitous computing: “an advanced computing concept where computing is made to appear everywhere and anywhere.”
Haptic computing: “a tactile feedback technology which recreates the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions to the user.”
Physical computing: “building interactive physical systems by the use of software and hardware that can sense and respond to the analog world.”
It seems as though physical computing and ubiquitous computing are strangely synonymous and opposing at once. Ubiquitous computing can appear through physical computing, but the restraints of the physicality of physical computing don’t align with the concept of ubiquitous computing.
Interesting.
Wearable computing often relies on haptic computing, which can be tested and materialized through physical computing, but haptics can exist outside of the body and wearables can collect data without haptics.
Interesting.
At the end of the day, it all seems to be about inputs, outputs, power, and connections. The way we describe the techniques of doing so varies, but what truly matters is that we continue to innovate and tinker into unimagined fields of the digital and physical world.
