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Go ahead with your wearables and your iWatch. Just don't crash my pants Go ahead with your wearables and your iWatch. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the day your iPants would crash
(about 2 hours later)
My friends are supremely talented at being late to things. Two times in two days this weekend, I was half an hour late – but still 15 minutes earlier than my dining and/or drinking companion. I thought I’d heard every excuse. But last week, the guy I’m dating (who is normally very punctual!) pulled out a new one: He was nearly late for a movie because his watch crashed.My friends are supremely talented at being late to things. Two times in two days this weekend, I was half an hour late – but still 15 minutes earlier than my dining and/or drinking companion. I thought I’d heard every excuse. But last week, the guy I’m dating (who is normally very punctual!) pulled out a new one: He was nearly late for a movie because his watch crashed.
See, my friend has one of those smart watches, the kind that display your email and trigger your phone camera and also incidentally tell you the time. Only sometimes it gets overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a perfectly fine watch and also a crappy phone substitute, and decides not to be a perfectly fine watch anymore. Thus, it decided to display 6:07 for like half an hour, and nearly made us both miss Ghostbusters. (In the theater! I know. New York is great.)See, my friend has one of those smart watches, the kind that display your email and trigger your phone camera and also incidentally tell you the time. Only sometimes it gets overwhelmed by the responsibility of being a perfectly fine watch and also a crappy phone substitute, and decides not to be a perfectly fine watch anymore. Thus, it decided to display 6:07 for like half an hour, and nearly made us both miss Ghostbusters. (In the theater! I know. New York is great.)
I’m far from Luddite about personal gadgets; in fact, I’ve historically skipped the interest in wearables (maybe with the exception of Molly Millions’ embedded mirror-shades) and gone directly to moaning about not yet having an in-brain Google implant. But not too long ago, another friend stopped me dead in the middle of yet another one of my rants about having to actually pull out a phone to look something up.I’m far from Luddite about personal gadgets; in fact, I’ve historically skipped the interest in wearables (maybe with the exception of Molly Millions’ embedded mirror-shades) and gone directly to moaning about not yet having an in-brain Google implant. But not too long ago, another friend stopped me dead in the middle of yet another one of my rants about having to actually pull out a phone to look something up.
“They’ll never make an implant,” said my friend. “Think of how often your phone crashes, or reboots, or has to be upgraded. Now imagine that every time you had to service your device in some way, they had to open up your head.”“They’ll never make an implant,” said my friend. “Think of how often your phone crashes, or reboots, or has to be upgraded. Now imagine that every time you had to service your device in some way, they had to open up your head.”
I would still like to be able to interface directly with the internet, but this line of argument was sensible enough that I’ve basically abandoned the dream of a widely-available cyberpunk upgrade.I would still like to be able to interface directly with the internet, but this line of argument was sensible enough that I’ve basically abandoned the dream of a widely-available cyberpunk upgrade.
Wearables, though, might be the next best thing; I know Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is a satirical dystopia, but connectivity junkies like me would happily wear some version of an äppärät, the ubiquitous digital pendant that Shteyngart described in an interview with the Nation as “a wonderful invention that ranks everybody. When I enter a bar in downtown Manhattan, my entire history is broadcast to everybody, and immediately everyone knows I’m the eighteenth ugliest man in the room but I have the fourth-best credit rating.”Wearables, though, might be the next best thing; I know Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is a satirical dystopia, but connectivity junkies like me would happily wear some version of an äppärät, the ubiquitous digital pendant that Shteyngart described in an interview with the Nation as “a wonderful invention that ranks everybody. When I enter a bar in downtown Manhattan, my entire history is broadcast to everybody, and immediately everyone knows I’m the eighteenth ugliest man in the room but I have the fourth-best credit rating.”
Maybe I don’t want my ugliness score broadcast around, any more than it already is just by photons and optic nerves, but you’re damn right I would sport a device that automatically sucks up and delivers information about everyone and everything in a room. I’m not super into the quantified self, but sure, give me shoes that tell me how far I walked. Give me sunglasses that record verbal notes while I’m walking the dog, or earrings that quietly read to me from Wikipedia. Give me connection and information built into every stitch I wear.Maybe I don’t want my ugliness score broadcast around, any more than it already is just by photons and optic nerves, but you’re damn right I would sport a device that automatically sucks up and delivers information about everyone and everything in a room. I’m not super into the quantified self, but sure, give me shoes that tell me how far I walked. Give me sunglasses that record verbal notes while I’m walking the dog, or earrings that quietly read to me from Wikipedia. Give me connection and information built into every stitch I wear.
But still: I am tempering my enthusiasm for the iWatch, if that is indeed what Tim Cook of Apple is announcing on Tuesday. Because the more gadgets you own, the more gadgets can go on the fritz – and when those gadgets are integrated with your watch or jewelry or shoes or glasses or clothes, the consequences to your daily life could be severe. Are we on the fast track to a society wherein your guy might be late to a movie because his pants crashed? Or his underwear got hacked?But still: I am tempering my enthusiasm for the iWatch, if that is indeed what Tim Cook of Apple is announcing on Tuesday. Because the more gadgets you own, the more gadgets can go on the fritz – and when those gadgets are integrated with your watch or jewelry or shoes or glasses or clothes, the consequences to your daily life could be severe. Are we on the fast track to a society wherein your guy might be late to a movie because his pants crashed? Or his underwear got hacked?
I’m joking, but I’m not completely joking. The more we convert our accessories to multi-taskers, the more disruptive it is when they inevitably fail. Yes, it was cumbersome back when you had to have a map and a watch and a quarter for the pay phone, instead of having all those functions in one hand-sized device – but if your watch ran out of batteries, your map still worked. Now that your phone can do it all, you’re left utterly at sea when it fails.I’m joking, but I’m not completely joking. The more we convert our accessories to multi-taskers, the more disruptive it is when they inevitably fail. Yes, it was cumbersome back when you had to have a map and a watch and a quarter for the pay phone, instead of having all those functions in one hand-sized device – but if your watch ran out of batteries, your map still worked. Now that your phone can do it all, you’re left utterly at sea when it fails.
Granted, in the same way that (per the brilliant Mitch Hedberg) an out-of-order escalator is just stairs, an out-of-order smart shoe or hat or pair of pants presumably still works to cover your feet/head/junk. But in general, the more we integrate a gadget into our everyday life, the more we depend on and trust that it will always work – and at the same time, the more we ask a gadget to do, the more likely it is to fail completely. (Approximately one dillion things can make my laptop hang or glitch or give up entirely; my watch will be OK unless the battery runs out or I smash it.) All of which means I can envision a future wherein, say, your web-searching, email-displaying glasses also have a dynamic prescription – meaning that when they crash, you can no longer see.Granted, in the same way that (per the brilliant Mitch Hedberg) an out-of-order escalator is just stairs, an out-of-order smart shoe or hat or pair of pants presumably still works to cover your feet/head/junk. But in general, the more we integrate a gadget into our everyday life, the more we depend on and trust that it will always work – and at the same time, the more we ask a gadget to do, the more likely it is to fail completely. (Approximately one dillion things can make my laptop hang or glitch or give up entirely; my watch will be OK unless the battery runs out or I smash it.) All of which means I can envision a future wherein, say, your web-searching, email-displaying glasses also have a dynamic prescription – meaning that when they crash, you can no longer see.
Companies need to take all this into account when they build wearables – and we need to take it into account when we decide which gadgets get our whole-hearted devotion. Either that, or we just need to build in a lot of redundancy. “My watch crashed, so I checked the time on my shoe, and my subway map glasses were on the fritz, so I just used Hopstop on my belt buckle. Let’s go get popcorn.”Companies need to take all this into account when they build wearables – and we need to take it into account when we decide which gadgets get our whole-hearted devotion. Either that, or we just need to build in a lot of redundancy. “My watch crashed, so I checked the time on my shoe, and my subway map glasses were on the fritz, so I just used Hopstop on my belt buckle. Let’s go get popcorn.”