Interesting Snippets

A couple of Boeing researchers created heads-up displays for engineers to overlay schematics on top of their work, reducing the distraction of double-checking a blueprint every few minutes. Despite the concept’s age, the paradigm still has an advantage over the smartphone. Something that floats in front of you is part of your senses, something you have to check and re-check is just a computer.

Traditional computing paradigms are based on the notion that computing is the primary task,” says Mann. “Wearable computing, however, is based on the idea that computing is NOT the primary task.”…. The wearable computer was meant by its early builders to be a different kind of computer, not just a computer in a different place. A computer interrupts you, but a wearable watches your mood, a computer needs your active attention, but a wearable is the one that’s paying attention, a computer needs direct input, but a wearable takes care of its own perceptions. When you’re wearing a computer, you could be fully human, and then some, but when you’re using a computer, you have to reduce yourself to a set of instructions, subject to the machine’s interpretation.

If we all start wearing glasses with cameras, the process of seeing and recording will become that much easier and possibly continual… you could set your camera to continually record (and consistently erase) chunks of time…. If something awesome (or horrible) happens that you want to save, you could instruct your Glasses to permanently store that file or upload it to your YouTube account. No more “Whoops, I didn’t get my smartphone out in time to record that!” Imagine how helpful this could be for reporting crimes. If you witnessed a boy being attacked in your yard, or a hit and run, or a robbery, you could immediately upload that file to police databases. Inevitably, we would all become watchmen, critical parts of the surveillance society…. And of course, any time we see something funny, embarrassing, sexual, disgusting, inspiring, or otherwise interesting, we will be able to more easily capture it and tweet it out… It’s creepy. It’s awesome. And it’s increasingly seeming inevitable.

Monitoring heart arrhythmia and sleep disorders can be an uncomfortable experience for patients who have to be hooked up to various wires and sensors… A noninvasive approach would put the patient at ease… (and) a team of international researchers have developed a skin-like prototype of an electronic temporary tattoo to do just that….

In addition to gathering data, skin-mounted electronics could provide the wearers with added capabilities. For example, patients with muscular or neurological disorders, such as ALS, could use them to communicate or to interface with computers. The researchers found that, when applied to the skin of the throat, the sensors could distinguish muscle movement for simple speech.

The new technology is known as “epidermal electronics” and can be applied to your skin just like a temporary tattoo… To have electronics as flexible as human skin will augment robotics, biometrics and health care. Forget your iPhone, one day in the future, you’ll have a super computer tattooed to your wrist.