Wearable tech. There’s something exciting about even the phrase itself. Wearable brings to mind the humdrum world of jumpers and socks and pairs of grey pants. These items are worn – wearable. They’re not donned. They do not adorn in the manner of tiaras and black silk dresses. Then there’s tech: a contraction that generally points to Silicone Valley-ish Elon-Muskery, which is to say technological advancements that thrill, chill and grab up headlines. One does not think of, for instance, some leap in the administrative efficacy of the software that programmes train timetables, when one hears “tech”. So, wearable tech evokes a sense of that mostly-only-read-about “tech” newness penetrating our own lives.
But will it? And will the collision of worlds be as exhilarating as we at first imagine? The closest thing we all have to wearable tech at present is the smart-phone. A smart phone is not exactly worn, but in terms of its close and intimate contact with nearly every aspect of our lives, it comes pretty close.
This evolution of mobiles video shows just how far the smartphone has come.
Smartphones arrange who we date; connect us to friends and family across the globe; provide entertainment when we’re board; capture our most intimate moments. Given they do all this, it can be hard to imagine that making the move from the trusty pocket to a more permanent residence in the glasses or wristband would herald much of a change.
However, there is one piece of wearable tech that makes the smartphone look like a forgotten and never-much-liked childhood nanny, in terms of overall in-life integration.
Enter the AlterEgo. This is a device which is fitted around the head and neck of the user, a small sensor under the chin and an earpiece placed in the ear. The AlterEgo responds to questions just like the AI the powers Siri or Cortana – with the jaw-dropping difference being that these questions need not be spoken; they need only to be thought.
From consciousness for all via Facebook
You read that right! The AlterEgo picks up on the user’s “internal voice”, and responds via the earpiece. This means that someone could carry out an entire conversation of piece of research without saying a word, and you’d never know. And they said phones at the dinner table were bad!
To be clear, the AlterEgo monitors neuromuscular signals that are generated when the user imagines talking. This means that it monitors the kind of physically incarnated echoes of imagined speech, rather than thoughts themselves, which is a great relief.
However, the thought of an entirely undetectable relationship between person and machine is a strange one. At least with a smartphone, you can tell when you’re being ignored. This secrecy, however, maybe just what some users are after. As our relationships with devices become increasingly high-stakes – as they take on a more indispensable role in what’s often called life admin – more and more people may find themselves embarrassed by how dependent they are on that little screen in their pocket. With the AlterEgo, there’s the benefit of the doubt: no one can actually tell whether you’re using it any given time – although you always could be.