Why is wearable tech considered the next Big Thing? Because the tech industry, including its media cheerleaders, need a new subject. A new sparkly future to dangle out of reach and make us yearn for the day when the object lands in our hands and everything's different. Better. More productive. Something that changes our lives as much as the smartphone. I have a hard time recalling life before the smart phone, when everything digital was accessible anywhere. But I'm sure I'm no happier or satisfied now than I was then. Or unhappier. You incorporate these tools into your life, find out that some things have changed for the worse - oh, great, email everywhere - and lots of things are now easier. You can ask your phone to find you a Thai restaurant on Lyndale, and it will! Granted, the search result is Lakevillle, Florida, but that's your fault for mumbling. But wearable tech will change everything! You'll have sensors that will download all your biometric information into health apps, and heads-up displays will let you see menus floating in space before you go into a restaurant! True. The old days of reading a menu posted behind plexiglass near the door will be gone forever. Everything will have changed. For example, you will become used to the non-intuitive act of speaking into your wrist.
That's an ad for Samsung's ugly new smart watch, which tethers to a particular model of phone. It's an interesting pitch: since visions of the high-tech future always have people talking to their wrist, that's what we want, right? That's the way it should be, right? I don't know. On one hand - sorry - it seems a step back from chatting away at nothing, with the little earpiece transmitting your words. But perhaps we need to talk to something. At something. Either we're trained by decades of telephones to address a receptacle, or it fills a human need to aim our words at something.
But not anything. If they made a thin film that fit in the palm of your hand, no one would want it, because A) it would seem like you were talking to yourself, and B) coffee breath.
We'll see what Apple comes up with. I suspect it won't look like someone strapped a pack of cigarettes on your wrist.
SPACE Don't count on the Russians to fight aliens. They're not ready. Russian Times has the disappointing news:
The fact that they took the question seriously and answered it makes me think they're lying, and know something.
COMICS Wonderful Atlantic mag piece on the incredible full-page comics of the early 20th century. And what do we have? Garfield and Crankshaft.
That's not entirely fair - most of the strips back then were uninspired, but it makes you wish modern artists - and newspapers - would do something like this today. Immense webcomics aren't the same. You don't have to scroll a newspaper page.
