Prepare to Wear! Exploring Wearable Technologies in the Learning Environment
https://www.educause.edu/annual-conference/2014/prepare-wear-exploring-wearable-technologies-learning-environment
Premise: "This is the year of wearable technologies. We'll all be cyborgs soon enough. "
Interesting presentation by some genuinely passionate Google Glass wearing presenters. But well, slightly troubling.
There is quite a mix of privacy, social acceptance, potential exploitation and even fashion issues at play here. I've no doubt at all that the wearable technology will explode in the next few years. It'll be all pervasive, at least to the technically franchised. Poorer and less digitally capable - not so much. Although, as technology gets cheaper via volume production then its reach will obviously and inevitably grow. I'm betting (incommon with many others) and the presenters suggest (a little) that wearable will morph into technology that's rather more permanently and physically connected. Of course, we already have medical devices implanted to prolong and enhance people's lives and that's obviously of great benefit. The use case will expand though, to enhance healthy people's every-day lives. On an individual or consumer basis, how many people would hesitate if offered instant easy access, say, to a memory bank of information? Never having to memorise a text book again. What about companies, countries? They'd perhaps be motivated to go quite a bit further.
Design / fashion and social acceptance might hold things up a bit at first. But design is getting better. It really is - Fitbit, Jaw Bone - improving. And anyway, going forward devices will probably become mostly invisible - unless we want them to be visible that is.
The Pew institute (http://www.pewresearch.org/) estimate that between 2011-2013 the number of minutes spent on-line doubled. From 98.1 minutes on-line daily to 194.7 minutes two years later. This trend, they say and I'm not sure anyone would argue, is set to continue.
About a quarter of the 100 strong or so audience admitted to wearing some tech. Mostly fitness bands. We probably aren't a representative sample being mostly middle aged IT managers.
https://www.polleverywhere.com/mayageorgiev742#polls/9163329
A new computing cycle is charging forward with wider and better access to network connectivity at its core. The presenters suggest that the connectivity we have now will look primitive in 5 or 10 years time. This has big implications for suppliers of connectivity like us. We take wireless connectivity seriously. But, we'll need it to be at the centre of what we deliver going forward. Capacity planning will need to take into account this big technology connectivity trend. This won't be just about wireless and we'll need, of course, to think about 4G, 5G - and what else? In a few years looking back it might look more like a societal and cultural revolution than technical. At the other side of this change we'll basically see our student and staff pretty much permanently connected. Constantly accessing information and applications but also acting as personal data collectors - pumping huge amounts of information, video into vast data warehouses in the cloud. Even if it is a private cloud - like ours in our University data centre in Cambridge.
The presenters thought that wearables will redefine the relationship between technology and humans. At some point, technology will be integrated into our brains. Rather disturbing.
So, anyway - Wearable tech at the moment?
The Google Glass specs might be the most well known - but there are just a few around at the moment.
A similiar, and the presenters thought more exciting, product is the Meta 3D - augmented holographic glasses. Available fall 2014 at $3000 and wired to a small computer. Their web site is here https://www.spaceglasses.com/
The youtube video below demostrates some of their capabilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ws53oSvyE&noredirect=1
A slightly unsettling but entertaining glimpse into the future made a couple of years before Meta3D was around is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziHCvpikLh8
Another player is this area is the Pivothead smart glasses.
Fitness / health bands are a big part of all of this and the market is predicted to grow from 107 million to 515 million by 2017.
Not to be outdone - shoes - connected to a smart phone - they vibrate to tell you where to go. Who knew?
Next up is the Muse 'brain sensing headband' . A band that, well, you wear around your head. Apparently it congratulates you if you spend enough time with a 'positive and calm mind'. More features open up if your mind is in a good place. Really? I'm not sure many people would take very well to a head-band telling them to calm down. I could be wrong.
So, onto 'Narrative clips'. Basically, technology that records all your day-to-day experiences. Disturbingly, there is no off or on switch. It's permanently on, beaming everything to data storage in the cloud.
One of the presenters has been wearing one for a while. She began to notice more who she chose to speak to and be more aware of her own behavour and general social interactions. After a time, she noticed that she tended to have lots of pictures of a certain colleague. Via the use of Narritive Clips she realised that she must really enjoy this other person's company. Not something she had been aware of - she said. I guess this means she / others replay their clips and review later? Interesting to have action replays of day-to-day interaction. I'm sure some will find this alarming. Especially, since there is no off or on button - it's always recording.
Want one? http://getnarrative.com/
And, what about privacy? what's public, what's private? It's hard not to conclude that, in the future, much of our lives will be recorded. Inevitably these recording will circulate, be analysed and used in ways we can probably not predict. Well, we can predict a few.
Will people accept being constantly recorded? The presenter thought there would be a critical mass which would lead to general acceptance. That sounds pretty accurate. In an earlier presentation, data was presented on 72,000 students who were asked if they minded their personal data being digitally categorised and tracked and used later by their University. Only 9% had a problem. Of the Other 91% most thought it was a good idea.
http://gregoredu.blogspot.com/2014/10/educause-2014-what-matters-most-to.html
Apparently, one tenth of all photos ever taken were taken last year. (I'm guessing the quality has reduced a bit though)
A relatively, on first glance, light piece on sleeping habits in various US cities was published recently in the Huffington Post. People get most sleep in Orlando apparenly. Where I'm currently typing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/18/cities-most-least-sleep_n_5683105.html
The interesting aspect of this article is that the data was collected by users of the fit-band 'Jaw Bone'. I don't know if this data was collected with their users permission but - there it is - mass data collection. These devices will collect much more data in the future that will be summarised, analysed and used for all kinds of purposes. Some good some, perhaps, not so.
Another interesting technology is the Oculus Rift - immersive virtual reality head mounted display.
The suggestion is that there will be new forms of sensory experience. Interesting start-up Reality Cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tEFlSxPNjc
The presenters suggested learning and teaching uses already include architecture, journalism, medicine.
What are the other challenges to wearable tech? Batteries. Batteries. Batteries. CPU increases - battery life not so much.
The future? "The future is not a faster horse"
These are exciting times indeed, and presumably whatever wearable technology becomes mainstream it will synchronise with the iPhone / iWatch. I think sometimes too much information can be distracting, resulting in less focus on specific tasks, if we're constantly bombarded with more information being thrown at us from our phone, watch, desktop, glasses, shoes, headbands etc. it's going to drive some people crazy! Jon
ReplyDeleteYes, good points. I did have a conversation with a hedge fund technology analyst. He didn't think wearable tech was really going anywhere. Maybe medical wearable he thought, I disagreed, I think wearale will be a disrupter - not today but in the medium future.
ReplyDeleteWearable tech has to have a purpose and add value, otherwise our attention to it disappears very quickly. We need to be able to experiment and decide not to use it without it being seen as failure. If we did this I'm sure existing wearable tech could be adjusted until incorporated into everyday life. The speed of take up is also dependent on cost as always!
ReplyDeleteBig topic at Gartner was the idea that we should experiment and accept that some of our experiments won't turn out anything useful - run pilots, trials. Perhaps small scale to minimise potential loss but (as Mandy says) they shouldn't be regarded as a failure. Main point is that we'll end up with some successes and introduce a culture where we can be more innovative
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ReplyDeletebrain sensing headband