Wearable computers gaining mainstream interest?

[converge]

Just happened across this tonight to my surprise:

http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5067011.html

I am curious if others are starting to run across more attention to this anywhere? There were several folk at the past defcon with some form or faction of a wearable, and it is just a damned cool thing to dream of, even consider tinkering with...

snippet
--
newsmakers Steve Mann is not only a pioneer in wearable computers, an electrical engineering professor and the star of a documentary titled "Cyberman."

Mann also is the first cyborg rights activist.

A native of Canada who teaches at the University of Toronto, Mann became famous in the 1990s for roaming the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus as a graduate student outfitted with chunky glasses that augmented his vision, a bulging, hip-mounted PC that boosted his memory, and an antenna that broadcast to the Internet whatever he saw. Since then, Mann has slimmed his "eyetap" apparatus down to a more manageable size and has purchased a former Toronto nightclub to use as a home, a design laboratory and a sort of tech-art gallery.
--

[hackajar]

This "brain wave" concert has brought some interesting thoughts to mind. Like eXisTance, where one person's interthoughts, played with everyone elses perception of reality in the game(or concert here).

This guy has been twisting the perciption of thought for years, or how we should percive thought, while we are thinking. Or capturing visually images, that are live to us, but may be redered infringing to others (lawfully) due to the capture method (sight's ok, but do not record, but recored was your site not a general area). Cool stuff Mang!

[spahkle]

Originally posted by hackajar
Or capturing visually images, that are live to us, but may be redered infringing to others (lawfully) due to the capture method

Anybody else having flashbacks to the movie "Strange Days"? A movie ahead of it's time. Now that Bio-Augmentation through wearables is becoming more feasible, it may be the next step. "Recording" experiences and selling them. Television will no longer be the drug of choice. Why "watch" something when you can "experience" and remember it as your own experience...

**/Arnold accent on
NO! I'm the real Quaid!! AAAaaaarrrggh
**/Arnold accent off

[murakami]

simstim!
gargoyles! (saw one a DC11)
cyborgs!

Oh my!

[converge]

or my last thought, a device that took camera snapshots say, once a second, or maybe every time you blinked your eyes, and categorized themchronologically for future seeking/playback retrieval... instant photographic memory... well, with a little more time delay and search latency....

[KeLviN]

the comps are still too big, too slow, and have shitty human interfaces.




but give it time......

[pezz]

the poma wasn't so bad.....I am waiting till they figure out the biological extensions.

[converge]

Originally posted by KeLviN
but give it time......

sure.... if you're the sort to kick around and wait for microsoft to start selling it to you... /me points to the scale of tinkerability and cost, then looks back across the room

it is true that anything pre-packaged things are still quite nasty.. ie xybernaut comes to mind

[KeLviN]

hell, you see my laptop? sony u1.

i could easily strap that to my belt, plug an eye piece into the vga and throw my mini hand held trackball in a usb and its totaly wearable.

the problem os OS.

for people that use it, palm OS is designed to be used easily for the purpose it serves.

desktop os's are designed for desktop uses.

we need a new OS designed for the wearable market.

less text, more point/click. more voice support. and more portable paripheral support. (cell, wifi, blue tooth, palm/ce connectivity)

[pezz]

Actually any OS that bases itself on the mouse is better suited for this type of market. Using eagleeyes or an eyemouse would be a better implementation. I have seen these support devices in action and they still leave a bit to be desired but it is getting better.

eyemouse

[Siviak]

Originally posted by murakami
gargoyles! (saw one a DC11)

I think you are refering to our dear mfreeck, but who knows...

Kelvin I like the idea of the instant photographic memory... it would be kinda a pain in the ass dealing with condencing the sheer number of pix it would have to take and store.. unless you came up with some sort of "facial/optical recognition" for them... like taking all 13 pictures of the 12th page of the magazine you just read and condencing them into one page for easier storage.. but teaching it to recognize the fact that there are 13 pictures of the same page would be a bit of a pain in the ass... just my 2 centavos

[murakami]

Originally posted by Siviak
I think you are refering to our dear mfreeck, but who knows...

Kelvin I like the idea of the instant photographic memory... it would be kinda a pain in the ass dealing with condencing the sheer number of pix it would have to take and store.. unless you came up with some sort of "facial/optical recognition" for them... like taking all 13 pictures of the 12th page of the magazine you just read and condencing them into one page for easier storage.. but teaching it to recognize the fact that there are 13 pictures of the same page would be a bit of a pain in the ass... just my 2 centavos

solve that problem and you can be facial recognition expert.

Nooo, not that kind of facial.

[Siviak]

Originally posted by murakami
solve that problem and you can be facial recognition expert.

I don't want that field to go any further thank you!

[converge]

well, being able to pattern search for specific events, unless those phd folk have tech I don't know of, would be quite scifi still. However, the ability to store linear pictures then play them back based on general time-guessing would be pretty simple.. ie. seeking back on a cd or video.

For example, you could seek back to a certain time/day, and if you remember that a certain time was before or after the given seek event... adjust the time you are searching at appropriately until you are playing back the event you need to recall. Obviously audio would make this even more cool/dangerous, but pictures are a more feasible adjustment considering storage space limits.

[Shatter]

I remember about 10 years ago when wearable computer were all the rage.

Portable 486 procs with HUD's opr monocle interfaces. Neat.

I've got pics floating around somewhere of some industrial modles that were pretty slick. Wrist mount with a palm mounted bar code scanner for warehouse inventory, all running to a 800MHz uplink network.

I think the original issue of Wired had a segment on them.

Everything repeats itself. I'm still waiting for my visor/goggle mounted VR to become common place dammit. Power gloves are dope as hell. They need to make a come back for MMOPRG's.

Ya. I'm old. Fuckoff.