Wearing multi-featured electronic gadgets is fast becoming a fashion statement. Fashion gurus and electronics wizards world over are working towards creating intelligent clothing with mobile phones and MP3 music players, wearable computers, and watch phones
diamond buttons containing tiny clocks. Electronics did not exist at that time otherwise d’Artois would have a wider choice.
The trend of electronics gizmos replacing jewellery and being used as fashion accessories is more than real. A model at the Brave New Unwired Fashion Technology Show at the Spring Internet World, Los Angeles, organised in April 2000, wore a necklace that either glowed, beeped, or vibrated to alert the wearer that he has received an e-mail.
At the World China Exhibition in April 2000, a Chinese model displayed an Internet necklace at a fashion show. The conceptual prototype allowed the wearer to dictate e-mail messages silently.
Clothes that tell you that you have forgotten your keys or warn you when your wallet is stolen, or a jogging suit that puts you through paces are part of a five-year project by the Brussels-based research group Star Lab to come up with a form of intelligent clothing. The mobile phone function in the clothing sends the data by e-mail to your sports club, which receives the report on your training by the time you have taken your shower. Star Lab has so far received funding from NASA, national government, and the European Commission.
With almost one year into its research, Star Lab showed off the first prototype of ‘i-wear’ at its elegant headquarters—an ornate former embassy—where some 60 scientists from 28 countries work on projects ranging from artificial brains to time travel to intelligent clothing. The prototype resembled a shirt composed of several layers, with heat sensors and microphones tucked away in the cuffs and collars to measure light and sound.
Cebit 2000, organised in February 2000, displayed wearable computers. The computers and batteries were hidden under the dress. Loudspeakers were mounted on the shoulders, the headset was worn round the neck, and the screen was just 5.1 cm (2 inch) from the eye. The keyboard was worn on the sleeve.
At the Hong Kong Brave New Unwired World Technology Fashion Show in November 1999 a model displayed a personal digital assistant on her forearm.
The Japanese don’t want to be left trailing and National Electronic Corporation (NEC) is busy designing what it foresees as the future of personal computers—a wearable computer terminal. Much like the other trinkets, people will wear in the future the wearable terminal that is predicted to become an indispensible business tool as well as fashion accessory according to NEC’s design centre at Tokyo. Some of the computers under design include wearable data terminal, lapbody computer, porto office, and spoon PC. Several prototypes of the PC have been already made. Some can be worn around the neck like a necklace, while some strapped around the waist adorn the arms and legs.
According to scientists, a few years from now computer shrinking would be so common that it would entail instant recognition of sound and handwriting over long distances. Sophisticated computers would also incorporate miniature keyboards and mice, voicemail, telephones, faxes, CD-ROMs, and even cameras and satellite transmission.
Computers would be specific to the needs of doctors, with medical equipment included in the PC, or to the needs of journalists who have to transmit field data apart from those basic computing needs. Inventory data terminal would be useful for those working in large departmental stores. The portal office computer would include most of the functions of a modern-day paperless office.
With Bluetooth technology coming fast into operation most of these devices would find it easy to communicate with other gizmos on the persons wearing the PCs.
Xybernaut of the USA is already making portable systems for use in the industry. This gives much to the expectations and would help in coming closer to wearable PCs.
Mobile and wireless computing spell the end of an era in which you sit down in front of your computer to communicate with the world and move physically between devices in separate locations to perform various tasks.
People want more than just accessing the Internet. They want TV and radio, and many other devices in one place. Besides, there should be the choice for buyers to equip themselves with different combinations of technologies. The show in Minneapolis projected models displaying wireless mini-computers and other high-technology gadgets. Internet World Asia 2000 in Suntec City, Singapore, presented the prototype of a bracelet, a pair of earrings, and a necklace—the first Internet-enabled jewellery—developed by Charmed.com, Los Angeles. With this jewellery, you have the advantage of looking great while you can call home, retrieve messages, or check on your stocks and shares. You can look good doing just about anything.
The idea is more than charming but fashion has co-opted the technology. In 1997 Motorola was the first to combine high technology with high fashion in Hollywood jeweller Martin Matz’s gold and diamond bags for its popular Star TAC phones. Motorola displayed its sleek Accompli watch phone at Cebit 2000 convention, which had a knobby antenna sticking out of the bottom. The company has also designed a wireless videophone that contains a tiny camera. It commissioned a boutique owner Tina Tan Leo to design four semi-precious carriers for the world’s smallest phone, the Motorola V-3688, in Italy.
The mobile phone is about to be transformed into a wearable and fashionable jewellery. The convergence of the watch and the communications equipment threatens traditional handset markets such as Sweden’s Telecom ABLM and EErricson. A team of fashion gurus and electronics wizards is working to produce jackets that incorporate a tiny mobile phone or a global positioning system to enable the wearer to determine his position anywhere in the world. Audio-video and video gear incorporating miniature cameras or TV screens can also be included. The jacket is the harbinger of fashion revolution that will include the latest communications gadgets.
France Telecom has spelled out its plans with seven other companies in a consortium I-wear. The members include Adidas, Levi’s, Strauss Europe, the French fashion house Courrages, the textile firm Bekintex & Vaso, Data Security, and Rectical. The work is being directed by Belgian Star Lab. Among the accessories, the watch has made a considerable progress. A century after the watch moved from the pocket to the wrist, timepieces are beginning to do a lot more than tick. Watch companies are turning them into stylish wrist phones, MP3 music players, and even crude Internet devices, presenting a challenge to mobile phone makers. People, especially youths, are looking for a cool technology, and that is where the creators of the technology will cash in.
As early as 1997 MITI’s Media Lab presented a bonafide fashion show of wearable computers. Partly an academic conference as well as a fashion preview, the show brought together computer scientists, researchers, and clothing company elite to watch fashion models prancing around in designs by aspiring fashion designers whose fanciful creations gave a new meaning to the term ‘software’.
Some of the world’s best-known fashion designers and cloth makers were on hand and designers from Nike, Levi’s, and Strauss and Swatch maker SMH Swiss—the all three Media Lab sponsors—were in the audience. The clothes on display—such as a music synthesiser woven into a tunic to translate the wearer’s words into a foreign language—were just a concept then. But the folks at Media Lab predicted that wearable computers would turn up on the sidewalks of Rome, Tokyo, New York, or San Francisco within the next few years.
Andrew Fagg, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, is working on building a smart wearable computer. He is doing research in one of the newest fields in computing that allows a personal computer to be as wearable as a tool belt. The user can wear the monitor as a headset and the keypad as a wristwatch. The commercial market for such wearable computers has expanded strongly over the past year mainly for specific industrial use.
With lithium batteries reducing the weight of mobile PCs, the technology for miniature computer screens planted at the edge of a pair of glasses has improved drastically. The day is not far when wearable computers along with other electronic accessories will become a part of our life.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is very keen on developing wearable devices. Charmed Technologies, a California-based spin-off of the MIT’s Media Lab, held a fashion show at Internet World Conference in London in September 2000 to draw attention to ‘wireless everywear’. The show presented prototypes of jewellery with discrete information capabilities that used wireless technology developed by Arraycom, a US Technology company led by Martin Cooper, whom many tech-buffs call the father of the portable cell phone. The jewellery included an electronic badge that automatically uploaded and transferred information via infrared technology to a Webpage without the wearer having to remember the file number. There would be no need to swap visitor cards.
Electronics giant Philips and jeans maker Levi’s are too getting into the act besides the I-wear project. They will launch ICD jackets across Europe with a built-in mobile phone and an MP3 music player, aimed at what a spokesman called ‘urban nomads’, i.e. youths who hold meetings everywhere.
