Fashion trends come and go, and these days you see people wearing just about anything. Still, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone “wearing” a computer in public.
The European union has green-lighted a new “wearable technology” program called “wearIT@work,” with initial funding for the ambitious new project coming in just shy of €15 million Euros, or roughly $20 million US dollars. So does the EU actually expect tech workers to “wear” a computer to work? In a word, yes.
According to ZDNet.com, the goal of the new program is to replace computer screens, keyboards and other interfaces with a wearable system that will take advantage of speech recognition technology and gesture control technology. The wearable computer system is being tested first in the fields of aircraft maintenance, automobile production, health care, and emergency response.
The underlying concept of “wearable technology” is to increase productivity by eliminating wasted time seeking out a computer interface and manually inputting information. For example, in the case of aircraft technicians, a worker must often locate a document on the computer; then locate both the aircraft’s maintenance and parts manuals; these documents must then be printed out and delivered to a technician, who will also need to write a report on paper detailing the work that has been done.
Using wearable computer technology, the technician can locate the relevant documents no matter where he or she is located, and proceed to do the work required and input a maintenance report while the work is being done using a wearable keyboard interface. Obviously, eliminating all of the middle steps from this process saves an enormous amount of time, while reducing the possibility of miscommunication between various technicians.
There are hundreds of other professions that can benefit from the efficiency of using a wearable computer on the job. In Paris, the emergency fire brigades are experimenting with wearable technology, and the initial results show that having immediate access to information, communication and online resources improves the safety and efficiency of firefighting.
In fact, the wearable technology concept has garnered so many positive results, it begins to seem like it is only a matter of time until every profession will be wearing computers and high-tech interfaces on a daily basis. And while the EU has jumped out in the lead on this money-saving concept, you can bet it won’t be long until American companies feel the need to incorporate computerized uniforms as well.
As history shows, any development that saves money and improves efficiency tends to flourish in the marketplace. That would suggest that, like it or not, we’re probably all going to be wearing computers in the near future.
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The wearable computer doesn’t seem all that far away. How often do your run into people wearing Bluetooth headsets walking down the street these days?
Comment by Stephen — February 7, 2008 @ 5:40 am