When people think of wearable technology today, they likely picture smart watches, fitness trackers, virtual reality headsets, and similar products. The history of wearable tech is an important part of the longstanding connection between the fashion world and the technology sector and in fact extends back to well before those products existed.
Wearable Technology
First, it’s helpful to define what we mean by “wearable tech.” Put simply, wearable tech is any electronic device that is worn on its user’s body, either independently or as part of a larger accessory or article of clothing. These devices can include medical tools, accessories, clothing, and even jewelry. Of course, some of the examples of wearable tech are more closely linked with the world of fashion than others, but advances in tech in one set of products can also mean updates and new opportunities for other ones as well.
Most often wearable tech provides an enhancement of some kind to the article of clothing or accessory it is a part of, or otherwise a benefit to the wearer. This can include monitoring of the user’s bodily data, access to digital or virtual spaces, and even improved physical performance for the user, among other things.
Earliest Examples
One of the earliest examples of wearable technology is something most of us take for granted: eyeglasses. Glasses date back hundreds of years, with the first having been invented during the Medieval era. Today we would hardly consider glasses to represent a type of wearable technology, but the fact that they utilize specialized materials to aid in human performance places them squarely in the wearable tech category according to the above definition. For most followers of fashion and technology, though, the real dawning of the age of wearable tech occurred in the middle part of the 20th century. Innovative counting tools that could be attached to a user’s waist or placed in a shoe emerged in the 1960s as a way for people to try to cheat at roulette in casinos. In the 1970s, calculator wristwatches became immensely popular.
Wearable Tech Today
As technology has advanced and society has become more accustomed to the idea of wearing clothing and accessories that double as tech devices, so too has the list of possible applications of wearable tech grown. Now, it’s common to find wearable tech across many categories:
- Smart clothing: Smart clothing uses built-in tech to either adapt to a user’s needs (for instance, allowing greater airflow when a wearer becomes hotter) or monitor aspects of the user’s bodily performance. In the latter case, clothes and accessories exist to watch for heart irregularities, to track workouts by biometric data, and more. Smart clothing may be designed to interact with other types of wireless tech, including laptops, smartphones, and more.
- Virtual and augmented reality headsets: Augmented reality—the practice of overlaying a depiction of the real world with digital content as well—and full virtual reality headsets are some of the most popular and latest examples of wearable tech. These types of products exist in the gaming sphere, but they have increasingly found their ways into other spaces and applications as well.
- Smart jewelry: Smart watches may be the most popular example of smart jewelry. They allow users to do everything from send texts and take calls to perform fitness monitoring tasks and more. Increasingly, tech has found a place in other types of jewelry as well, including rings, pins, and watchbands.
- Sensors and cameras: Users are finding it increasingly helpful to wear body-mounted sensors and cameras in a number of environments. GoPro cameras can be mounted directly on the body or on an item of clothing or accessory like a bike helmet. In other cases, this type of tech takes the form of sensors aiming to capture and analyze data produced by the wearer himself.
The Way Ahead
It’s difficult to say exactly where wearable tech could be heading going forward, only that it’s likely that technology will continue to progress at a rapid pace. There are some specific products that have been speculated about for years and which, if they are ever produced, are sure to garner significant attention. Apple’s take on tech-adapted glasses, for instance, is an example of such a hotly-anticipated product. Some experts expect Apple to someday release augmented reality glasses capable of transferring information between a wearer’s iPhone and her face, doing everything from playing games and composing emails to sending and displaying text messages.
Another as-yet-unseen branch of wearable tech that is highly anticipated is smart contact lenses. These products—a marvel of technology given the small size of the lenses themselves—may someday be able to provide an augmented reality experience as well, or at least to synchronize with smartphones to provide information to the wearer in addition to helping them to see better.
Technological advances outside of specific products could help to benefit all wearable tech as a category. An example of this is energy harvesting. As of now, wearable tech is limited by battery capacity. Once a battery runs out, the user must remove the smart product and recharge it, usually by plugging it into another power source. Experts in the space are hoping to find alternate ways of recharging the technology that they wear. Ideally, this would be possible by using the wearer’s body heat or even their movement to help to power the device. If this could be achieved, it would go a long way toward making it possible to have permanent wearable tech—technology designed to be more fully integrated with a person’s entire lived experience.
Did you subscribe to our daily newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe!
Source: Decrypt
