OK, I’ve gone on record: I think wearable technology is a
huge disruptive wave currently bearing down on us. Accept it.
And I’ve also said that stupid wearable technology is inevitable. Accept that as well.
It appears that this dam is
beginning to burst.
Catharine Taylor had a humorous and totally on-point reaction to
the “tech-togs” that were unveiled at CES. Her take: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Maarten Albarda a similar reaction to his first go-around with Google Glass: “Huh?”
Don’t get me wrong.
Wearable technology, together with the “web of everything,” will eventually change our lives, but most of us won’t be going willingly. We’re going to have to get through the
“bubble of silliness” first. Some of this stuff will make sense and elicit a well-earned “cool” (or “dope” or “sick” or what ever generational thumbs-up
is appropriate). Other things will garner an equally well-earned WTF? And some will be imminently sensible but will still end up being tossed out with the bathwater anyway.
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Rob Garner always
says “adoption follows function.” This is true, but each of us has different
thresholds for what we deem to be functional. If technology starts moving that bar, we know, thanks to the work of Everett Rogers and others,
that the audience’s acceptance of that will follow the inevitable bell curve. Functionality is not equal in the eyes of all beholders.
The other problem with these new interfaces is that
function is currently scattered around like a handful of grass clippings in the wind. Sure, there are shards of usefulness, but unless you’re willing to wear more layers of wearable tech than
your average early-adopting Eskimo (or, as we say here in the politically correct north, Inuit), it’s difficult to see how this can significantly improve our day-to-day lives.
The other
thing we have to grapple with is what I would call the WACF: the Weird and Creepy Factor. How exactly do we feel about having the frequency of our butt imprinting our sofa, our bank balance, our blood
pressure and our body fat percentage beamed up to the data center of a start-up we’d never heard of before last Friday? I’m an admitted early adopter, and I have to confess: I’m not
ready to make that leap right now.
It’s not just the privacy of my personal data that’s holding me back, although that is certainly a concern. Part of this goes back to something I
talked about a few columns back: the redefinition of what it means to “be” online
rather than “go” online. With wearable technology, we’re always “on," plugged into the network and sharing data whether we’re aware of it or not, providing a
philosophical loss of control. Chances are that we haven’t given this a lot of rational consideration, but it contributes to that niggling WACF that may be keeping us from donning the latest
piece of wearable tech.
Eventually, the accumulated functionality of all this new technology will overcome all these barriers to adoption, but we will all have differing thresholds marking our
surrender to the inevitable. Garner’s assertion that adoption follows function is true, but it’s true of the functional wave as a whole -- and in that wave, there will be winners and
losers.
Not all functional improvements get adopted. If all adoption followed all functional improvements, I’d be using a Dvorak keyboard right now. Betamax would have become the
standard for videocassettes. And we’d be conversing in Esperanto. All these were functional improvements, but casualties to an audience not quite ready to embrace them.
Expect more to come.