Re: TECH:NOMAD

Felix Ungman (felix@hu.se)
Sun, 1 Jun 1997 14:02:36 +0200


Eugene Leitl:
[turning from laptops to wearable computing]
>Using cellphones has become socially acceptable very rapidly, I wonder
>however how long it takes until people with headsets, heavy hipbelts and
>black monocles, with a micro CCD embedded, while babbling to invisible
>presences, won't raise eyebrows anymore.

Wearable computing is no question really cool technology. But is it
really computing? Cellular phones where adopted rapidly because
it really makes sense to communicate with your friends, wherever
you are. If you're at the supermarket it makes sense to ask your
girfriend at home about the milk (or even better, ask your CORBA
complient fridge). But what do you need to compute anywhere?

I think you're right about using the pager, not the laptop, as the
prototype for wearables. Wearables is telepathy.

>I think Linux to be an excellent platform (most of the MIT wearables
>used it), albeit speech input was pretty nonexistant half a year ago.

The Newton platform is also really nice. Everything from the kernel
to the GUI is designed for handheld devices, so it's very clean. Also,
speech is coming soon, and I hope to see these GSM-phone PC-cards
really soon too (I've been waiting years for this).

Felix Ungman