Re: TECH:NOMAD

Carl Feynman (carlf@atg.com)
Tue, 03 Jun 1997 10:29:47 -0400


At 11:16 AM 6/3/97 +0200, Felix Ungman wrote:
>Another point: You will not always have the spare attention to do word
>proccessing, web browsing or email anywhere. With my Newton MP 2000
>and Nokia PC-card I can do web browsing anywhere, and it gives me a
>feeling of safety and security. But still, for some reason, I do most of
>my browsing at the office. This is more a marketing than a technological
>point: How do you convice the potential customer that with wearables,
>she could work at places where she doesn't want to be in the first place?

I have a very long commute from home to work. I drive a car to the train
station (5 mins), ride the train to the city (53 mins), take a subway to the
arcology where my job is (15 mins), and walk through the arcology to work
(15 mins). It's not as bad as it sounds, though, because when I'm on the
train, I work on my laptop. In fact, the train is almost a perfect office
for tasks requiring concentration, since it doesn't have distractions like
family, coworkers or the internet on it.

It's not clear to me what the advantage of having a wearable computer would
be over the current system. I don't work on the laptop when I'm on the
subway, because it's too stealable. Presumably the same whould apply to a
wearable (it might be harder to steal since it would be strapped on, but on
the other hand it would be lighter and more concealable). And I couldn't
use a wearable while I was walking around, for the same reasons I don't read
books while walking around.

The only thing that I really miss when using my laptop is display resolution
and brightness. But displays that I've seen on existing wearables are much
worse than even the 800x600 LCD screen I'm typing this on. If I could get a
1280x1024 color display on a wearable, I'd buy it in a minute (well, lobby
my employer to buy it...)

So what are wearbles for?

--CarlF