Tag Archives: wearables

Back to the Future: Hits and Misses

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Photo by Erin Cadigan

Photo by Erin Cadigan

In the 1985 film “Back To The Future II,” the characters create a time machine and travel 30 years into the future, to October 21, 2015. I am a fan of the trilogy so I have been thinking about how accurately they portrayed our current year. There were some hits and some misses.

Flying Cars

While we do not yet have commercially available flying cars we do have working autonomous vehicles. Google has prototypes driving on city streets in California. Toyota, Volvo, Audi, Mercedes Benz, Apple, and Tesla are also developing self-driving cars. Apparently it is easier to develop a self-driving car than a flying car. Now, if only we could develop an autonomous flying car, that would be really cool.

Hoverboards

In the movie, the main character rides a levitating skateboard, which he calls a hoverboard. We do have those, although they are not in mass production. Lexus recently demonstrated a hoverboard, partly to coincide with the date in the movie, which may be the first step toward their goal of developing a levitating car. If they succeed, we could some day have flying cars, but they wouldn’t fly high up in the air like in “Back To The Future” or “The Jetsons.”

Fax Machines in Every Room

In one scene of the movie, they show a home with multiple fax machines. I think we moved past this technology. Fax machines are still available as standalone machines or integrated into scanner/printers, but faxing has largely been replaced by other electronic communication methods. Now we have screens in every room and in every hand.

Large Screen Advertising

When the main character arrives in the future, there is outdoor advertising everywhere on large screens, almost to distraction. I think we have this one covered. I can drive down the highway now and see full color video on billboards. In 1985 who would have thought we would have 60-inch high definition televisions in our homes? In terms of screen size, we subscribe to the “bigger is better” philosophy. The largest current sports arena screen is the Jumbotron in Houston, which measures 52 feet high and 277 feet wide. We have definitely figured out how to make large displays.

Thoughts

Some things, such as flying cars, have been anticipated since the 1950s, but we haven’t quite perfected them. Other predictions are already old school. I wonder if movie scripts mimic our ingenuity and development, or is it the other way around? If we were to make a movie today portraying 2045, what would it look like? Will we all still be walking around looking at six-inch screens or will we have integrated our viewing into wearables such as glasses and holographic projections? What do you predict for the future? Let me know your thoughts and I will circle back in 2045 to see if you are right.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Form Follows Function: Why Do We Need Wearables?

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shutterstock_134823296I recently read an article titled: “Smartwatches: Wear Did It All Go Wrong” which laments the fact that these devices have not been adopted into the mainstream and offers some explanation as to why. The article boils it down to the fact that while the technology is available, the social or personal need for it does not exist yet. In other words, there is still a very thin market for them. In architecture, there is an adage that “form follows function” meaning the shape of an object or a building should follow its intended function. In the case of smart watches, it appears that we developed the form and the technology before fully understanding the need or the function. In other words, the “what” was developed before the “why.

Transplanting New Technology Into Old Forms

As humans, we have a habit of trying to superimpose new ideas and new technologies onto old forms. I think that if the form is familiar and widely accepted, then it’s easier to sell the old form with new functions. Think of the evolution, or lack thereof, of the computer keyboard. The keyboard we use today on our smartphone stems from the 1873 manual typewriter. There has been no significant change in style in 141 years! In the case of a smart watch, it is a combination of a smart phone and a wristwatch. The smart phone has its origins in the 1876 telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell. A person talks in one end and listens from the other. It became mobile and then other functions were added to simulate a personal digital assistant and then finally a full computer.

The wristwatch comes from the spring driven pocket watch of the sixteenth century; in the twentieth century, it became electronic with the advent of quartz crystals. Along the way, there were more functions added, such as timers and alarms and even an attempt to add a calculator, which had mixed results. The wristwatch also was made to simulate a personal digital assistant and now is attempting to become an extension or a replacement of the smartphone.

The Future

I believe that the smartwatch is the wrong answer to the right question. The question is: what will make our life better? It is time to stop extending the old forms to fit our modern lifestyle and needs. It is time to reinvent the form to fit our way of doing things. The technology is available now. It is time to think differently.

Thoughts

This blog post is a challenge to all to think of different ways to reinvent our outdated forms. We can do better than a nineteenth century keyboard. We can stop using sixteenth century metaphors such as wristwatches. Dick Tracy got his two-way wrist radio almost seventy years ago. Surely we can do better in 2014. Do you have an idea for a better form? Share it with me and together we can make the world a more elegant place.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at nigh.