Annotating our lives with digital intelligence
From clothes riddled with sensors to name tags that detect our moods, computing's next wave could unleash small devices that increasingly augment everyday activities with digital intelligence.
That was the predominant vision at a conference on "wearable computing" held recently in Boston, where researchers showed off prototypes and discussed ideas.
Some attendees took wearable computing to its extreme, donning cyborg-like miniaturized displays attached to eyepieces. But most of what was on exhibit seemed much closer to jumping into a mainstream commercial product.
For example, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (known as ETH Zurich) showed off stretchable, threadlike sensors that can be woven into shirts to detect their wearers' posture. People with back pain or injuries could be prompted on a PC or a mobile device to straighten up, pronto.
