Wearable technology: a glimpse into the future or just another passing fad

In the last month alone, the Pebble watch has gone on sale, Google officially announced Glass and Apple's iWatch was all but confirmed. We've even had reports of a dress that turns clear when you are turned on.

It might be too early to start writing obituaries for portable technology but it is becoming easier to argue that the next wave of technology innovation has already arrived.

The idea of wearable technology is not a new one. It dates back to the age of the Casio calculator wristwatches and is born out of the vision to seamlessly interweave technology into our everyday lives – the ultimate goal being to make technology pervasive and interaction fluid.

Like any other wave of technology, it has as many critics as it has champions. While the early adopters are chomping at the bit with the thought of what is yet to come, the sceptics are pointing out the loopholes and their concerns already.

One of the main points they bring up is that of battery life and how these gadget will fare when smartphones are barely over the line in terms of solving that conundrum. Another is that of privacy and just how much information about us these gadgets will reveal to the people we pass on the street.

Despite some negative press, I find it difficult to overlook the opportunities presented by wearable technology. It promises benefits to personal safety, health and a host of other plus points. It also represents the latest and most advanced convergence between that of the human body and technology, and nobody knows quite where this will eventually lead us.

Inventors are always looking for 'the next big thing', and more often than not it turns out to be anything but. This is not the first time we have reached what many believed to be a sea change in technology, but when you consider the players involved this time around, the knowledge and means at their disposal, and the rate at which technology has been moving forward over the last few years, it is not so fanciful to believe we could on the threshold of something groundbreaking.

We are closer to immortality than you think

The concept ofimmortality has been intriguing us as human beings for as far back astime recalls. Through religious belief and myths such as the fountainof youth, the idea of living forever is one that has found a home inmany hearts and minds.

Even in the world ofscience, a lot of research is being dedicated to unlocking the'immortality gene'. But while science struggles to unlock the key toimmortality, the digital world is a lot closer to perfecting its ownversion of the age old idea and is more confident of what it thinksthe end product will look like.

The idea being proposedis one of 'digital immortality'. The idea is to store a person'spersonality in a more durable media, such as a computer, and allowingit to communicate with people in the future. Basically, your brain isscanned and your entire essence is uploaded into a digital form ofbits and bytes.

This means you willthen have an avatar behaving, reacting and thinking like a person onthe basis of that person's digital archive. And even after thephysical death of the individual, the avatar could remain static orcontinue to learn and develop autonomously.

Regardless of yourstance on these sort of issues or whether or not you think thiscounts as immortality, you have to admit that the feat is quiteremarkable. It highlights a progress in our understanding ofourselves and is a pointer to what technologies of the future mightlook like.

The only issue I havewith digital immortality is that it could herald an age when humanbeings are harvested for their thoughts and made redundant by superandroids created from 'the best of us'. You also cannot ignore thepossibility of tweaked digital avatars and multiple copies ofsuper-upgraded clones and what impact that would have. Human beingswould be ironically left to die.

Whatever happens andhowever digital immortality works out in the future, what I believewill be equally exciting will be the discussion surrounding merits ofthis technology and whether or not it will enrich our lives in thesame way other technologies have. It is clearly a very excitingtechnology but will it empower us like the internet has or will itintroduce us to a new way of being unkind to one another?

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