On November 4th, 2014 the Nimbus Ninety’s third IGNITE forum, one of the leading independent UK business technology events and research organisation, took place in London.
As the founder of TheASX.org, I was very pleased to be part of this amazing event which was full of great insight into how companies around the world are pushing for disruptive innovation.
There were a lot of conversations around the future of technology and the different platforms that will be part of it. Consequently wearables was right at the center of the conversations.
Digital transformation strategist Rudy de Waele, internationally known as a leader in Mobile 2.0 where he was a proponent of open innovation and the development of the app economy ecosystem, shared great insight into what the future has in store for us.
Rudy’s presentation (above) delighted us with a video from the Discovery channel called “Discovery Channel Beyond 2000 Wearable Computers 1992” which attempted to give people in the 90s a sneak peak into the future of wearable technology. I went out of my way to find the video in order to share it with our readers.
This video reminds me of two visionary movies which opened a windows into what some thought the future will look like in 2015 and 2054.
The first movie is Back to the Future II. When Marty McFly, played by Micheal J Fox, goes into October 21 2015 and the first futuristic items he interacted with was smart clothing. During Rudy’s talk at IGNITE he presented statistics around the expectation that 24% of the millenials will purchase a piece of smart clothing within the next year. I had come to terms with the fact that by October next year, hovercars won’t be massively produced, however the fact that at lease we have a well stablished notion of smart clothing, makes up for some of the disappointment.
Last week during an Interaction Design Meetup I met Dale Herigstad. Dale is a four time Emmy Award winner and also part of the research team that conceptualized digital experiences for the second movie I had in mind – Minority Report. I was delighted to have a chat with him and learn about his startup SeeSpace which is leading development in gestural navigation for screens at a distance. We also touched on the fact that Minority Report was one of the inspirations behind what today is known as Microsoft Design Language previously known as Metro Design. As a self-declared Windows Phone evangelist and given that Windows Phone was my first mobile platform for which I design and develop apps, I was very please to share some of my thoughts and specially admiration for his work.
Now that I have touched on what some thought the future will be back in 1989 and 2002, when these two movies were released, I would like to leave you with one of the visions shared during IGNITE as to where we are heading when it comes to wearables.
At the end of the day, Dr. Mitra Memarzia, one of the panelist from Innovate UK, shared her vision on how in the future the platform for wearables won’t be a watch or glass or smart clothes. According to her vision, in the future the platform for technology will be our very own body. She referred to some already existing technology that is inserted into the body to help snippers focus by blocking thought related to doubt. She went on to say that once the brain “gets used” to this device, the device can be removed and the same effects from the device can be accomplished by the brain, as if the brain had already been “re-wired”.
One of my 2015 new year’s resolution for The Alternative Startup Experiment is to start introducing wearable to some of our products. With Microsoft’s last week announcement of the Microsoft band, and given that our project mostly focus on Microsoft technology, we have the perfect opportunity to start playing, experimenting and learning from this wearable technology.
In conclusion being a delegate at IGNITE has given me the reassurance that efforts should be placed in the emerging field of wearables as part of our efforts to be the truly cross-platform experimental startup.
