Behold the 4th Screen – Beyond Wearable Tech!

It’s safe to say this is the generation of smartwatches and mobile device companies are not slacking in rolling them out. From Samsung with its Galaxy Gear watches to Motorola with its Moto 360, wearable tech is fast becoming the in-thing in the gadget world today. Apart from watches, there is other wearable tech like Google Glass from Google.

These devices are made to improve access to a mobile device faster than having to whip out your phone from that big, heavy handbag everytime you’re on a bus, or suffer the humiliation of having to hold a whole tablet to your ear whenever you’re taking a call because you don’t  have headsets to answer with.

How will this wearable tech change our lives? Will it improve it or just increase the clutter of gadgets we most likely have  at the moment? Let’s apply wearable tech in every day life beyond its well known purpose of being a link to your mobile device for calls and notifications.

Take health for example. Now we don’t have to always rely on a doctor’s feedback or opinion because our health is in our hands (or on our wrist with smartwatches). Wearable tech will also make it easy for physicians to monitor their patient’s health as well by remotely accessing information from the smartwatch to their own devices. Since we can not rule out doctors completely because we need them for serious medical help like surgery. When performing surgery, they can make use of devices like Google Glass to relay videos to other doctors who may add their input as the operation progresses.

Wearable tech also makes working out more fun. You can track a lot of things like blood pressure, heart rate, stress levels, calories being burnt, etc.

This brings us to the issue of sports. Smartwatches are already being used to track fitnes levels and soon we might see being fully used on the playing fields/running tracks. in football for example,if a team manager can assess the productivity/fitness of a player on  a field, it will be easy to make substitutions based on the data he/she is receiving from his/her player’s device about their ability to play.

Recently there have been prototypes of data logging shirts that monitor the body’s movements during a game and that information helps make player substitute decisions or prevent possibilities of injuries to weaker players.

 

When it comes to our private life, wearable tech could help us with information such as menstruation cycle dates, fertility levels, hormone averages and even help you find the best time to have sex, without having to check your wife’s mood (which is most likely difficult for men out there).

This easy-to-access data can also help in areas like parenting. There are now smartwatches made just for kids that help keep track of their whereabouts as long as they keep them on. this is a way to monitor their movements and give you peace of mind.

They also help in emergency situations. Wearable tech will/does make it easy for people in trouble to communicate to their loved ones faster than calling from a phone. Some smartwatches come with distress buttons that send an emergency message with GPS locations to a person they want to alert.

 

Speaking of GPS, this wearable tech that’s being released in all forms will also make it easy to find directions and navigate unfamiliar areas, without using your larger mobile device.

This whole range of wearable tech is not just limited to headgear and watches. There are also belts, shoes, jewelry and clothes also being experimented with to be  smart but still look fashionable.

Wearable tech also work even in other areas like business, in terms of marketing and advertising. These devices gather personal data but some of it can be used, legally, to help establish ways to improve their products and services by studying patterns of consumer usage from the gagdets.

For example, according to Betakit.com, “Google has already been rumored to be getting ready to leverage Glass in this way with their “pay-per-gaze” advertising model. Using Glass’ eye tracking capabilities, advertisers would be charged based on users actually seeing their ad, taking pay-per-engagement to a whole new level.”

These are just a few of the ways wearable tech will impact human life. There are so many more. Ofcourse there are issues to deal with like privacy and affordability of these devices but first it is up to the individual to feel comfortable with the whole concept or not, accepting the fact that times are getting “smarter” and more technologically advanced. 

 

Picture credits: SportTechie, TrendBlog, DigiThoughts