Wearable’s…Would you?

The vision of the future is always something you either love and want to embrace, or, like me many times, you find yourself sitting back laughing and wondering what planet these people are on. That being said, I’m sure people did exactly that when we went looking for the Americas, or someone said “hey, I can make a ship out of iron”….But in technology, and with the whole world of blogging, we have a lot more opinions that just frankly seem based on no real practicality or real thought. In some cases it feels to me that many tech businesses develop tech simply because they can, rather than thinking “does this have a benefit to real people?”

In this post I want to have a quick look at wearable technology with payments.

 

Wearable tech

Ok this isn’t anything new, hell, my first watch I was given back in the day, was and is a form of wearable technology, so let’s not start thinking wearable tech is something new. It’s also nothing new for wearable’s to steal from tech we already have. Does anyone remember the good old Casio calculator watches?

In some cases, it works well, but that is quite rare I believe. When I look at the majority of watches I see in a jewellery store, the added features apart from delivering the time, is a stop watch, maybe some form depth measurement, and then a convoluted way of measuring air speed. Now there must be a reason for this, as we have had digital watches for a very long time now.

I personally believe watches are more jewellery than technology in our minds. We want them to look good, act as a status symbol sometimes and do just one thing well, and that’s tell the time. Oh, and I don’t want to have to recharge them or change the battery even. That kind of feeds into the jewellery angle too I believe. In today’s mobile world, if I want to access computing power I will opt for a device that suits the job, and that is today a mobile phone. It’s a device that I carry everywhere, and will do even if I had a smartwatch (even if I can make calls on my smartwatch) because it’s far more natural to interact with a mobile than it is a watch. Just think of touch interaction on a watch as opposed to a large touch based smartphone? Experience is everything here.

So, do I want apps on my watch? Probably a no for the mass majority of us. We will continue to opt for stunning analogue devices that show real craft and engineering over their smart variety counterparts. But would I use wearable’s for other things, not just apps?

 

Payment wrist bands

I’ve seen NFC based wrist bands now, which again look kind of cool, but really, in the real world would I be seen with that on my wrist? If embedded in my watch then maybe, but in a rubber like band, made popular by Lance Armstrong’s “Livestrong” campaign, that’s a no go. I would also be paranoid about anyone reading my every broadcasting wrist band and swanning off with the capabilities to make payments from my card details.

Wristbands are a prime example of tech companies delivering technology for technology sake.

 

Finally, Google Glass?

Some people really love this concept, I personally don’t (are you sensing I’, not a fan of wearable technology). For one, I hate things in-front of my eyes or distracting my vision. I also don’t like to look silly, and until Glass looks a little more stylish they are always going to have issues.

This is before we raise the issue of data protection, privacy etc etc. I’m not saying wearable technology will not turn out to be profitable, I’m sure it will, but, and this is the thing for me, IMHO wearable tech is not a game changer and it won’t be adopted by the majority…

Usually I am very pro-technology….