Apple commanded headlines this week by announcing the new iPhone
6, Apple Pay, and iWatch. The seamless integration between these
goods and services is also noteworthy, as it seems to be Apple’s
way of guiding us into the wearable revolution one step at a time.
Yet skeptics are still wary of whether we the people are ready to
fully embrace the geek. Over at CNN, Jeff
Yang writes:
The question I’m interested in is whether Apple’s long-awaited
arrival in the buzzy wearables category finally means that
people—regular people, that is, not pixel-pushing pundits and
Tesla-driving tech titans—are ready to wear them.The fact is, while wearables have generated a lot of attention,
they’re being used a lot less than the fanfare might suggest.According to the
NPD Group and
Strategy Analytics, only about 14 million fitness bands and
activity trackers and about 2 million smartwatches were sold
globally over the 12 months ending this past March. (Everything
else—Google Glass, cloud cameras, digital jewelry, wi-fi socks,
connected underwear—basically represents a rounding error.) Compare
that with the number of smartphones sold around the world: 964
million. That’s the difference between a niche product and an
emerging necessity.
As Yang notes, Google Glass (for instance) may not have the
numbers. However Glass has helped pioneer the path into wearable
tech, and provoked questions of privacy and connectivity that will
surely arise as wearables gain popularity. Reason TV delved into
some of these questions earlier this year:
“Google Glass: Privacy, Journalism, and the Dawn of
Wearable Technology,” produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. About
7 minutes.
Original release date was May 16, 2014, and the original writeup
is below.
“I do believe that our mobile phones are going to be outdated
and are going to be replaced with wearables,” says University of
Southern California journalism professor
Robert Hernandez. “So my end goal is augmented reality, or AR
storytelling. This is technology that’s emerging, and Glass is a
really great wearable platform that is very early, but has a lot of
potential to do that.”Hernandez is incorporating Google Glass into his journalism
class curriculum next year, and plans to take this technology and
build a media platform around it. He sat down with Reason TV’s
Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss how Google Glass works and its
potential capabilities. He also addresses privacy concerns and
other critiques of this wearable technology.“The truth is that we don’t have privacy, and in public places
there are all these cameras recording us all the time. So if this
is going to help you realize and be aware, and be a more engaged
citizen, that’s great,” says Hernandez.About 7 minutes.
Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Paul Detrick and Alexis
Garcia.Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe
to Reason TV’s YouTube channel for notifications when new
material goes live.
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