Artifact Details

Title

CHM Soundbytes : If the Computer Fits, Wear It!

Catalog Number

102737955

Type

Moving image

Description

Pioneers have experimented with wearing computers for half a century. Yet aside from specialized applications like fitness trackers and certain industrial uses, our bodies remain largely free of the smart tech that fills our pockets and purses.

Why? Besides larger questions around how wearable computing might fit into our everyday lives, the technology wasn't ready. Early devices were too bulky, hot, isolated, or hard to use to be consumer products. But that may be changing.

Thad Starner, Greg Priest-Dorman and Daniel Siewiorek are major pioneers of wearable computing. But while Dan was developing multiple generations of wearables for industrial and military use, Thad and Greg were focused on a more elusive goal – consumer wearables that could be part worn in daily life. They were both hired as early members of the Google Glass team. They also practice what they preach; both men have been wearing computers daily since the early 1990s.

The traveling exhibit we are hosting this summer, On You: A Story of Wearable Computing, shows consumer, professional, and home-made devices. Curated at Georgia Tech by Starner and design researcher Clint Zeagler, the exhibit explores the four key technical hurdles to making a consumer wearable computer: power and heat, networking, mobile input, and displays. Have they been solved?

Date

2015-08-03

Participants

Priest-Dorman, Greg, Speaker
Siewiorek, Daniel P., Speaker
Starner, Thad, Speaker
Weber, Marc, Moderator

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Format

MOV

Collection Title

CHM Soundbytes

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X7580.2016