Thinking Through Wearable Technologies, Ubiquity and Pervasiveness
Channel: Katina Michael
Date: 2016-02-25

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: "learning by doing" through interaction and "learning by being." Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning: wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.

With each release greater numbers of on-board sensors can collect data about physiological characteristics, record real-time location coordinates, and use embedded cameras to "life-log" events 24x7. Such data, knowingly or unknowingly collected and bandwidth permitting, may be wirelessly sent to a private or public cloud and stored, often for public view and under a creative commons license. Embedded sensors on wearers can actively gather information about the world and capture details of a personal nature—ours and those of others too.

Read more here in Michael and Michael's 2013 piece in Communications of the ACM. http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2013/11/169022-no-limits-to-watching/abstract

Recording and Editing Mix: Adam Preston
Wearable Participant: Deniz Gokyer (GoPro Camera)
Interviewer: Katina Michael
Location: Wollongong University, Australia
Recorded on: September 13, 2013