Why I’m not excited about wearable tech

The future, they say, is the internet of things. And for all the things that go on one’s body, that means wearable tech. Smart watches, smart glasses, and even smart shirts: five or ten years from now, a lot of what you put on your body might be wired.

Are you excited yet? I’m not.

Ads everywhere

Our world is already full of advertising, but wearable tech is going to allow advertisers to get closer and more personal than they ever have before. For example, American consulting firm PwC recently released a long, gushing report on the future of wearables that includes this paragraph:

[...] through wearable technology, brands could present relevant content to a shopper while they are considering a product—say, in a grocery store, recognizing items a consumer has placed in the grocery cart and serving up relevant recipes through augmented reality. Brands could even tap body cues to tailor messaging. Sensor revealing that you’re thirsty? Here’s a coupon for smart water. Low on vitamins? Flash this for $1 off your favorite vitamin-loaded juice product. Serotonin levels down? Grab yourself a free soda and open happiness.

That sounds lovely for advertisers, but for users it sounds like it would make something as simple as a trip to the grocery store unbearable. Is whatever convenience my wearable clothing offers me worth the price of having more ads shoved in my face, and even having my own body’s responses uploaded to the cloud and used to try to get me to spend money? For me, no augmented-reality recipe is ever going to be worth putting up with my clothes telling me that I’m thirsty, and then trying to get me to buy something.

That may be an extreme case, but it’s a serious issue: wearable tech is really going to push the boundaries of targeted advertising, and everyone is going to have to assess just how comfortable they are with giving advertisers access to extremely personal data in return for whatever convenience these devices can offer. It’s a line you’ll have to draw individually, but if you’re annoyed by phone ads that track your app usage, imagine what it’s going to be like when those ads are tracking your pulse.

My $200 shirt is out of battery

Wearable tech promises to make a lot of the things you wear now more expensive and more power-hungry. Take Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch, for example. The cheapest version will cost US$349 for a device that, at its core, is basically a less-functional smartphone you can strap to your wrist. If you spring for the Sport version it does have some pretty cool extra applications for those of you who exercise frequently, but otherwise you’re basically paying $350 just to save yourself the trouble of having to reach into your pocket (which takes two seconds) to check the time or your latest text.

That’s already a pretty heavy expense for the rather minimal convenience the device offers, but you’ve also got to consider that the Apple Watch is now yet another device you’ve got to remember to plug in and charge every night. Forget, and it quickly becomes a very expensive little brick.

And of course, the same is true for most wearable tech. Smart glasses certainly cost a lot more than having eyes does, and they’re going to need to be frequently charged, and occasionally repaired, updated, virus-scanned, and replaced.

Will the convenience these devices offer ever really be worth the price, in both money and time, that these devices command? Maybe. But thus far, a lot of what we’ve seen looks like the Apple Watch: some smartphone tech shoved into a piece of clothing. Is Google Glass really worth US$1,500 when you could just pull out your phone and do virtually all of the same things?

Terrifying abuse cases

For me, this is where the rubber really meets the road. It’s easy to nitpick about value-for-money or complain about the increasingly Orwellian nature of targeted advertising, but what really concerns me is what happens in a world of wearable tech when your device’s security is compromised, or even just when apps or their advertisers lose sight of what’s right to make a buck. Specifically, I’m most worried about health.

Health-related apps are one of the most compelling things about wearable tech, and probably the best argument in favor of adopting it. But at the same time, personal health information can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Unscrupulous advertisers could easily twist the data collected by your device to get you to buy health products you don’t actually need. And apps that have bugs or simply collected a faulty batch of data could even end up directing users to do things that might be bad for their health.

For hypochondriacs, this technology is going to be a nightmare, but most of us are at least a little scared of getting sick, and that’s going to make us vulnerable to being manipulated. If an app or an ad was telling me that I was low on some vital nutrient, I’ll admit that I might be tempted to stock up, even if I was feeling perfectly fine.

And of course, hackers could do all kinds of dangerous things with access to your health data. For example, I imagine it might be possible for a skilled hacker to manipulate your health data so that it looks like you’ve got some kind of problem when you actually don’t, or just steal your data and sell it to advertisers who can then bombard you with (for example) ads about workout gear every Wednesday because they know you work out on Wednesdays.

I’m not alone

I’m aware that I often play the role of Tech in Asia‘s grumpy luddite, but in this particular instance, I’m not alone. The PwC report I mentioned earlier was primarily based on a survey of 1,000 people that assessed their attitudes towards wearable tech. And even though the report takes a very pro-wearables tone, the survey’s respondents apparently didn’t:

When asked “How do you feel about the future of wearable tech as part of everyday life?” 41% of respondents said they feel excited, while 59% expressed concern.

PwC puts this up to the lack of a “Wow factor”:

Without meaningful, life-changing wearable technology in place [...] it’s easy for consumers to envision the negative consequences of technology for technology’s sake.

Technology for technology’s sake: that’s what a lot of wearable tech feels like right now. If you want to get people excited about our wearable future, developers, you’re going to have to show us more innovation.

I may be a curmudgeon, and even I’ll admit this market has potential. But right now, with the exception of fitness bands, almost every piece of wearable tech I’ve seen is at its core just a less powerful, less functional smartphone that’s been hacked into some item of clothing.

And that, my friends, is not exciting.

(h/t to PandoDaily for pointing me in the direction of the PwC report)

Why I’m not excited about wearable tech