Wary of wearables
Issue 87 - 8 February 2022 (8-min read)
I hear becoming a parent can make people paranoid. So strong is the fear of losing your child or any harm befalling them that it makes parents do crazy things. Like putting on a wearable tracking device that lets them hear when older kids are bullying the little one out of their lunch money.
It may sound farfetched to you but I know of a parent who’s doing this. And while his may be the best case study for a child development expert, for me, it’s the technology that stands out. Can this father really enable the speaker button on his six-year-old girl’s tracker to tell off other children making fun of the girl with the "funny watch"?
This week in The Global Tiller, we take a closer look at the latest developments in wearables technology and the future of hyper connectivity. How will it impact our privacy and what could be some effects on our behaviour and our health? Which new frontiers of inequality does it create?
The most common form of wearables that we have around are fitness tracker bands and smartwatches that constantly track our movements and then give insights into how productive or not we are. If your smartwatch just told you to stand up and you immediately sprang out of your chair, you know what I’m talking about.
Wearables are no longer limited to this purpose though. There are running shoes that track your performance, smart goggles that help swimmers track their laps, smart glasses that can become extensions of our computers and smartphones, and virtual reality helmets that help athletes practice without damaging their health.
As the wearable technology improves, we are looking at a future where they will become less and less visible, meaning they will resemble our regular watches or innocuous pieces of jewellery. Sure, your next fitness tracker would look prettier and would go with all your outfits but it can also wreak havoc on your privacy.
If you bought Apple’s AirTag hoping that it will prevent you from losing your keys, you should probably worry about a whole lot more you can lose now. This tracking disc has been wholeheartedly embraced by car thieves, who are fixing them on expensive cars to track their movement.
Several women have reported finding AirTags hidden in their cars. With a battery life that lasts up to a year, it could be a long time before these devices stop transmitting data to these "smart" stalkers. To be fair, Apple has introduced a feature that allows your iPhone to inform you if there is an AirTag tracking your movement but, since this doesn’t extend to Android phones, these trackers can easily go undetected.
The extension of battery life on wearables will also be a game changer, especially if it involves energy harvesting from humans - basically extracting energy from our movements. This could have profound implications in the area of medical wearables, especially those that could be imbedded in the skin to monitor blood sugar levels, carry out blood analyses or even pump insulin automatically.
But these blessings will come at a cost. With the Covid-19 pandemic making more people mistrustful of doctors and the scientific community, it won’t be long before people use all this data to self-medicate and "do their own research".
If doctors are already annoyed with people looking up their symptoms on Google, you can imagine how future doctors’ visits would go when you present them your entire personal biometric data and your own diagnosis. If your device can tell you beforehand that you’ll get a flu tomorrow, would you even need to visit a doctor in the first place?
Even in its present condition, fitness trackers are creating what scientists call 'the nocebo effect'. Obsessed with reaching 10,000 steps per day or getting the perfect combination of REM sleep every night, fitness trackers are adding to people’s stress levels and disappointment. Even those who wake up feeling great, end up feeling disappointed and unaccomplished as soon as their fitness tracker tells them their sleep wasn’t optimum.
To be clear, my intention isn’t to scare you away from wearables entirely. It’s a remarkable technology that improves our lives in many different ways. But as they become part of our lives, it won’t hurt us to take a moment to evaluate what kind of an impact they are having and how can we make them work for us.
Are wearables inherently more invasive than smartphones and laptops, which are already generating a great deal of data about our behaviours, beliefs and movements? Shall we then have a larger conversation about surveillance and data gathering done by a handful of technology companies beholden to their governments? Many athletes are using wearables to improve their performance. What will our future Olympics look like if rich athletes are aided by technology but the poor ones aren’t?
We’d love to hear from you about your experience with wearables. Do write back.
Until next week, take care and stay safe.
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
Ashlee Fidow on art, identity and the movie industry in the Pacific
Don’t miss our latest Pacific Toks podcast episode in which Philippe gets a chance to celebrate his love for the cinema. Ashlee Fidow is a comedian and stunt woman, who literally kicks butts for a living. You may have seen her work in Hollywood classics, like Mulan, The Hobbit and the soon-to-be-released Thor! She sits down with Pacific Toks in this episode and discusses art, identity and the movie industry in the Pacific.
…and now what?
This year for Christmas I was very happy to receive an Apple Watch as a gift. I’m a big geek and an Apple fan so I’m always happy to get the newest device they’ve created. Unsurprisingly, I’m not disappointed. It’s quite an enjoyable and convenient device.
Is it useful? Yes and no. I’ve lived without it up until recently. But you know how it is: first, it’s a gadget, then it becomes a part of your daily life. That’s how it goes with any new technology in the past: smartphones, phones, planes, cars, books, pens, the plough or wheels.
Wearables are just a new iteration of human’s ability and hunger to build new tools. That’s just who we are. But we are also those who will dismiss the new device completely at first before adopting it. Do you still have friends or family refusing to own a smartphone as it happened around the first iPhones? I don’t think so.
Anyhow, I’m now constantly connected to a lot of sensors that monitor me. Through this small piece of technology, I can track my heartbeat, the oxygen level in my blood, the surrounding noises, and more. It’s fascinating how many tasks can be done by such a small thing.
After a few weeks, the initial novelty of the smartwatch may have waned off but I’m still liking it. One great upside is that, in our daily masked life, my phone finally unlocks automatically. Welcome to a universe of connected devices that control you and ease your life for you to never give up on them.
Another unexpected upside is that I don’t use my phone as much now. Since I receive my notifications on the watch, I can see what they are and, unless it requires me to read more, I can carry on with my work. Just a flick of the wrist and I can focus again.
It has also helped me become more mindful of what’s happening inside of me. Being able to monitor your heart, connects you to your body in a strange and unique way. Many people are telling you to “listen to your body”, these devices may just be the speakers we need to listen better.
Sometimes, though, these speakers may be too loud and may influence you too much as Hira mentioned. It happened to me recently when the geek in me became interested in recording my drinking habits. Water drinking, of course. Everyday, I was carefully logging each litre of water I drank, trying to reach the goal of at least two litres a day. And in July, when I had some health issues, possibly due to excessive water drinking, I stopped tracking my water intake which reduced my consumption and I have felt better since.
I could blame technology for my health issues but the obsession with drinking this much water goes back way before tracking devices were invented. I’ve been hearing since my youth that you should drink two litres of water a day!
For that matter, a lot of what we blame on technology dates back further. People have been gossiping and bullying others long before the invention of the Facebook comments section. Conspiracy theories were swapped at cafes long before YouTube and Joe Rogan’s podcast. Social media amplifies these behaviours but they’re all too human to begin with.
Technology is eventually just a reflection of our world. As we hear more and more people telling us that we need to take care of ourselves, of our health, the tech companies are giving us what we want.
But is what we want always what we should have? Do we always have to accept being given what we want? Isn’t this the definition of a spoiled child? And we know how spoiled kids turn out to be!
As for any new invention and any new tool humans invent, wearable devices come with great benefits and great risks. They can help people with disabilities and they can push us to the extremes of fitness. They can help protect our kids and they can provide criminals with convenient solutions.
It’s been decades now that technology has become a major part of our lives. As new tools are coming on the market, shouldn’t we have by now created ways to make sure we keep them in check? Shouldn’t we be able to tell the makers of this tech what limits they should respect? Shouldn’t we be able to create the frameworks for those companies to have no choice but to be responsible and to focus on encouraging positive interactions and not counting on the worst of our nature to make profits?
We can keep blaming the technology, until technology eventually realises we are our own problem. By then, they’ll be too deep into our minds for us to be able to take back control of our lives.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just been told by my watch I need to go for a walk, see you next time!
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury