You are what you wear

I love technology and gadgets. That is, I love saying and believing I love technology and gadgets. This despite not understanding the objects of my love much. But then, is that not true of many things we love and is not all fair in love? Anyway, the passion for these new-fangled concoctions and contrivances is not just because I want to feel fashionable and trendy. Technology today defines our very existence.

One is deemed dead in the absence of a digital presence in at least one of the multiple planes of tech. Ironically, morbid though it may seem, many who are actually dead continue to live online! Relatives who burn or bury their demised dear ones either forget to carry forward the funeral from crematorium to the ‘cloud’ or simply do not inherit the password of the one who passed away. I was pretty rattled when I received an automated e-greeting from a close ‘ghost’! Now that is something to remember when you draft your Will.

Mobile technology tops in innovations as well as in inciting public fancy. The flood of gadgets and apps are taking the world on a high tide that is both scintillating and scary. While the ride touches troughs, the next upheaval only lifts us to dizzier heights. Ultimately it is all about control. Only that, we are tools in the vice-grip of what were supposed to be tools in our hands. It started with the TV remote that, once picked up, seizes and ceases our senses. Its progeny have gone berserk now.

The buzzword today is disruption. In a sense all technology cause disruption as they alter in some degree the way we go about our routines. The cell phone itself was a tectonic shift that made the period earlier seem like paleolithic era. But for over a decade since, the focus and growth were in improvising a basic hardware template and in increasing connectivity. The smart phone stormed the scene in ‘08 and the pace and pattern suddenly changed. There is nothing organic in the spate of disruptions that are being unleashed since then. It’s war out there and as in love, all is fair.

The legacy of Steve Jobs, who let loose the smart phone revolution with the touch & pinch iPhone, has once again vaulted over the jumping jacks of the trade with its latest Apple watch. While the concept is not wholly new, the Apple bite has made it a truly juicy offering. This re-engineered wearable gadget not only disrupts current technology, markets and lifestyle but life itself. For the present it will serve only iPhone users but will soon break free with crowds of competitors and clones in tow.

Digital citizens are already trapped in the tyrannical technological web of Governments, google or geeks. Our footprint is traced, tracked and targetted within milliseconds of us floating into the cloud. But since the footprint, at least the first step, is a conscious one, we had a semblance of choice and some blissful ignorance about our visibility. Wearable devices, as is apparent from Apple’s pitch, now take the intrusion into a dicey but dangerous domain: Privacy is not taken away but surrendered with passion and at a steep price.

The wearable will straddle all of our material existence – finance, health, social life, religion and entertainment. The gadget can not only display to us such intricate and intimate details as temperature, heartbeat, blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol levels and worse, even mood swings but also make them public without our permission. All our routines, from wake-up call to domestic chores to office to bed time and what not is clocked and calibrated. Soon human behaviour will be directed by the device, for all to see. The world will truly be a stage with our character choreographed. Daily life becomes a live show.

The physical body getting reduced to a virtual mass of bits and bytes is a minor casualty. The wearable supercedes the mind and puts the body on auto pilot. The sense organs’ signals will probably reach the wearable first ahead of the mind with the mind left with no business to mind. And as chips get smarter and finer with immense processing power, the wearable will be the new mind.

With humans becoming just data, the sense of self is redefined or even lost. The individual and the ego are irrelevant. That probably answers the why of the missing ‘i’, Apple’s trademark prefix. It is Apple Watch and not iWatch. Small wonder the world is watching with eager interest.

Love it or leave it, there is no stopping the oncoming onslaught of this new tech. Whatever the flip side, these are exciting times to be a consumer. So, just sit back and enjoy as the tsunami engulfs us. Also indulge in some speculation: Where will the next wearables be worn? Will they be jewellery, footwear or wigs? Only God knows, provided He is hooked to a wearable that befits his reputation as all knowing!

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