Demasiado datos. Ése es el peligro. Ahora que parece que Apple va a presentar al fin su versión de los sistemas vestibles, hay que recordar que los mejores datos son aquellos de los que no necesitas preocuparte. Y los mejores sistemas aquellos que te ofrecen datos sólo cuando los pides.
Smart Watches, Wearables, and That Nasty Data Rash es una gran lectura:
EVERY TECHNOLOGY HAS ITS TOXIC BYPRODUCTS and associated maladies. The pollutants of the industrial era cursed us with black lung, lead poisoning, radiation sickness and more. Now the information age threatens to ding us with the damaging, if less deadly, ailments of data pollution.
For all the remarkable opportunities that information technology has unlocked, it’s hard to dispute the downside of our diminished ability to focus, to find calm, to connect with the people we care about. As social networks spew a dazzling blizzard of text, images and alerts, we’re buried under the impossibility of consuming those messages as quickly as they are produced. Online, we enjoy the illusion of companionship without the demands or benefits of friendship. Offline, we test our genuine friendships by gazing into glass slabs instead of enjoying one another’s company.
And now here come the wearables. I’m a technologist, an enthusiast, an optimist. I’m beside myself about the possibilities of ubiquitous computing. But I’m also concerned that the first generation of wearable gadgets is buffeting the body in unintended ways, like so many other technologies that came before. Will our skin burn with bubbling boils of data? Will our ears buzz with non-stop notifications? Will our eyes flicker with the alerts streaming across the clothing and accessories of others?
There are so many opportunities in the fact that we can now wear data. But the risk is that it will wear us.
Luego ofrece una serie de recomendaciones, más que razonables, sobre cómo deberían actuar esos sistemas. Para concluir:
Technology should bend to our lives instead of vice versa. Instead of using the cold and creepy terms of enhancement or augmentation, I suggest wearables should aim to amplify our humanity. They should let us be who we already are, only more so. They should give us greater control, mastery, and understanding over our environment and ourselves. They should reinforce connections with the people we love and the places we visit, instead of isolating us under a torrent of data. They should draw us into the world instead of drawing our eyes to a screen.