Memorial Sunday and I'm busy clearing out some junk and adding some order to the chaos around me. One of the trinkets I run across is a wearable USB key - it wraps around your wrist just like one of those bands that Lance Armstrong made so popular about 4 years ago (LiveStrong), just a little bulkier and less cute. As a card carrying member of the Esquire nation,I had decided long ago that I would not be caught dead wearing the thing (I had causally acquired it at some function or the other) and had left it to languish, unloved - no doubt the pack rat instinct from my amygdala had seen this day coming. As Esquire readers know, some days you just don't give two, so to maximize other tasks, instead of figuring out how to dispose of the thing, I decided to leave it on my wrist. Afternoon came with me still wearing it and not hating it. It frankly didn't look awful and the geek in me could appreciate how handy it would be if I had to hack into the computer systems at the grocery store suddenly if called upon for national security reasons... Ok, implausible, but still. At any rate, a style conscious techie suddenly made the transition from ugh! to hmm! I could see the possibilities.
After some more gazing into the possible future, I've decided that wearable technology and computers is going to be huge. Consider that we're already doing this in some way or the other; I have had a backpack that had iPod accommodations for at least 3 years. Watches are now supercomputers nonchalantly masked as time pieces. And let's not get started on cell phones which we have draped around us in one way or the other all through the day. However within these examples are the seeds of what will be, vs. what the hype is about: fabrics, materials, hugging shirts (I kid you not), mood matching clothes, etc. Essentially stuff you don't actually need. Instead I believe that wearable technology will be firmly grounded in the styles people use today - handbags, belts, wallets, shoes, rings and jewelry. Remember that phone shoe from Get Smart? Coming your way soon in 2010. With Bluetooth.