Apple and Google have begun working on projects to create wearable computers, so expect to be sporting your latest mobile device on your wrist or attached to your retina.
Apple is experimenting with prototypes like Nano wristlets and Google X labs are working on peripherals, according to the New York Times. Their sources say that Google has hired engineers from Nokia, Apple and others who specialize in tiny, wearable computers. It even said that a small group of Apple employees are prototyping wearable device including a "curved-glass iPod that would wrap around the wrist" which would enable people to communicate with Siri.
If that sounds like a Dick Tracy wrist communicator to you, then yes, you are not alone. But has there been any developments since the wrist communicator? There have been numerous innovations that can make people look like Borgs, including head-mounted displays currently at use in the U.S. military -- but are they necessary?
The smartphone is a mobile device that many people have on their person, sometimes in a pocket, so isn't that already wearable?
“Years ago, researchers envisioned these tiny computers transmitting information to the Internet,” Yael Maguire, a visiting scientist at M.I.T. and Harvard, told the Times. “It wasn’t what we envisioned, but it happened. It’s called the smartphone.”
