Wearables: smarter and healthier together

Wisdom of the crowd

It has been going on for a while: the rise of smart devices in our immediate vicinity. In recent years, our phone has turned into a smartphone: a phone, camera, web browser, car navigation, game console, MP3 player, calendar and much more, all in one.

Remote control from the world

This year, the breakthrough is expected from the smart wristwatch (the “smartwatch”). Manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple, Sony, LG and Nike have announced or already launched their own model. Meanwhile, our glasses, contact lenses, scales, energy meter, thermostat, car and lighting are also becoming “smart”. They get sensors and an internet connection. They communicate with our smartphone via an “app”. The smartphone will become our remote control for the “Internet of Things” world. Thanks to these smart devices, life becomes more fun and easier: we can request relevant information everywhere on the spot, keep in touch with our friends, record events on images and always find our desired destination while navigating.

Helping others by helping yourself

Without being immediately visible, all these intelligent devices collect information about us and our environment. These are collected, combined and analyzed in order to subsequently extract information and return it to us. In the form of a search result, a purchase suggestion, a short route home or health advice. The data collected from all of us combined is at the same time a large “population survey”, with which new insights and knowledge can be obtained. How does someone’s state of mind depend on where they live, how much they exercise, what they eat and how often they have social contacts and what the weather is like? Every retweet, like and +1 says something about the relevance of information for ourselves, but also for others. Thanks to Google, we are leveraging this “wisdom of crowds” to rank and filter the vast amount of people and data on the internet to extract relevant information. The same happens on the social network PatientsLikeMe where fellow sufferers support each other, exchange experiences and keep a personal diary. Comparing and analyzing data from multiple patients provides new insights into effective medical treatments. In short, by sharing our data, we not only receive better tailor-made advice, for example, with which we can live healthier or travel faster, but we also help others: “helping others by helping ourselves”. Together we are smarter.

What the future holds: The Borg of Avatar?

Due to the many smart devices in our immediate vicinity, we are inextricably linked to the web and, via services such as Google and Facebook, indirectly with everyone. We become, as it were, “cyborgs”: part human, part machine. Because of our connectedness, we now resemble “The Borg” from Star Trek: a group of cyborgs who operate as one collective in which the individual no longer has a will or personality of its own. Is resistance meaningless, as “The Borg” used to say? Are we all connected in this way and can we no longer live without each other? Is there room for individuality or is our (literal!) View on reality completely dictated by companies such as Twitter and Google, who provide us with the most popular search results and purchase advice? In addition to the chilly image of The Borg, there is a warmer image of the movie “Avatar”; the blue, human-like beings, the Navi, who can make intensive contact with other living beings by directly linking their nervous systems, via the Tree of Life that connects everything with everything like a nervous system. From this vision a deeper contact and connection with each other is possible. In order to realize such a vision of the future, the smart devices would have to penetrate even deeper into our body. We should not leave the developments of these new technologies entirely to companies and their revenue models (we pay with our privacy), but should help shape them based on social challenges and interests, such as solidarity. Are you thinking along?