鈥楢pple Watch allows you to communicate immediately, and much more intimately than ever before,鈥 Apple CEO Tim Cook said at this week鈥檚 launch of his company鈥檚 shiny new toy. Far be it from me to criticize a man who could buy my house with an hour鈥檚 earnings, not to mention order hordes of fanboys to beat me to death with their iPhone 6s, but let鈥檚 think about this.
Is a tiny screen displaying 鈥淢eet Ken for lunch鈥 really more immediate than a shout up the stairs, more intimate than Napoleon鈥檚 letters to Josephine? Perhaps Napoleon would have enjoyed a smartwatch: 鈥淢arching home, army in ruins, don鈥檛 watch House of Cards without me.鈥
The watch launch in California was accompanied, in true Apple fashion, by dancing girls, white tigers and zeppelins flying in formation. Okay, perhaps not, but there were thousands of salivating tech bloggers, a supermodel (Christy Turlington) and one very appreciative audience. I kept waiting for the applause to die down and for Mr. Cook to reveal the slogans the company had rejected: 鈥淎pple smartwatch: For people too lazy to reach into their pockets,鈥 or 鈥淭he actually quite dim watch, because you still need a phone to use it.鈥
That鈥檚 worth remembering: Most smartwatches, including Apple鈥檚, still require a phone to operate. Instead of replacing one phone with another, the Don Draper-level geniuses of the tech world have ensured that you will need to own two devices, where one would previously suffice. Actually, I take it back: That鈥檚 not just smart, that鈥檚 satanic smart. Take a bite of the Apple, people.
As many as 28 million smartwatches will be sold this year, according to the research firm Strategic Analytics. The favourite Pebble sold its millionth watch in December. Apple will sell millions more. With its watch retailing in Canada between $450 and $15,500, that鈥檚 鈥 well, I鈥檇 do the math but I don鈥檛 have a calculator strapped to my wrist.
No one uses a smartwatch for calculations, unless you鈥檙e calculating how many steps you鈥檝e taken that day. It is the perfect tool for quantifying in a society that鈥檚 measurement-mad. Your smartwatch will track your heart beat, caloric intake, blood pressure, running speed and infrequency of calls to your mother.
鈥淭ime to stand!鈥 The Apple Watch will remind you periodically. 鈥淭ime to stand up and move for one minute.鈥 This is odd, because in all other ways the device seems designed to ensure that your limbs atrophy and fall off. You can pay for a can of pop without reaching for your wallet, change the thermostat without crossing the room, check the weather without actually having to go outside and experience it. When we鈥檙e -shaped lumps of flesh with vestigial stumps for arms, this will all seem quite funny.
Everything can be quantified with a Dick Tracy watch, no matter how nebulous. Will.i.am of the band The Black Eyed Peas has created the Puls, a 鈥溾 鈥 he refuses to call it a 鈥渟martwatch鈥 鈥 that looks like something a felon would wear on day parole, and offers the usual social-media connections while also measuring 鈥渆motional responses.鈥 That is, it includes an app that will tell you how you鈥檙e feeling if you speak into it for 30 seconds.
I鈥檓 not sure how this is an improvement on looking in the mirror, or even just asking a friend, 鈥淒o I seem more hormonal than usual?鈥 but then I鈥檓 not exactly in the smartwatch target demographic. I doubt that Will.i.am was thinking of middle-aged ladies who remember the squandered promise of LaserDiscs and New Coke when he told Yahoo News, 鈥淲e are not bound by tradition. We don鈥檛 have to adhere to yestertools.鈥
I feel like a bit of a yestertool myself when confronting the inexorable march of technology, or like Grandpa Simpson, shaking his fist at the world and for the days when we all wore onions on our belts. But I don鈥檛 think I鈥檓 alone. We鈥檙e in the middle of a seismic moment, both seduced by the possibility of technology and frustrated when it creates more voids in our lives than it fills.
We鈥檝e always been good at creating technology to fill holes we didn鈥檛 know were there. Douglas Adams was once asked why he had such a dislike of digital watches. (In The Hitchhiker鈥檚 Guide to the Galaxy, human feebleness is defined by affection for such gadgets.) He said it wasn鈥檛 so much that he didn鈥檛 like them, as he didn鈥檛 see the point. Why replace a perfectly good wristwatch with one that you needed two hands to use? 鈥淭he great thing about human beings,鈥 he said, 鈥渋s not only do we invent stuff that鈥檚 new and better, but even stuff that works perfectly well we can鈥檛 leave alone. It鈥檚 the most charming and delightful thing about humans. We keep on inventing things that we got right once.鈥
I tend to agree with him, but then my judgment is suspect. After all, I鈥檓 still using a BlackBerry.
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