Wearing one might be made a condition of holding a driving licence.'ġ. For instance, suppose there was a wearable that triggered a red light on the roof of your car when your blood-pressure and pulse rate went above a certain level.' A sort of road-rage meter ? 'Exactly. 'But wearables could also be made compulsory in certain contexts. 'Well, one suggestion is that domestic appliances could respond to the information and anticipate your needs - when you came in tired from work, say, the Teasmaid would make you a cup of tea and the TV find you a suitably relaxing programme without your having to lift a finger,' he said. So there's no reason why wearables shouldn't become cheaply available in the not-too-distant future.' But why would anybody submit to being fitted with them ? he was asked. It's been calculated that if cars had developed at the same rate as computers over the last thirty years, you'd be able to buy a Rolls-Royce today for under a pound, and it would do three million miles to the gallon. They're improving faster than any other machine in history. 'Computers chips are getting smaller and smaller and more and more powerful all the time.

'Well, it's technically feasible,' he said. I switched on in the middle of the discussion, but as far as I could gather somebody's just written a book suggesting that as computers get smaller and cheaper in the future they could easily be worn on the person or actually implanted in the body, to monitor your pulse rate, temperature, blood pressure, muscular tension, blood sugar level, etc., etc., and anyone with access to this information on their own wearable computers could tell from it what you were thinking and feeling. He was being interviewed about 'wearable computers'. I happened to hear Ralph Messenger on the radio this morning - some kind of popular science magazine programme.

Thinks... by David Lodge