I wrote:
> > The Last Foot And No Third Hand problem: the
> > distance between a comfortable viewing distance
> > and your ear almost cries out for an additional unit,
> > and to operate any such handheld unit, you need to
> > have *both* hands free for efficient operation.
Jurgen, ready for the elective surgery, suggests:
> ...or it cries for some body modifications :)
> But i think you are right in several ways. Handsfree headsets are
> good, but there is 'social' problem...you look really stupid if you
> talk to a 'virtual' somebody while your hands are free.
Worse than stupid - psychotic. In Tokyo that could be
a plus - people getting out of the way of the nutcase
talking to himself - but for most of us.....
I think you might see a transitional social protocol:
people who wear hands-free phones pulling out
their palmtops when it rings, whether they need
them or not, and keeping one hand at the earpiece
when it doesn't have anything else to do. And
even this won't really get started until you have
seamless earpiece-mobile-phone-to-palmtop
integration, with neither being otherwise dependent
on the other.
> Especially at commuting times...you are very close to the
> next person and ...talk?
I just found out that my phone has "whisper mode." Old
news to others, I'm sure. Anyway, that's a partial solution.
> Seems that the times are right for this:
>
http://www.egd.igd.fhg.de/fhg_igd/abteilungen/a3/PROJECTS/Wearable/wearable_
e.html
I've been a Cyborg Lib guy for a while, but it might take a
little while to catch on.
I don't mean never, though. Eyeglasses probably looked
damned weird at first. But within fifteen years after they
were introduced in Western Europe, you find paintings of
people wearing them from the Middle East. People tend
to overestimate change in the short run, and underestimate
it in the long run. Thus, the Apple Newton, then people
running screaming from anything palmtop-like when it
turned out to be a fiasco, then to the present day: the
Palmpilot becoming a gotta-have-it, almost de-geekified
enough for prime-time.
Michael Turner
www.idiom.com/~turner
leap@gol.com
Received on Tue Jul 18 16:34:04 2000