Startups and technology companies are pushing the boundaries of wearable technologies. They demonstrated the future of marketing, mobile technology and consumer behavior tracking during the Tech Media Internet Summit at the Raleigh Convention Center this past week.
The Tech Media Internet Summit brought in digital media marketing executives, startup entrepreneurs, software developers and anyone else interested in digital media from around the country for a three-day event in downtown Raleigh. Speakers included Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Bandwidth’s David Morken, comedian Kevin Pollak, Twitter’s Southeast director Brent Herd, and Cheezburger founder Ben Huh.
Topics ranged from a startup showdown to trends about human behavior, and from the social media revolution to the future of mobile devices.
Though every person took away something different from the Internet Summit, one constant theme was change and the unknown. “New rules” was a common phrase used toward all of the new technology in mobile devices, marketing and wearable technologies.
For example, think about how marketing has changed. Nowadays, marketers probably know more about you than you know about yourself. Data are being collected with everything you do with your mobile device, tablet or computer. With every click or action you perform with an app, data are being collected, stored and used to personalize the content you see. This is why sites like Amazon and Google will look different to you than they will to your friend, even if you search for the same thing.
And the big data trend will only continue to grow. With the emergence of wearable devices, data collection is becoming very personal. Google Glass is the most prominent device and has a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display. It’s not very visually appealing at the moment, but for some people, being on the cutting edge is more important than appearance. With Google Glass, users can share what they see live, see directions right in front of them, ask Glass to answer any question, translate speech into various languages and speak to send messages.
Another new technology is Airo. Airo is a wristband made by a Canadian company that claims the product can automatically track the calories someone consumes and the quality of the meals. It also monitors calorie output, stress levels and circadian rhythms while you sleep.
If you think this technology is too cutting edge, consider that four engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won first prize for a wrist technology called Wristify, which claims to regulate your temperature. It monitors body and air temperature and sends pulses of hot or cold waveforms to the wrist to stabilize any deviation. The team recognized the incredible amount of energy consumed for space heating and cooling, and Wristify could revolutionize our heating and cooling systems.
All of these technologies monitor more about a person’s life than before and enable marketers and companies to sneak even farther into your life. And as cities become universally connected via Wi-Fi, the data will be a click away.
At first glance, a lot of consumers will probably have a problem with the invasiveness of new technologies as they encroach further, but I’m here to tell you the battle is not worth fighting. Throughout the Internet Summit, executives and students alike were a little creeped out but came to terms with the future.
No one can tell you what the future is going to be like because technology has never developed as fast as it is developing now. As I talked with numerous people at the Summit, I noticed there was a certain energy in the room from the mutual curiosity about what is to come. To the right person, the unknown is exhilarating and revs people’s engines. When change happens, I hope everyone is ready to go.
