Easily
the most unfortunate thing about Apple releasing a $10,000 gold-plated watch is
that it shows one of the great innovators of consumer technology in our time
has stopped innovating at the furious rate it once did. The second most
unfortunate thing about the release – and it is very closely related to the
first – is that otherwise sensible people begin asking questions like, “can
high tech do high fashion?” and the corollary, “can high fashion do high tech?”
Technology
is, in its nature, practical. It is applied in an ever-increasing array of
situations to find logical, cheap and scalable solutions. Technology needs to be practical to survive.
Fashion, on the other hand, needs to be superficial to survive: it has to keep
changing its appearance. The substance (clothing) is always broadly the same.
Therefore, when humankind turns to fashion at the expense of technology, the
result will be anything but progress. The example of the Apple Watch is an
excellent example of this rule in practise.
The Apple Watch: Apple’s
“Most Personal Device yet.”
Apple’s
website describes the Apple Watch with the following blurb[i]:
“High-quality watches have long been defined by their ability to keep unfailingly
accurate time, and Apple Watch is no exception. In conjunction with your
iPhone, it keeps time within 50 milliseconds of the definitive global time
standard.” As attractive as the blurb makes it sound, it is still only
referring to a wristwatch – first developed in the late 1800s[ii].
And for the record, even a wristwatch that keeps time to within 50 milliseconds
is not an innovation.
The
blurb continues, “And because it sits right on your wrist, it can add a
physical dimension to alerts and notifications. For example, you’ll feel a
gentle tap with each incoming message. Apple Watch also lets you connect
with your favorite people in fun, spontaneous ways — like sending a
tap, a sketch, or even your heartbeat.” The only way both paragraphs could
be made more ridiculous would be by saying, “and we do a solid gold version…”
None
of this is to say that the Apple Watch won’t be a resounding success. Some
analysts expect it to sell up to 20 million units in its first year[iii]
But the success needs to be viewed in context of what has come before from the
same company. Apple didn’t just bring us the most admired products on the
market, but was also responsible for highly practical technology: the
longest-lasting batteries in consumer products, the lightest notebook computer
and going further back, the first graphical user interface. Now, they’re
releasing a watch which allows you to send a heartbeat.
When Product Design becomes
Fashion
There
are those who will counter that technology firms have long run a tightrope
between what constitutes sophisticated product design and fashion, but they are
missing the point. Nobody is suggesting that a product’s design shouldn’t be
given due attention. But at what stage is the balance tipped towards fashion? This
point is reached when true innovation – practical innovation - comes second to
superficiality. This point, as Apple’s blurb for its watch illustrates so well,
is characterized by corporate hot-air and buzz words.
The
curve below roughly charts the move away from practical innovation towards
marketing and fashion. The Y-axis represents innovation while the X-axis
represents the passage of time. The curve is notional – no company can innovate
effectively forever so there is a natural tail off in innovation over time. In
effect, what we are witnessing with the Apple Watch is not an early stage
innovation at all, but rather the late stage of the Apple iPhone: the
technology is all already there – it’s just being packaged differently.
Wearable Technology
Technology
may have a future in clothing – in fact, it almost certainly does. But just by
creating the term, “wearable technology,” the emphasis has moved from practical
advances in technology, to advances in how technology can be worn. It starts
with a smartphone in the form of a watch; a year later, there’s a smartphone in
the form of cufflinks and a year later still, there’s a bikini with a built-in
smartphone. The aggregate is that humankind has lost two years of progress and ultimately,
all that it has is a smartphone to show for it.
To
summarize, technology is evolving in ways which promise to bring huge advances
to humankind: in medicine, education, engineering and energy. We should be
absolutely indifferent whether the innovations are in PC grey, leopard skin or
denim. Bringing fashion to the world of technology is not only silly – it has
the potential to slow humanity’s progress. It moves the focus away from what is
important to what is frivolous. None of the great moves in technology in the
past had anything to do with fashion. Why should those in the future be any
different?
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