Fashion Sensors

Even with clothes, it's difficult, you know, if you're giving a Nobel Prize recipient lecture generally on this planet. Yes, I've heard that it works out kind of okay on Beta's at but I think that that's that's about that's about it nice nice, Well, actually, though, the dumb thing is, if you're a dog, you can get away with it like nobody cares, unless you're goofy, in which case you have to wear It's harder to be taken seriously as

a dog if you're wearing clothes. I think, well, what would you take more seriously a dog or a person who's naked? Okay, you know what, I'm going to just go ahead and derail this hypothetical conversation we're having so we can get onto the topic, which is the future of clothing. Yeah, you know, all the things in our environment have been getting upgraded by technology. So you used

to have like a notebook and a pencil. I guess now some people still use those, but that tablet and now we've got iPad apps that that that directly duplicate a notebook and a pencil. Yeah, I guess you used to have like a yelling at people, but now you have a telephone or smart so now you can yell at people over the phone. Yeah, you can yell at people who are farther away that normally your voice wouldn't carry. Yes, you can actually yell at people in space and they

could hear you. But it's basically other than some, you know, ways of making them a little comp or maybe clothes are about the same as they've been for a hundred

years or sure. Most of the improvements in them, I mean have been a little bit in like zipper technology, I suppose, but synthetics, but mostly in the manufacturing of them, making them cheaper and more widely available in different styles, right, Yeah, i'd say that we could definitely say like the production of clothing has gotten a lot more high tech, but maybe not necessarily like for the utility of the user,

the wear or the owner, whatever you'd call it. Yeah, there only been a few technologies I would say that have really advanced clothing. I mean, we could look at specific industries and see examples, but they aren't for your general consumer use. Like firefighters, for example, have clothing that have and or astronauts have clothing that have much more, uh important applications besides just covering the person. But those are not things that translate to everyday clothes that you

and I would write. I mean, I guess you've got like, I don't know, gortex or whatever. Sure, you've got some stuff that's you know, maybe a little less flammable or maybe it's hydrophobic or even oleophobic. I'll talk some more about that in a little bit. I mean, you know, for consumers, we've got like anti wrinkle material, sure, but

it's not I mean, it doesn't iron it. I think I think the I think the most high tech piece of clothing I have is actually, you know, I've got some of gloves that have the little conductance um fingertips ys. So that way, it's you can use a capacity of touch screen and be able to actually manipulate it without having to take your gloves off, which you know when it starts getting cold. Is nice, especially since we all are using phones that don't have physical buttons anymore. So,

or at least I am. So it means I need to have something that can interact with the screen. That's interesting. It's kind of specialty, but that's cool. Yeah, there's the power glove. Okay, that's it's not an article of clothing. That's a video game peripherals. The glove, isn't it. It is a wearable It is wearable computing. I'll give you that. I mean, you wouldn't turn one down if you were out in the cold, right. I don't think a power

glove would fit me anymore anyway. What's the future of clothing, Jonathan, Well, there's a there's a lot of different ways of looking at this, and one of the things we want to talk about was wearable computing. So that you know, the power glove fits right in there in a sense, fits in so it's like a computer that instead of putting on your desk you put on your naked body. It's a little bit of an oversimplification, but okay, you know, I usually think of this in two major categories. I

think of passive systems and active systems. So a passive system is clothing that has something that ends up taking in information about either you or your environment and then sending that in some way to a collection point, usually like an app of some sort, where you can look

at that data and do something meaningful with it. Active systems are ones that not only can interpret information about the environment or say the person who's wearing them, but actually make actual change just you, change in some way so that it is reacting to that information as opposed to just sending it to you. So an example there,

let's we'll go science fiction. Ey, Okay, an example there might be that a passive system might let you know how fast your heart is beating, and could be really useful if you are doing something that's fitness related or health related or as we talked about in our stress video. You know, one of the things about stress is you don't always realize yourself when you're stressed. Although I don't know,

I don't know if I would be less stressed. If my shirt was telling me that I was stressing out, well, I mean, it might be helpful for your your shirt to remind you, like, hey, I'm taking some galvanic skin conductance readings and um, you need to chill for a bit. Maybe maybe maybe go outside do some yoga. I don't know, man, now I'm stressed out, all right. But an active system

might be something more science fiction. Ye. Like, an example that I gave before we came into the podcast room was, you know, everyone's the first thing we thought of when we thought of science fiction clothing, which is back to the future, to where Marty McFly has the shoes that automatically adjust his feet and the jacket that automatically adjust to his build and will even dry itself off once

it gets wet, that kind of thing. And while the active side is probably you know, there's not that many examples we can point to in the real world or even in in like prototype stages right now, there's a lot going on with the passive side. And some of this wearable computing takes the form of not like clothing, not like shirts and pants and shoes and that kind of thing, but stuff like a wrist bands, you know

the fitness band bands that we've talked about in the past. Um, Google Glass is another great example where it's this wearable computer that again is not I mean, if you've seen one, you know it's not gonna be a fashion statement for a while. Probably probably they're they're working towards it. Yeah, I hear the next version is going to be a little more streamlined U and core style. Just I'll be

O G walking around with mine. That's original Google glass and and and these days a lot of the other little especially fitness trackers, are coming in more and more aesthetic versions because they realized that some people don't want to look like they're from the nineteen eighties and right right, and we're starting to see some interesting, uh sort of I would say in the lab uses of of computing

and fabrics or computing and clothing. Actually got to take a tour of a fabric computing lab at Georgia Tech a few years ago, and that was really interesting seeing how they were using conductive thread woven through materials so that they could allow electricity to pass through the material and use it for various purposes. Now we're still on the very beginning stages of this kind of stuff too, but you could see further down the line how that

could become useful. Uh. Some of the ones that I've I've seen that are really interesting to me that again are not necessarily the type of clothes that you're going to wear for everyday use. One was the key glove, which is a wearable, wireless, open source input device. So think of it as an alternative to like a keyboard

or a track pad. It's a glove that you would fit over one hand, and it's got all these different sensors all along the fingers and the palm and uh of the of the actual glove that you can use to type stuff out, So every single joint of your finger would be a different letter and you could Uh.

It's kind of laid out the way a stenographer's keyboard is laid out, so that the the letters that are most frequently used are a group together and uh and the easiest places theoretically for most people to reach with using one hand. So this could be a useful tool for people who have mobility issues. It could be UM. They've even added some haptic feedback to it so that people who are visually impaired can use it. Understand what's

going on. What I was thinking was just that you could be typing a document while you're out taking a walk or on the trained or something and is sending text without having to really take your hand off the steering wheel. This is this has gotten, you know, well beyond that because the videos I saw, even though the the glove itself looked pretty primitive, I mean it was fairly clunky, although it was an earlier build as well.

They explained in the video or in the text beneath the video that in fact there are later versions that are a little more streamlined. But because the haptic feedback, you can even have things where you're manipulating virtual objects and have the feedback to the gloves, so you know

when you're going too far. Uh. It can actually track complete three access movement with your hands, so it can detect, you know, when you rotate your wrist or cool, so like like moving a little bit closer to to you know, Tony Stark's Iron Man movie series, the three dimensional hologram, right, Yeah.

Instead of using cameras to track your movement, this is actually using wires and some gyroscopes and accelerometers things like that, and uh, and again, it was talking about how this could be a great input device for people who have either some sort of visual in pairman or perhaps they have only the use of one arm, something like that. Um is really interesting. Again, not the kind of clothing that you and I would wear on a on an everyday basis, but a really cool example of wearable computers.

Another really neat one was called tacit, and this is a wrist mounted device that senses objects that are somewhere between an inch away and ten feet away. So it's designed to help people with who have well First, it was designed to be part of a video game. The idea that the guy had was, what if I created a video game that was kind of like those old text adventures where you would say things like go north, you know, go west, open door, but it detects when

a grew is near exactly. That's in fact, he actually says that in his blog about about tacit. He's like, there's a grew in the room to the south. Um It's it really does bring out the Zork reference. But anyway, that the idea he had was that what if you could go through a virtual maze and this particular wrist mounted device would alert you when you were coming close to a wall in the virtual maze by giving you

haptic feedback, you know, a little motor vibrating. And now, originally he developed a headband that he wore, and he said that it was effective. And he got to the point where he thought, wait a minute, what if I, instead of using this to manipulate UH an avatar through a virtual environment, what if I used some form of sensor that could detect the presence of an obstacle in front of me, perhaps using something like ultrasound or some

other form of sensor like an optical sensor. And then the feedback it gives is some form of haptic feedback, like a vibration. And then the closer I am to something that the stronger the vibration. And so he tried it, and he had a headband and with the sensors and would try going through a room blindfolded. And turned out that he was able to get through rooms pretty easily, except that anything that was lower down than say, head level, he might still bang into, like a coffee table, the

old coffee table to the shin problem. But um, he said that the problem, the other problem was that it drove you nuts because you had all these little motors connected to your head and they're constantly buzzing. He's like, that drives you bonkers after about ten minutes. So that's when he created the wrist mounted version that helps with

two problems. One the feedback is on your wrist and on your head, and two, because you can put your hand out in front of you, it can detect things at a wider range of heights than say something that's

mounted to your forehead. And so the idea is that this could eventually help people with visual impairments get around unfamiliar, complex environments without the use of say an assist animal or a cane or something like that, where they could walk through and they would get feedback whenever they were coming close to an obstacle, and they could then maneuver through an environment much more easily and independently. So these are examples again of wearable computers that I'm really excited

about that are showing some possibilities. And if you think about it, you extend this outward and you think, well, sensors are always getting smaller, and we're getting we're getting much better at creating smaller processors. Maybe we can eventually get to a point where this kind of functionality could be built directly into clothing and not in something that's

like a wrist mounted unit that you wear. Yeah, I think the challenges that, um, we don't usually think of electronics as cozy or comfy, and that's for a good reason,

because usually electronic components are rigid and pointy. Yeah. Um, but yeah, like you said, I mean as they continue to shrink, I can see well okay, and especially with the development of these kinds of fabrics that right are are woven with electronics and also with a with different polymers to to coat them and keep them safe and also keep them you know, so that you can layer them with more comfy stuff like cotton, which doesn't usually

come in conducive forms. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to find that conductive cotton plant that where you can really, you know, just run electricity through it. So but yes, I've never tried. What happens if you try to send electricity. I'm pretty sure it burns. Yeah, it's I don't know, it's not conductive, it's I could I could be incorrect. Yeah, So I have a question, Yes, will they ever make clothes that mean I don't have to do laundry anymore. Um, I would not go so far as to say you will

never ever have to do laundry. However, there I mean, I don't do it anyway, but that the future. I wanted to be clean, right, buy a new pack of socks once a week. Yeah Okay, Now now we're getting into my personal behavior where I bite socks all the time. Um. Yeah, if I could just wear new socks every single time, I totally would. I haven't reach that level of affluence. Oh I have to wash them first, Okay. Anyway, it's self self cleaning, self cleaning clothes. Cleaning clothes, is that

a thing? It's it's a thing that people are working on. Who Yeah, it's kind of cool really, So we're not talking about like robotic clothes that put themselves in the washing machine. I'd imagine it's some kind of chemical kind of It's a couple of different approaches, but yeah, you're generally talking about something that's coding fibers in some way. And there are two main ways of doing this. One way is to try and make sure the clothes never get dirty in the first place, and that's where that

hydrophobic and oleophobic kind of codings come into play. This is what I was talking about earlier. Now hydrophobic and means that it repels water. Oleophobic means it repairs, repels oils, and that takes care of a lot of stuff that would otherwise get your clothing dirty. And in fact, there have been a lot of work on this for the military, mean, because you know, if you're in the military, sometimes you come into contact with stuff that would be hazardous to

you and in chemicals. You know, you might it might be a fuel, it could be even a chemical weapon, and you don't want that stuff soaking into your uniform being a potential hazard, yeahor even just unpleasant. I mean if you're if you're marching across terrain and your socks get wet, and that's a really good quick way to get very ill from from from a quick foot infection. Yeah, you can suffer some pretty nasty, uh debilitating injuries that way.

So this kind of super repellent clothes, clothing which is repellent to again oil and water but hopefully not to people, allows you to wear this stuff longer without having to worry about it getting soiled or soaked with harmful chemicals. And keeping you more safe. But that's just one approach. What if you get something dirty in the first place, and you're like, well, what do I do now? Like what what if I'm wearing something that isn't hyper repellent

to this stuff? And that's where you get into the true self cleaning kind of approach that some folks in Monash University in Australia came up with. And I apologize to all our our Australian listeners if i've if Monash is in fact, no, it's spelled Monash, but it's pronounced

grizz wobbler like well shucks, I didn't know. Sorry, um, But anyway, they created these fibers that were coated with something called titanium dioxide nanocrystals, and uh, it's this stuff is pretty interesting and that when it comes into contact with sunlight, it releases uh, some hydroxyl radicals which can break down organic matter through oxidation, which basically means that

it is burning organic matter when sunlight hits it. Yeah, it doesn't your skin molecules are wrong size, yes, so it won't also won't boil boil, it won't burn wool um, so you don't have to worry it. You could make a you could have a wool sweater that's coated in this stuff and it wouldn't I think cotton is also safe. I mean, this stuff is already in use industrially um in in paint and as a surface coating on windows. Yep, yep. So this is a way of trying to keep windows

clean without having to wash them constantly. So in this case, it would just be applied to textiles. And these guys in Australia figured out a way of making that happen. They said that if you were to spill red wine on your clothing and red wines one of those infamous stains that's really hardened out, they said that the stain would end up being significantly faded after twenty hours in

the sunlight. So they were using an artificial sun, you know, essentially they were using you you like to to make it go away. Uh. And they put it next to a shirt that had also been or some fabric that had also been stained when red wine, but not treated in this way, and saw that the stain on the shirt that had not been treated did not change at all, whereas the stain on the shirt that had been treated had faded significantly. Other types of stains go away much faster.

Coffee apparently only takes a couple of hours, which is great. I'm gonna be spilling coffee all over myself on purpose just to watch it go. No, No, I'm not not again. Fool me once. Ouch. I've got to follow up on that. It. Yeah, I was about to say, okay, well maybe I'll give you a follow up on that right now. Yeah, let's speaking of spilling coffee on yourself. How often do y'all spill boiling hot coffee in your lap and scald yourself?

Every every single time I go to McDonald's. Yeah, I mean you always just forget you're supposed to drink it, and then you pour it out and then like like immediately onto the lap. Yeah, I just I just, for some reason, every time I pick up a cup of boiling hot coffee, I am filled with the urge to juggle. And I don't know why. It's it's pathological. Well, I have got a solution for you, my friend. Excellent. So you've heard of hydrophobic fabrics. You mentioned them earlier, so

that they repel liquids rather than absorbing them. But apparently the problem is this doesn't really work when liquids they're hot, right, Okay, So normally hydrophobic materials have some kind of coating that is that basically prevents the water from pinnach trading the cloth weave. But these types of coatings that repel water also tend to melt, and so when something really hot goes onto a hydrophobic piece of cloth, it just goes

straight through it. Your crotch man, because what happens. But um, so that that's bad news for you. But in two thousand nine, a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota St. Paul and uh Hong Kong Polytechnic University combined carbon nanotubes with teflon and cotton, and together these three items were able to produce a fabric that repels water at up to a hundred and sixty seven degrees fahrenheit. Yeah, so now we just have to figure out a way

of making sure it doesn't transfer heat effectively. And then you're really set. Well, I mean there you be, okay, because once you spill it all over yourself, you can, like if it doesn't penetrate, you can brush it off pretty quick as the heat disperses fair quickly at that point. It's surface area related, that's true. I mean it's it's really when it's soaks in and has extended contact with

the skin where you start to suffer some pretty nasty burns. Yeah, but of course that's not the only way that future consumer clothing might protect your body from danger. Have y'all heard about the bulletproof suit? Only because you told me about it right before we came into the podcast room, and you didn't tell me, so I have no idea what this is. Great. So we've got bulletproof vests that are pretty darn good, right, they already exist and they're

highly effective armor. But it's getting lighter and more flexible all the time. Uh. And there are several examples of this for UH. For one example, I know if you may have read a few years back about this UH business that was selling the bulletproof polo shirt. Um, they say, these fabrics are kind of heavy, and you know, they're not just like the normal clothes you would wear. But there's a new one that sounds pretty cool. It's just

November this year. It was a Toronto based taylor called Garrison Bespoke, and they offered a bulletproof three piece business suit. Is this is this? Is this marketed to a specific demographic. Know, you might wonder if it's people who aren't too popular. I just think of like, like you know, like I can imagine Chicago Taylor's going nuts with this particular Yeah, I'm thinking Mafia, m M I five and uh so. Yeah,

there's a three piece business suit available in Pinstripe. And according to popular reports, the head of the company, the tailor that made this, he offered employees the chance to line up while he was wearing the suit and stab him with a knife. Man, if I'm not going to make the joke, I was going to, please go on. I just can't. I just can't believe that this hasn't been in James Bond yet. Really, I this is just brilliant. So the suits lined with carbon nanotube fabric and that's

on the inside of the suit. Basically it resists knife tips and even nine millimeter pistol gunfire. And it costs not But I can imagine the kinds of business leaders who are looking for a bulletproof fancy suit might be able to afford that. I just think, all right, a couple of things I would ask the tailor, one, is that all right? I understand that it protects against the penetration power of say a nine millimeter bullet or a knife.

What about the impact, Oh, I'm sure it still hurts. Yeah, I don't want to get shot, even if it means that I am certain that the bullet isn't going to penetrate my my flesh. That's that's not the that's not necessarily the deal breaker for me. Well, I think that not dying from I mean, if you were if you were shot at more often than you are. I'm not making personal assumptions about how often you're shot at. Um.

I don't need that kind of weekend. Um. I'm just saying, you know, it's it's better better than nothing, right, But I guess and and better and better than a giant like tac vest right right. Well, so this is expensive now, but one imagines that well, you know, actually, I can see in the future if this is much easier to make, you could you could probably buy some kind of bullet or knife resistant, if not completely bullet or knife proof, piece of clothing just to wear, you know, to be

about as comfortable as what you normally wear. Probably more expensive, but not all that much more. I could certainly see that if this were developed in such a way where mass manufacturer was fairly easy, that it would be used in military uniforms. Yeah. I don't know if this exact same kind of nanotube fabric shows up in military uniforms, but the people who made this have been working with the military in one way or another. I think this is showing up in military applications if I may offer

and other kind of protective clothing. Um. So, so, there has has been some serious research conducted by a British industrial designer, PAULO Leary, who worked with UM Dumontfort University's Lingerie Design course UM to create underpants that that shield flatulence. What I guess shield it? Yeah, shield us from shield shield others from. I guess it's not really shielding the flatulens. I guess that the flatulence is fancy free. Okay, okay,

So so, so how the stuff works. It's a material called zoor flex, and this is an activated carbon cloth that was traditionally used in like military and first responder suits. It's a very porous material. It's really good at filtering UM gases and liquids from anything that you don't want to get through, um, like for example, fart smell uh. And so so this this clever fellow has has created underpants with a little panel in the back uh that that you put them on and you and eat whatever

you want. Um. Extremely serious journalist Jared Balini of CNN tried them and and did terrible, terrible things and and they were effective. So well, you can say goodbye to crop dusting. I mean, you know. Uh. In In addition, this stuff is really good for like respiratory masks, UM, conservation of artifacts, wound dressing, chemical and bio hazard suits presumably not just built into underpants, not only in underpants, like a face mask that looked like a pair of briefs.

This is the thing I think people would appreciate. This matters to the person on the street. It matters to the person on the on the public transportation every day. Let me tell you, Yeah, it certainly matters to me. So that's cool. This is this is useful. This is our future, guys. Yeah, without getting to crude, I wonder if there's the same kind of uh technology you can apply to masking perhaps audible frequencies. Uh. This particular one

does not mask audible frequencies. But but I'm sure that we could get into um, some other kind of fabric, maybe a kinetic fabric, soundproofing fabric. What you're saying is that the social embarrassment of the sound would not be mitigated, but at least the smell factor would be. Yeah, I got you, I understand. I see where you're coming from. There.

There's a great quote in Bellini's piece about his experience of wearing these briefs um from the Dalai Lama, who was basically just giggling like a twelve year old about farting. So I think that really, fart part sounds are something that we can all enjoy. It's kind of a universal common truth. Maybe maybe uh maybe fart sounds would be less embarrassing to their author if they were less offensive to the nose. Yeah, I think I think this could

bring humanity together. The underpants could somehow translate it into a totally different sounds, so you still know what happened, but it's a much more comic kind of like maybe it's like the the the clown honk noise, or I was thinking of you know, those toy laser guns do you. What I immediately thought of was the thing in Halo that you can do where you can change you know, like terrible dying sounds like someone's head exploding into into

a bunch of grounds, going it's the birthday. Yeah, well, you know what. I hate to change the subject from this weighty, weighty topic, but I wanted to also mention that we can't talk about the future of clothing without also mentioning the fact that there are a lot of people working on using clothes to be away of means of generating electricity. Oh yeah, we've talked about that before. We did in one of our exercise podcasts about piece

of electric nanogenerators. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, on a much more macro level, that kind of technology has been used for years, and for example, wristwatches that are kinetically U battery powered. Yeah, so you've got you've got this with piece of electric materials. You have this relationship between kinetic energy and electricity, like you were saying, Lauren, where one will end up translating into the other. So if you apply electricity to a piece of electric material,

you will get movement. And if you apply movement to it, if you apply a physical force to it, it will generate electricity. Uh. It's one of those cool things. So if you're able to create clothing that can have this these sort of materials woven into it, then at least in theory, you can generate electricity. Uh. There are a lot of different companies working on this in various ways, including being able to harness things like like these, the

kinetic force we get when we encounter noise. You know, if you just go through a noisy area, that noise is actually putting a physical push on you. I mean, noise is a physical phenomenon, right, So uh, if you were able to harness that and recapture some of that energy, that would be great. Now, I want to give a caveat in that these methods are generating tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of electricity. So it may be that we find

some real practical use for this in the future. But as the technology stands right now, it's not terribly useful, but we have high hopes. Well it's right now it's not quite enough to like charge your MP three player, but you know it's as as more things get to incorporate these kinds of technologies, then we could perhaps use it to you know, keep your cell phone charged anywhere you go, or also with the improvements in battery technology where we don't require as higher voltage for example, to

charge of battery, this could be really useful. Well, it's certainly better than nothing. And when you think about it, UM inaggregate, if you imagine an entire city of people using stuff like this, that would add up long as long as you could harness that electricity in some way. That's that's the challenge right now, is that if you're not generating enough to really harness anything, then we're still we're still below the threshold, but we're hopefully going to

see that increase. And of course, you know, we could see this being built into stuff besides clothing and wearables, right, we can see this built into say, floors so that as people walk on the floors, roads, yeah, yeah, staircases, that kind of thing. As long as we don't all have flying cars, right, Well, we'll get to that. Um So yeah, I mean we're a couple of different other

things we could talk about. Yeah, Actually, speaking of kinetic harnessing materials, there are some people who are working with UM. You know, if you start with fabrics woven with some electronics and add in some layers of reactive polymers the way that um a few artists are doing right now, you can you can get a kinetic fabric that will

change as the wearer moves. That's kind of interesting, which I mean could could lead to interesting practical things like, um like, if you're running around a lot, your sleeves shorten, um making you know, you know that that could be cool. Right now, it's really in a very proof of concept kind of artistic stage that makes you look a lot like Miss Silent Hill, which I don't really think is quite quite that great. Yeah, that's a very specific thing. Um.

Some people really like pyramid Head. But I gave that up in two thousand twelve. It was a year ahead.

But but yeah, it's interesting as a concept. Yeah. I've also um seen some some sort of conceptual debates about this, discussions, I should say, conceptual discussions about the future of clothing, where you might be able to have clothing that can change its density in some way by expanding or contracting fibers, and therefore being able to adjust to different temperatures, so that if you are getting cold, it could actually end up becoming more dense and thus keeping heat in and

if you were getting too hot, it could become less dense, more porous, and allow heat to pass through more readily. Uh. I don't know what the actual mechanism would be there, but it was again one of those sort of conceptual discussions, and I would be interested to see that if it were to ever go into you know, something beyond just a concept into an actual piece of clothing, so you

can demonstrate exactly how it was working. Uh. I've also seen discussions about working in electronics into clothing so that you would be able to do things like create an interface for you to be able to control something like

a smartphone or m P three player. So for example, you might be able to give it a command and change the volume by running your hand down your sleeve or up your sleeve, or even you know, change tracks by swiping that kind of stuff, so that you don't have to get the phone out while you're doing whatever

you're doing. That sounds great, but it's also like, you know, you brush past somebody on the bus and suddenly the volume is deafening, and you know they're certain, they're definitely like, you know, I could easily imagine that being an issue, especially if you have friends who are a little uh mischievous, who like to come up and just swipe their hand down your arm and the next thing you know, you're you're deaf. Um. There's also a little but weird that

you're touching yourself in public all the time. I don't know, I think that's talking about your arm here a large I'm necessarily suggesting that that would be all these you know what, I just realized what we didn't cover. Pat your head and rub your belly At the same time, I realized what we didn't cover. I can't believe we didn't cover this. Hug shirts. You guys don't I'm talking

about I do. And this still creep and yourself the future technology that everybody's been waiting for, it sure is, Joe. So let's say, Joe that you are going to go on an extended trip away from your sweetheart and you want to be able to maintain contact with said sweetheart and show affection despite thousands of miles separating the two of you. Yeah, I have a telephone. Well, let's say that you want to display something more than just words. You know, more than words of people have FaceTime on

their phones and hug. You want to give a hug, Yeah, you want to hug your sweetheart and not just like a text message. Isn't that what the X stands for? Okay, So if you'll just stop being up to what you would do is you could buy a pair of these hug shirts which have sensors on them and little bladders inside them that can inflate so that they give haptic feedback.

And then when you and your sweetheart are both wearing them and you want to give your sweeter a hug, you just hug yourself around yourself, and the shirt notices and it and it sends. Is there a warning that there's an inbound hug? No? I mean, if you're wearing a hug shirt, you have to expect there could be a hug at any given time. I'm just that is one of the best and worst things I've ever heard.

This is an idea that was actually UH posted several years ago, and I don't have any idea of where the company is right now, like whether or not this still is a thing, But I remember reading about it years ago when I was first looking into wearable computers, and the first thing I thought of is I sure, hope they don't make hug pants. But anyway, so moving on the I think that went over my head. I'll

explain it to you later. So the the other thing I wanted to mention was that fabric displays the idea of building displays directly into um clothing, which is not a big thing. It's it's being used right now, mainly in places like trade shows so that, uh, people who are hired by a public relations firm can walk around and they have some catchy looking display on themselves, like

on their clothing that gets people's attention and display. Yeah, like when I go to c e s is the sort of thing I have seen in the past, where it's just a way of catching someone's eyes so that your booth stands out in a crowd of a billion other booths. Right, So it doesn't seem to be something that would necessarily translate to your average consumer. But I but with flexible oh LED displays becoming more are they're not They're not inexpensive yet. You know, they're still really

expensive to create. But as that technology matures and the prices come down, you could theoretically see things that have those sort of displays built in so you might imagine again, like a coat that has a display wrapped around one arm, where you can use that as an interface for stuff. Um, it's kind of, you know, futuristic and certainly not not necessarily an improvement over existing technology, but I could certainly see someone doing it, certainly and uh and and having

probably way too much fun with it. Yeah, I mean I'm sure I would. I'd be i'd been playing with that kind of stuff, like essentially would be like wearing a smartphone interface on your arm. But I mean, that's another thing that we've seen. It's, like I said, some limited examples in the past, but it's all, like I said, mostly for uh, commercial display purposes, not something that your

average person. You're not gonna get someone necessarily buying a T shirt with the screen on the front so that they can watch television while they're traveling around, because it'll be awkward. Well, what I have in mind is that I would like a T shirt that automatically downloads and displays a new random example of unsettling fan art from the Internet every fifteen minutes or so. You'd be asked to leave so many places, sir, could you please turn

off your shirt? It would be worth it. Everyone would be so creeped out all the time. Yeah, well, let him get a chance to get to know you first before you creep them out. Show That's what I say. But anyway, all of these are so creepy. I like to think that the future has the potential to be awesome. It's just sad that often it turns out. Okay, it'll be both you know where, all right, So we've talked

about clothing that essentially acts like a computer. We've talked about clothing that can protect you from a bullet or a knife wound. We've talked about fartproof clothing. Clearly, there's gotta be something in here that works with one of our other favorite topics. Okay, how how about this? How are we going to get all of these clothes in the incredible future? No, we're going to print them at home on our three D printers. Hey, technically those three

D printers will have been delivered by drones. So my answer still stands. Okay, Yeah, that seems like not a bad idea, because like clothes that don't necessarily have all these like moving parts or yeah, I mean, I mean, you know you can already order design co design, um custom jewelry and other accessories from three D printers. And so basically we're just waiting on the tech and materials

to improve. You know, you could get clothes that are fitted very precisely to you uh and and with improved kind of materials printing, we could have combinations of textiles that are really difficult to put together in real life due to the physical restraints of actual sewing, because if it's all from one piece of stuff, then then it just kind of works out like that. I mean, And

we've already got artistic examples of this. Just this year, there was that beautiful dress that UM that Didavante's modeled UM that was like kind of chain mail laser centered thing that was like three thousand articulated connections. It was. It was really gorgeous. If you guys haven't seen it, check check it out. It's a really neat example of

a three D printed piece of fashion. But um, you know, and and so I think that And apparently at the recent Victoria's Secret show there was one of the runway models had a pair of digitized wings that that had that had been three D printed. So I don't know, I guess this is a thing that is happening in the fashion industry for sure. Interesting. I'm I'm I'm hoping that.

I mean, I would love how how awesome would it be to just be able to be like, I want this pair of jeans that I own and I want them again and I just just do it, just do it. Now that I have is finally worn out and I need to replace them, and there's no way anyone will ever carry these again. And yeah, as someone who um, I'm very particular about my shoes and when or whatever company is making the shoes that I happen to really love.

Whenever that company discontinues those shoes, I have a crisis that reaches psychological and emotional levels that I don't like to think about, and then I have to go and get new ones. But if I were able to print the exact kind of shoes that I always love, I would never have to worry about them going out of style because I don't care about that out of style things so much. I care about having shoes that I like,

So that would definitely be an improvement for me as well. Well, we've talked all about it, so I think it's about time to wrap this up. We've got plenty to think about personally. I think the clothing future of clothing is all going to be directly inspired by Lady Gaga, um My meat dresses on on delivery hypercol oh in hypercolor. Yeah,

we didn't even talk about hypercolor. We introduced hypercolor the concept of hypercolor to Joe earlier, who it's a little younger than I am and did not know what hypercolor was. For those of you out there who don't know what hypercolor is, google it. Yeah, that's funny. We we talked about like technology, we never really mentioned the future of fashion, in which my one prediction is that high heels for

men are coming back. Yeah, like like King Louis. Yeah, fantastic can keep it has done really well on Broadway. I don't know that I'll be fashionable because uh I don't. I just a man, have worn high heels. I don't know if I can do it again. All right, guys, we're wrapping this up, So if you have anything that you want to say to us, join us on the social network platforms where we are because we really want to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter,

you can find us on Facebook, fast on Google. Plus we are FW Thinking, and go to FW thinking dot com. That is the website where we have all the blogs, all the videos, the podcasts, lots of different material there for you to to look at. It's fantastic stuff. Everyone's been working really hard on it and it looks great, So go check that out and we will talk to you again really soon. We're more on this topic in the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com Problems

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