Martin Magnusson got bored of waiting for the cyberpunk future we were promised in the mid-eighties, so he decided to build his own wearable cyberdeck rig. The version pictured [ganked from this Wired article] is a little crude, perhaps (I quite like the did-it-myself workbench aesthetic of exposed cables, personally, though it’d be a nightmare in a combat situation)), but he’s also managed to scrunch the bulk of it down into a little CD-case-shoulder-bag number for the more style-conscious geek-about-town.
In case you’re wondering about battery life (which was my first question), Magnusson reckons he gets three hours of juice from four AA batteries, which is better than I’d have expected, though still not too awesome. Time to look at harvesting waste energy from the body, Mister Magnusson? 🙂
Looks more bulky than the cyborg rigs I used to see around the Media Lab in the 1990s. Steve Mann’s late 1990s rig was much more streamlined and I bet he’s continued with development at Univ of Toronto as, probably, Thad Starner at Georgia Tech.
Personally, I consider my iPod Touch something like a wearable computer.
Definitely has that German-tourist cyberpunk hipster thing going on.
We’ve been suffering from a lack of stories about wearable computing since the late 90s, when they’d elicit drool from the tech crowd and laughter from everyone else. Thanks Futurismic for bringing it back. (this isn’t sarcasm btw, I’m with the geeks)