It’s been a long day in front of the computer, your shoulders are a little sore, a client has asked for some changes that took more time so you haven’t had a break in a few hours. You leave the office and have to stand on a crowded tram packed in against the rest of humanity.
What you need is a glass of wine and a little back massage to take the edge off…
Well these ingenious MIT students can’t do much about the glass of wine (though you could quaff from a paper bag) but they can do something about the back rub.
This piece of wearable tech allows you to send a message out to your network, signalling that you need some TLC, and the network can respond with some virtual love which results in your jacket providing you with a little back massage. The closer the person is to you (physically but potentially metaphorically too) the closer to your spine the touch actually is.
What I find really interesting is how the confluence of extremely cheap internet connectivity is being coupled with physical devices that can enable interaction between people. Those that are permanently internet connected talk about a “presence” online - however things like this SoS jacket provide a physicality to connectivity that is just not possible with a computer or even mobile phone.
Expect to see more devices like this in the future as costs come down and will start heavily blurring the boundary between physical and virtual, particularly with the use of haptics.