Recent explosion in communication technologies like Facebook and Twitter has enabled you to share thoughts on diverse range of issues instantly with the rest of the world. But what if you can wear those thoughts on your dress as you go around and mingle with friends, family or society at large? A new futuristic technology developed by researchers at the Microsoft could enable you do so and change the way you have communicated so far. Named as the ‘Printing Dress’, the technology integrates the notion of ‘texting’ with the help of a customized keyboard into the dress and enables you to print any text on your dress as you do on any other mobile device to show the world whatever you have in your mind.
The dress consists of a top bodice, a corset and skirt as its three main parts. All these parts are made up of paper stitched by machine. The corset of the dress contains a customized keyboard that has been assembled into a QWERTY keyboard layout. And, instead of inks, it uses a mesh of solid and stranded wire for printing letters onto this paper dress. The researchers have used four Lilipad Arduino boards, a USB hub, a laptop and a short throw projector that is placed beneath the skirt and hides from the view of onlookers. The laptop will run a processing sketch of the letters pressed by you on the keyboard and display them as animated text with the help of short throw projector on the skirt, at a resolution that can be easily read by people around you.
At a time when new communication technologies are rapidly rendering the notion of privacy as redundant and we are welcoming this change by revealing more about ourselves in the e-world, there is no mechanism that can hold us responsible for the words we share in the e-world. However, the researchers believe that introduction of the concept of wearable text in mainstream could usher in a more transparent and open world. “The notion of wearing what you say, in the instant you say it, serves as instant accountability and raises questions around social identity. Perhaps it would usher in a new age of responsibility, where people would inherently become more conscious of what they say because it would literally reflect âonâ their character regardless of when and where it was said.”
Via: Microsoft research