When Tech Goes Wearibly Wrong...

Let’s go to 1900. The Old Car Festival at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan is America’s longest-running antique car show, sporting an electric car from 1903. Yes, electric cars go back that far, and they are so quiet you can’t hear them over the noise of the festival.

So why did electric vehicles lose out a century ago? It’s probably not for the reasons you’d think.

Curator Matt Anderson of the Ford Museum says electrics weren’t manly enough for the times.

“Electrics were thought to be the ideal ‘women’s car,’ if you will,” he said. “You don’t have to crank it, so it doesn’t require as much physical strength to get it running and operating. They’re much cleaner than a gasoline automobile; they don’t emit the kind of fumes or exhaust we associate with those cars.”

Which sounds great? Except consumers back then didn’t want that. They wanted a messy adventure machine.

“It made noise, it broke down,” David Kirsch, an automotive historian at the University of Maryland, said of the gas-powered car.

“It was relatively easy to fix,” he said. “So a man could take his girlfriend out into the woods and do what they will. And if he were very lucky the vehicle might break in a way that he could fix it.”  Masculinity, displayed.

Kirsch’s point is that culture becomes an important wild-card in technology history. It was back then, and could be going forward in ways we can’t predict.

So now this brings us to today.  Where does cultural decisions factor in the success or failure of certain innovations.  First, this seems to be more prevalent with innovations that travel with our person, such as, cars, clothes, personal electronics, etc... Why?  Well, people have a tendency to weigh in “How does this make me look” when deciding to select items that travel with them.

For example, what does the fanny pack, camera watch, blue tooth, brockabrella, and now wearables have in common?   Some may argue narcissism, or in the street vernacular, douche-bag qualities.

Even Nike who pioneered the FuelBand foresaw this and decided to drop their FuelBand Engineering Division as of April this year.  Google, Apple, and Samsung are still trying to convince the public otherwise.  However, there is a fine line between novelty and annoyance.  As for the FuelBand, it became a data nag, yet for the wearable tech, it may not be an annoyance to you, but to those around you.  

So unless you plan to be alone for the rest of your existence, you may want to think twice before sporting an image defining piece of technology.  As we said in an earlier article, some technologies can go wearibly wrong. 

Source(s):

• http://www.marketplace.org//topics/sustainability/first-electric-cars-werent-manly-enough
• Common Sense

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

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About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 22 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.

For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085 x502