Earlier this week, researchers at MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with Microsoft, announced the development of DuoSkin, a temporary metallic tattoo that allows users to control their mobile devices. The “on-skin user interfaces” can be designed as fashionable, jewelery-like adornments, turning people into a glittery tribe of artfully tattooed techies. Swipe a finger across the metallic design on your forearm, and you can scroll through information. Or use your mobile device to read data stored on your skin.
And why not? Skin is such an accessible platform. And we all have plenty of it.
None of this should surprise us. Or freak us out. Such wearable technology is the natural evolution of the solipsistic nature of smart devices.
That smartphone in your hand is a tool for efficiency and convenience, sure, but it’s also a satisfying return to childhood when you did feel the world revolved around you. Who wants or needs to grow out of that illusion? Technologically armed, you’re the centre of your universe, using this app to beckon a ride or that app to bring dinner from your favourite restaurant to your front door or such-and-such an app to get a barista to make your coffee so you don’t have to wait in line or another app to remotely prepare your home for your arrival. They’re more reliable and obedient than a nanny or spouse.
Scrolling through the app store is like a trip to a candy store. So many things to tempt you! When I view them, I imagine all these earnest tech people wanting to revolutionize modern life, making us happier, healthier, fitter, thinner, more efficient.
So I tried out a few newly launched smart products with apps of their own: La Roche-Posay’s My UV Patch; First Response Pregnancy Pro; and Philips Hue White Ambiance lighting. Each of them use slightly different technologies, but all promise a better life. But do they deliver?
The My UV Patch, billed as “the first connected stretchable UV patch,” will be available in stores next year. (As part of the company’s goal to help prevent skin cancer, next year will also see the roll-out of skin clinics that will allow people to have their moles checked.) I read the UV Patch instructions and placed the heart-shaped tattoo-like film on the top of my hand. I answered questions on the app about skin type, hair colour and eye colour, and whether I easily burn.
The idea is that you wear the patch, which is made with photo-sensitive dyes, and then scan it via the app on your phone when you’ve been outside in the sun. On a day last week in Toronto when the temperature was 30 and the UV index was 7, I held my hand out flat in the midday sun for about 30 seconds. Then I scanned the heart: “You have already used your daily sun stock for the next two days,” it warned me. “You’re now exposed at your own risk.”
Really? That was crazy. And alarming. I put some sunscreen on the hand, over a new patch. Same message. Was My UV Patch smart or kinda stupid? “The photo-sensitive dyes will change based on the UV in the environment and then, based on the information you inputed about your skin type, the app uses an algorithm to calculate your risk,” explains Kristen King, group product manager at La Roche-Posay, a company under the L’Oréal umbrella. “But it doesn’t measure risk protection.”
In other words, putting sunscreen on over the patch doesn’t help you know if you’ve being adequately protected. “The point of it is to help change behaviour. To act as a reminder of the need for sunscreen,” King says, explaining that research in 23 countries among nearly 20,000 people showed that while nine out of 10 consumers are aware of the potential for sun damage, only 27 per cent wear sunscreen (primarily on the face), less than 5 per cent wear long-sleeved shirts and only 20 per cent try to stay in the shade.
What the app will do is keep asking if you have applied sunscreen – a bit like an annoying, over-protective mother.
On to connected pee sticks. First Response Pregnancy Pro is promoted as the first and only pregnancy test with Bluetooth wireless technology that connects the test stick to an app on your smartphone. If the verdict is positive, you get calculations on your due date and a calendar to make note of obstetric appointments. And there’s “wait support” – meaning that you can be entertained (with “cooking tips and playful animals,” among other things) for the three minutes it takes to get your result.
Uh, who’s the baby in this scenario? This would suggest that a grown woman is in need of pre-programmed distractions just as you might provide for a toddler, waving a funny toy in his face while you try to shovel in some broccoli.
Next up, Philips Hue White Ambiance smart light bulbs. Philips is the world’s leading lighting brand and has the largest connected lighting system. It began selling Hue connected products in 2012. The new White Ambiance, which allows you to program 50,000 shades of white (“light recipes,” the company calls them) in order to “match the moment” in your life, launched this spring. Via an app, you can control or program the lights.
“We’re trying to move light from an on/off proposition, in which you replace the bulb when it breaks, to have light be a supporting part of your life,” explains Todd Manegold, connected home business lead, North America, at Philips Lighting. Maybe my life is boring, but it certainly doesn’t have 50,000 different kinds of moments. I can think of four, maybe five, off the top of my head. Might this be tech-nerdy overkill?
The smartest thing about this is the brilliance of the marketing idea. Manegold helpfully pointed out what every human knows – that “on a sunny morning, you feel more energized and ready to get on with your day versus waking up on a rainy, cloudy day. Lighting has a big impact on how people feel and behave.”
Big tick mark. And it’s kind of James-Bondy to surreptitiously press a button and change the mood of the room.
But with all these connected products, quite apart from their usefulness, there’s a dark, Trumpian undercurrent – and that’s about privacy.
With health-related apps, such as First Response Pro pregnancy and My UV Patch, experts are concerned about how information is used, including by third parties.
Ann Cavoukian, executive director, Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University, says: “The majority of the time, the lack of secure privacy protection is an oversight by the companies. They’re just eager to get it on the market. … You’re exposing yourself, and the information you provide could impact you with your employers, with insurance companies. You have no idea, no control.” Regulators in the EU have recently passed rules to help protect consumers, such as making privacy the default setting, embedded in the design of “smart” products, she explains.
Unfriendly intrusions from strangers who can access information or gain control of the devices remotely worry experts as well. “Hackers could examine when lights are on or off and could form predictions about when you’re away,” Cavoukian says regarding connected lighting.
Paranoia is an unfortunate by-product of our hyper-connected world. But I’m probably like you in that I think more about apps’ advantages rather than their data risks. When I do hear the warnings, a part of me starts imagining someone with a dystopian view of the world and bad hair, thinking everyone’s out to get him.
That was, at least, until I read about smart, connected vibrators. At a recent DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, two independent hackers showed that the We-Vibe 4 Plus vibrator – a type of sex toy called “teledildonics” – can easily be hacked. Not only could a third party seize control of the device – not your lover on the other side of the world who wants to remotely give you a little thrill – but the device “talks” to the manufacturer, Standard Innovation.
Consider this when you’ve dimmed your Hue White Ambiance lights to an appropriately sexy shade of soft white and are availing yourself of your teledildonic device. You may think it’s all very private and secret, but the company will not only know when you’re using it, it will know what temperature the device records as well as the level of the vibrator’s intensity.
Talk about childhood and having your mother watching over you. Not very sexy.