Like promised here I will start a little series about technologies for people with disabilities.

What we learned from the previous internet years will be even more true here: these technologies made for very special applications will drive the all-over technology development in wearable computing.
For one important reason: developed for people with disabilities we will need them a) for people with artificial disabilities and b) for tiny computer with disabilities too.

What a) means is that the perfect user for wearable computing is an future ideal

of someone who needs technology for augmented reality. This means his or her senses are "not enough" to see, feel, hear, smell whatever this augmented reality is about. This way everyone is limited. The most well-known example is the mobile phone. It gives us the ability to talk to someone far away every time. But there is much more to explore.

About b) Todays computer have a lot of disabilities too. They can mostly not hear or see or feel - in fact they have no senses at all. But in wearable computing future computer have to invisibly understand what we want from them. They should hear us (speech recognition), they should understand us (artificial intelligence) and why not smell (bio data)?

Tomorrow we'll start with the first technology examples. Stay "tuned"...

[click picture to enlarge; source or here]