I’m currently in Manchester, NH, which is home to a mill complex that from the mid-1800s to early 1900s was the largest cotton-textile manufacturing center in the world. Today, the news is that DARPA and some other companies have developed a fabric that acts as a camera.
Let’s say that it takes 5 years to bring this tool to market for the military. Let’s say it takes another 5 to get it to the commercial sector. Kids will come to school with videorecorder t-shirts. And ties. And jackets. And. And. And.
How would you use it?
Perhaps more importantly, how would your school ban it?
[…] This one is about fiber fabric, which functions like a camera. On the other hand, there hasn’t been any news about it since July 2009, which is when I first found out about it. So no obvious progress. […]
There’s at least one essential bit of information needed to make a pertinent comment: how obvious would it be that the clothing is a camera?
While we wait for the answer to that I’m going to focus on fighting battles for access to current technology, not something that might or might not be an issue in a decade.
I was probably snarkier than I needed to be. We do need to fight for access to current technology, as opposed to worrying about vaporware.
But I think that thinking through the process of how a technology gets banned, and why, would help us understand how to break through the barrier.