Time to call the device squad: why you should inspect your gadget habits

With Santa set to bring more gizmos your tablet may have to get the sack, says Joshi Herrmann
Smart stuff: the Apple Watch is due early next year
Joshi Herrmann15 December 2014

Is there a protrusion of our bodies to which technology manufacturers will not soon be attaching their inventions? Is there no orifice that will go unfilled by trackers, sensors, HD cameras and optically controlled display units?

And when will come the point that we are so surrounded by digital devices that the original rationales for having them — portability, convenience and compression — are cancelled out by the sheer mental effort required to administer, charge and maintain the fleet.

This Christmas, we are told, discerning consumers will be adding smart watches, fit bands and drones to their armoury of laptops, tablets, phones, e-readers, running watches, MP3 players, digital glasses et al. But no one seems to know if that should mean disposing of a few to make room. Is there an arbitrary but widely agreed figure for how many devices it’s OK to have, like the cap on annual housing benefit? Five microchip-run devices in your home seems absolutely adequate — let’s say a phone, a tablet, an e-reader, a laptop and some wrist-based accoutrement.

Apart from anything else, the increasing sophistication of phones in particular makes the marginal benefit of acquiring each new device pretty slim. Need a word processor? Use your phone. Need a music player? Use your phone. Need some kind of run- measurer that uses GPS and learns the length of your stride? Use your phone. Need a virtual magazine that only shows you articles you will be interested in, based on past reading habits? You don’t need that.

And then there are the home-based devices — referred to by tech writers as “the internet of things” — whose functions aren’t so much made obsolete by smartphones but by no one needing them. Like the “Egg Minder”, that allows you to find out how many eggs are in the fridge at home. Or the “iKettle” — which you can start from your bed by phone.

I put these points to two people who are more in the device-acquisition camp. James Cook, a tech reporter at Business Insider, argues for careful scrutiny. “We still don’t know if smart watches are going to be good or pointless,” he says. “Will.i.am’s watch is awful technology — one review called it the worst piece of technology ever. I don’t like it when things become gimmicky. Something like Google Glass — I don’t think that improves our lives.” He is more hopeful about the Apple Watch, due early next year, and knows of people who have been promised it as a late Christmas present.

Katharina Zimmermann, who has developed Epson’s new Runsense (a sports watch) and Pulsense (an activity monitor that measures heart rate 24/7 from your wrist), makes the case for specialist devices. “Your phone is like a Swiss Army knife — you can use it for lots of things but you wouldn’t want to cut your steak with it. For running, when you use a phone, the accuracy won’t be as good and it will drain your battery, and phones are getting bigger again. I’ve seen people running into lampposts as with a phone you have to fiddle around. A running watch is specifically tailored for a purpose.”

But the reckoning on device ownership will surely come. If the decadence of every Londoner owning six or seven electronic devices doesn’t herald the end of civilisation, it may at least put a slight strain on the National Grid.

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