Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future. He says. Black clothes,
Speaker 1: white shoes, black hat, Cadillac. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, clothes make the
Speaker 1: person right, well just dead stairs. Okay, I realize I'm
Speaker 1: saying here in a white T shirt and blue jeans. Well,
Speaker 1: without clothes, it's hard to get people to take you seriously.
Speaker 1: Even with clothes, it's difficult, you know, if you're giving
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize recipient lecture generally on this planet. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've heard that it works out kind of okay on
Speaker 1: Beta's at but I think that that's that's about that's
Speaker 1: about it nice nice, Well, actually, though, the dumb thing is,
Speaker 1: if you're a dog, you can get away with it
Speaker 1: like nobody cares, unless you're goofy, in which case you
Speaker 1: have to wear It's harder to be taken seriously as
Speaker 1: a dog if you're wearing clothes. I think, well, what
Speaker 1: would you take more seriously a dog or a person
Speaker 1: who's naked? Okay, you know what, I'm going to just
Speaker 1: go ahead and derail this hypothetical conversation we're having so
Speaker 1: we can get onto the topic, which is the future
Speaker 1: of clothing. Yeah, you know, all the things in our
Speaker 1: environment have been getting upgraded by technology. So you used
Speaker 1: to have like a notebook and a pencil. I guess
Speaker 1: now some people still use those, but that tablet and
Speaker 1: now we've got iPad apps that that that directly duplicate
Speaker 1: a notebook and a pencil. Yeah, I guess you used
Speaker 1: to have like a yelling at people, but now you
Speaker 1: have a telephone or smart so now you can yell
Speaker 1: at people over the phone. Yeah, you can yell at
Speaker 1: people who are farther away that normally your voice wouldn't carry. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can actually yell at people in space and they
Speaker 1: could hear you. But it's basically other than some, you know,
Speaker 1: ways of making them a little comp or maybe clothes
Speaker 1: are about the same as they've been for a hundred
Speaker 1: years or sure. Most of the improvements in them, I
Speaker 1: mean have been a little bit in like zipper technology,
Speaker 1: I suppose, but synthetics, but mostly in the manufacturing of them,
Speaker 1: making them cheaper and more widely available in different styles, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd say that we could definitely say like the production
Speaker 1: of clothing has gotten a lot more high tech, but
Speaker 1: maybe not necessarily like for the utility of the user,
Speaker 1: the wear or the owner, whatever you'd call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there only been a few technologies I would say that
Speaker 1: have really advanced clothing. I mean, we could look at
Speaker 1: specific industries and see examples, but they aren't for your
Speaker 1: general consumer use. Like firefighters, for example, have clothing that
Speaker 1: have and or astronauts have clothing that have much more,
Speaker 1: uh important applications besides just covering the person. But those
Speaker 1: are not things that translate to everyday clothes that you
Speaker 1: and I would write. I mean, I guess you've got like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, gortex or whatever. Sure, you've got some
Speaker 1: stuff that's you know, maybe a little less flammable or
Speaker 1: maybe it's hydrophobic or even oleophobic. I'll talk some more
Speaker 1: about that in a little bit. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: for consumers, we've got like anti wrinkle material, sure, but
Speaker 1: it's not I mean, it doesn't iron it. I think
Speaker 1: I think the I think the most high tech piece
Speaker 1: of clothing I have is actually, you know, I've got
Speaker 1: some of gloves that have the little conductance um fingertips ys.
Speaker 1: So that way, it's you can use a capacity of
Speaker 1: touch screen and be able to actually manipulate it without
Speaker 1: having to take your gloves off, which you know when
Speaker 1: it starts getting cold. Is nice, especially since we all
Speaker 1: are using phones that don't have physical buttons anymore. So,
Speaker 1: or at least I am. So it means I need
Speaker 1: to have something that can interact with the screen. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's kind of specialty, but that's cool. Yeah, there's the
Speaker 1: power glove. Okay, that's it's not an article of clothing.
Speaker 1: That's a video game peripherals. The glove, isn't it. It
Speaker 1: is a wearable It is wearable computing. I'll give you that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you wouldn't turn one down if you were
Speaker 1: out in the cold, right. I don't think a power
Speaker 1: glove would fit me anymore anyway. What's the future of clothing, Jonathan, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of different ways of looking
Speaker 1: at this, and one of the things we want to
Speaker 1: talk about was wearable computing. So that you know, the
Speaker 1: power glove fits right in there in a sense, fits
Speaker 1: in so it's like a computer that instead of putting
Speaker 1: on your desk you put on your naked body. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an oversimplification, but okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I usually think of this in two major categories. I
Speaker 1: think of passive systems and active systems. So a passive
Speaker 1: system is clothing that has something that ends up taking
Speaker 1: in information about either you or your environment and then
Speaker 1: sending that in some way to a collection point, usually
Speaker 1: like an app of some sort, where you can look
Speaker 1: at that data and do something meaningful with it. Active
Speaker 1: systems are ones that not only can interpret information about
Speaker 1: the environment or say the person who's wearing them, but
Speaker 1: actually make actual change just you, change in some way
Speaker 1: so that it is reacting to that information as opposed
Speaker 1: to just sending it to you. So an example there,
Speaker 1: let's we'll go science fiction. Ey, Okay, an example there
Speaker 1: might be that a passive system might let you know
Speaker 1: how fast your heart is beating, and could be really
Speaker 1: useful if you are doing something that's fitness related or
Speaker 1: health related or as we talked about in our stress video.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things about stress is you
Speaker 1: don't always realize yourself when you're stressed. Although I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would be less stressed. If
Speaker 1: my shirt was telling me that I was stressing out, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it might be helpful for your your shirt
Speaker 1: to remind you, like, hey, I'm taking some galvanic skin
Speaker 1: conductance readings and um, you need to chill for a bit.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe maybe go outside do some yoga. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: now I'm stressed out, all right. But an active system
Speaker 1: might be something more science fiction. Ye. Like, an example
Speaker 1: that I gave before we came into the podcast room was,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone's the first thing we thought of when
Speaker 1: we thought of science fiction clothing, which is back to
Speaker 1: the future, to where Marty McFly has the shoes that
Speaker 1: automatically adjust his feet and the jacket that automatically adjust
Speaker 1: to his build and will even dry itself off once
Speaker 1: it gets wet, that kind of thing. And while the
Speaker 1: active side is probably you know, there's not that many
Speaker 1: examples we can point to in the real world or
Speaker 1: even in in like prototype stages right now, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on with the passive side. And some of
Speaker 1: this wearable computing takes the form of not like clothing,
Speaker 1: not like shirts and pants and shoes and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, but stuff like a wrist bands, you know
Speaker 1: the fitness band bands that we've talked about in the past. Um,
Speaker 1: Google Glass is another great example where it's this wearable
Speaker 1: computer that again is not I mean, if you've seen one,
Speaker 1: you know it's not gonna be a fashion statement for
Speaker 1: a while. Probably probably they're they're working towards it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear the next version is going to be a
Speaker 1: little more streamlined U and core style. Just I'll be
Speaker 1: O G walking around with mine. That's original Google glass
Speaker 1: and and and these days a lot of the other
Speaker 1: little especially fitness trackers, are coming in more and more
Speaker 1: aesthetic versions because they realized that some people don't want
Speaker 1: to look like they're from the nineteen eighties and right right,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to see some interesting, uh sort of
Speaker 1: I would say in the lab uses of of computing
Speaker 1: and fabrics or computing and clothing. Actually got to take
Speaker 1: a tour of a fabric computing lab at Georgia Tech
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and that was really interesting seeing
Speaker 1: how they were using conductive thread woven through materials so
Speaker 1: that they could allow electricity to pass through the material
Speaker 1: and use it for various purposes. Now we're still on
Speaker 1: the very beginning stages of this kind of stuff too,
Speaker 1: but you could see further down the line how that
Speaker 1: could become useful. Uh. Some of the ones that I've
Speaker 1: I've seen that are really interesting to me that again
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the type of clothes that you're going
Speaker 1: to wear for everyday use. One was the key glove,
Speaker 1: which is a wearable, wireless, open source input device. So
Speaker 1: think of it as an alternative to like a keyboard
Speaker 1: or a track pad. It's a glove that you would
Speaker 1: fit over one hand, and it's got all these different
Speaker 1: sensors all along the fingers and the palm and uh
Speaker 1: of the of the actual glove that you can use
Speaker 1: to type stuff out, So every single joint of your
Speaker 1: finger would be a different letter and you could Uh.
Speaker 1: It's kind of laid out the way a stenographer's keyboard
Speaker 1: is laid out, so that the the letters that are
Speaker 1: most frequently used are a group together and uh and
Speaker 1: the easiest places theoretically for most people to reach with
Speaker 1: using one hand. So this could be a useful tool
Speaker 1: for people who have mobility issues. It could be UM.
Speaker 1: They've even added some haptic feedback to it so that
Speaker 1: people who are visually impaired can use it. Understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. What I was thinking was just that you
Speaker 1: could be typing a document while you're out taking a
Speaker 1: walk or on the trained or something and is sending
Speaker 1: text without having to really take your hand off the
Speaker 1: steering wheel. This is this has gotten, you know, well
Speaker 1: beyond that because the videos I saw, even though the
Speaker 1: the glove itself looked pretty primitive, I mean it was
Speaker 1: fairly clunky, although it was an earlier build as well.
Speaker 1: They explained in the video or in the text beneath
Speaker 1: the video that in fact there are later versions that
Speaker 1: are a little more streamlined. But because the haptic feedback,
Speaker 1: you can even have things where you're manipulating virtual objects
Speaker 1: and have the feedback to the gloves, so you know
Speaker 1: when you're going too far. Uh. It can actually track
Speaker 1: complete three access movement with your hands, so it can detect,
Speaker 1: you know, when you rotate your wrist or cool, so
Speaker 1: like like moving a little bit closer to to you know,
Speaker 1: Tony Stark's Iron Man movie series, the three dimensional hologram, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Instead of using cameras to track your movement, this is
Speaker 1: actually using wires and some gyroscopes and accelerometers things like that,
Speaker 1: and uh, and again, it was talking about how this
Speaker 1: could be a great input device for people who have
Speaker 1: either some sort of visual in pairman or perhaps they
Speaker 1: have only the use of one arm, something like that.
Speaker 1: Um is really interesting. Again, not the kind of clothing
Speaker 1: that you and I would wear on a on an
Speaker 1: everyday basis, but a really cool example of wearable computers.
Speaker 1: Another really neat one was called tacit, and this is
Speaker 1: a wrist mounted device that senses objects that are somewhere
Speaker 1: between an inch away and ten feet away. So it's
Speaker 1: designed to help people with who have well First, it
Speaker 1: was designed to be part of a video game. The
Speaker 1: idea that the guy had was, what if I created
Speaker 1: a video game that was kind of like those old
Speaker 1: text adventures where you would say things like go north,
Speaker 1: you know, go west, open door, but it detects when
Speaker 1: a grew is near exactly. That's in fact, he actually
Speaker 1: says that in his blog about about tacit. He's like,
Speaker 1: there's a grew in the room to the south. Um
Speaker 1: It's it really does bring out the Zork reference. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that the idea he had was that what if you
Speaker 1: could go through a virtual maze and this particular wrist
Speaker 1: mounted device would alert you when you were coming close
Speaker 1: to a wall in the virtual maze by giving you
Speaker 1: haptic feedback, you know, a little motor vibrating. And now,
Speaker 1: originally he developed a headband that he wore, and he
Speaker 1: said that it was effective. And he got to the
Speaker 1: point where he thought, wait a minute, what if I,
Speaker 1: instead of using this to manipulate UH an avatar through
Speaker 1: a virtual environment, what if I used some form of
Speaker 1: sensor that could detect the presence of an obstacle in
Speaker 1: front of me, perhaps using something like ultrasound or some
Speaker 1: other form of sensor like an optical sensor. And then
Speaker 1: the feedback it gives is some form of haptic feedback,
Speaker 1: like a vibration. And then the closer I am to
Speaker 1: something that the stronger the vibration. And so he tried it,
Speaker 1: and he had a headband and with the sensors and
Speaker 1: would try going through a room blindfolded. And turned out
Speaker 1: that he was able to get through rooms pretty easily,
Speaker 1: except that anything that was lower down than say, head level,
Speaker 1: he might still bang into, like a coffee table, the
Speaker 1: old coffee table to the shin problem. But um, he
Speaker 1: said that the problem, the other problem was that it
Speaker 1: drove you nuts because you had all these little motors
Speaker 1: connected to your head and they're constantly buzzing. He's like,
Speaker 1: that drives you bonkers after about ten minutes. So that's
Speaker 1: when he created the wrist mounted version that helps with
Speaker 1: two problems. One the feedback is on your wrist and
Speaker 1: on your head, and two, because you can put your
Speaker 1: hand out in front of you, it can detect things
Speaker 1: at a wider range of heights than say something that's
Speaker 1: mounted to your forehead. And so the idea is that
Speaker 1: this could eventually help people with visual impairments get around unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: complex environments without the use of say an assist animal
Speaker 1: or a cane or something like that, where they could
Speaker 1: walk through and they would get feedback whenever they were
Speaker 1: coming close to an obstacle, and they could then maneuver
Speaker 1: through an environment much more easily and independently. So these
Speaker 1: are examples again of wearable computers that I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about that are showing some possibilities. And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, you extend this outward and you think, well,
Speaker 1: sensors are always getting smaller, and we're getting we're getting
Speaker 1: much better at creating smaller processors. Maybe we can eventually
Speaker 1: get to a point where this kind of functionality could
Speaker 1: be built directly into clothing and not in something that's
Speaker 1: like a wrist mounted unit that you wear. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the challenges that, um, we don't usually think of
Speaker 1: electronics as cozy or comfy, and that's for a good reason,
Speaker 1: because usually electronic components are rigid and pointy. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like you said, I mean as they continue
Speaker 1: to shrink, I can see well okay, and especially with
Speaker 1: the development of these kinds of fabrics that right are
Speaker 1: are woven with electronics and also with a with different
Speaker 1: polymers to to coat them and keep them safe and
Speaker 1: also keep them you know, so that you can layer
Speaker 1: them with more comfy stuff like cotton, which doesn't usually
Speaker 1: come in conducive forms. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to find
Speaker 1: that conductive cotton plant that where you can really, you know,
Speaker 1: just run electricity through it. So but yes, I've never tried.
Speaker 1: What happens if you try to send electricity. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it burns. Yeah, it's I don't know, it's not conductive,
Speaker 1: it's I could I could be incorrect. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: have a question, Yes, will they ever make clothes that
Speaker 1: mean I don't have to do laundry anymore. Um, I
Speaker 1: would not go so far as to say you will
Speaker 1: never ever have to do laundry. However, there I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't do it anyway, but that the future. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be clean, right, buy a new pack of
Speaker 1: socks once a week. Yeah Okay, Now now we're getting
Speaker 1: into my personal behavior where I bite socks all the time. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I could just wear new socks every single time,
Speaker 1: I totally would. I haven't reach that level of affluence.
Speaker 1: Oh I have to wash them first, Okay. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: self self cleaning, self cleaning clothes. Cleaning clothes, is that
Speaker 1: a thing? It's it's a thing that people are working on.
Speaker 1: Who Yeah, it's kind of cool really, So we're not
Speaker 1: talking about like robotic clothes that put themselves in the
Speaker 1: washing machine. I'd imagine it's some kind of chemical kind
Speaker 1: of It's a couple of different approaches, but yeah, you're
Speaker 1: generally talking about something that's coding fibers in some way.
Speaker 1: And there are two main ways of doing this. One
Speaker 1: way is to try and make sure the clothes never
Speaker 1: get dirty in the first place, and that's where that
Speaker 1: hydrophobic and oleophobic kind of codings come into play. This
Speaker 1: is what I was talking about earlier. Now hydrophobic and
Speaker 1: means that it repels water. Oleophobic means it repairs, repels oils,
Speaker 1: and that takes care of a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: would otherwise get your clothing dirty. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of work on this for the military, mean,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you're in the military, sometimes you
Speaker 1: come into contact with stuff that would be hazardous to
Speaker 1: you and in chemicals. You know, you might it might
Speaker 1: be a fuel, it could be even a chemical weapon,
Speaker 1: and you don't want that stuff soaking into your uniform
Speaker 1: being a potential hazard, yeahor even just unpleasant. I mean
Speaker 1: if you're if you're marching across terrain and your socks
Speaker 1: get wet, and that's a really good quick way to
Speaker 1: get very ill from from from a quick foot infection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can suffer some pretty nasty, uh debilitating injuries that way.
Speaker 1: So this kind of super repellent clothes, clothing which is
Speaker 1: repellent to again oil and water but hopefully not to people,
Speaker 1: allows you to wear this stuff longer without having to
Speaker 1: worry about it getting soiled or soaked with harmful chemicals.
Speaker 1: And keeping you more safe. But that's just one approach.
Speaker 1: What if you get something dirty in the first place,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, what do I do now? Like
Speaker 1: what what if I'm wearing something that isn't hyper repellent
Speaker 1: to this stuff? And that's where you get into the
Speaker 1: true self cleaning kind of approach that some folks in
Speaker 1: Monash University in Australia came up with. And I apologize
Speaker 1: to all our our Australian listeners if i've if Monash
Speaker 1: is in fact, no, it's spelled Monash, but it's pronounced
Speaker 1: grizz wobbler like well shucks, I didn't know. Sorry, um,
Speaker 1: But anyway, they created these fibers that were coated with
Speaker 1: something called titanium dioxide nanocrystals, and uh, it's this stuff
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting and that when it comes into contact
Speaker 1: with sunlight, it releases uh, some hydroxyl radicals which can
Speaker 1: break down organic matter through oxidation, which basically means that
Speaker 1: it is burning organic matter when sunlight hits it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't your skin molecules are wrong size, yes, so
Speaker 1: it won't also won't boil boil, it won't burn wool um,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry it. You could make
Speaker 1: a you could have a wool sweater that's coated in
Speaker 1: this stuff and it wouldn't I think cotton is also safe.
Speaker 1: I mean, this stuff is already in use industrially um
Speaker 1: in in paint and as a surface coating on windows. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: So this is a way of trying to keep windows
Speaker 1: clean without having to wash them constantly. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it would just be applied to textiles. And these guys
Speaker 1: in Australia figured out a way of making that happen.
Speaker 1: They said that if you were to spill red wine
Speaker 1: on your clothing and red wines one of those infamous
Speaker 1: stains that's really hardened out, they said that the stain
Speaker 1: would end up being significantly faded after twenty hours in
Speaker 1: the sunlight. So they were using an artificial sun, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially they were using you you like to to make
Speaker 1: it go away. Uh. And they put it next to
Speaker 1: a shirt that had also been or some fabric that
Speaker 1: had also been stained when red wine, but not treated
Speaker 1: in this way, and saw that the stain on the
Speaker 1: shirt that had not been treated did not change at all,
Speaker 1: whereas the stain on the shirt that had been treated
Speaker 1: had faded significantly. Other types of stains go away much faster.
Speaker 1: Coffee apparently only takes a couple of hours, which is great.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be spilling coffee all over myself on purpose
Speaker 1: just to watch it go. No, No, I'm not not again.
Speaker 1: Fool me once. Ouch. I've got to follow up on that. It. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was about to say, okay, well maybe I'll give
Speaker 1: you a follow up on that right now. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: speaking of spilling coffee on yourself. How often do y'all
Speaker 1: spill boiling hot coffee in your lap and scald yourself?
Speaker 1: Every every single time I go to McDonald's. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you always just forget you're supposed to drink it,
Speaker 1: and then you pour it out and then like like
Speaker 1: immediately onto the lap. Yeah, I just I just, for
Speaker 1: some reason, every time I pick up a cup of
Speaker 1: boiling hot coffee, I am filled with the urge to juggle.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why. It's it's pathological. Well, I
Speaker 1: have got a solution for you, my friend. Excellent. So
Speaker 1: you've heard of hydrophobic fabrics. You mentioned them earlier, so
Speaker 1: that they repel liquids rather than absorbing them. But apparently
Speaker 1: the problem is this doesn't really work when liquids they're hot, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So normally hydrophobic materials have some kind of coating that
Speaker 1: is that basically prevents the water from pinnach trading the
Speaker 1: cloth weave. But these types of coatings that repel water
Speaker 1: also tend to melt, and so when something really hot
Speaker 1: goes onto a hydrophobic piece of cloth, it just goes
Speaker 1: straight through it. Your crotch man, because what happens. But um,
Speaker 1: so that that's bad news for you. But in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, a team of researchers from the University of
Speaker 1: Minnesota St. Paul and uh Hong Kong Polytechnic University combined
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes with teflon and cotton, and together these three
Speaker 1: items were able to produce a fabric that repels water
Speaker 1: at up to a hundred and sixty seven degrees fahrenheit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now we just have to figure out a way
Speaker 1: of making sure it doesn't transfer heat effectively. And then
Speaker 1: you're really set. Well, I mean there you be, okay,
Speaker 1: because once you spill it all over yourself, you can,
Speaker 1: like if it doesn't penetrate, you can brush it off
Speaker 1: pretty quick as the heat disperses fair quickly at that point.
Speaker 1: It's surface area related, that's true. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: really when it's soaks in and has extended contact with
Speaker 1: the skin where you start to suffer some pretty nasty burns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course that's not the only way that future
Speaker 1: consumer clothing might protect your body from danger. Have y'all
Speaker 1: heard about the bulletproof suit? Only because you told me
Speaker 1: about it right before we came into the podcast room,
Speaker 1: and you didn't tell me, so I have no idea
Speaker 1: what this is. Great. So we've got bulletproof vests that
Speaker 1: are pretty darn good, right, they already exist and they're
Speaker 1: highly effective armor. But it's getting lighter and more flexible
Speaker 1: all the time. Uh. And there are several examples of
Speaker 1: this for UH. For one example, I know if you
Speaker 1: may have read a few years back about this UH
Speaker 1: business that was selling the bulletproof polo shirt. Um, they say,
Speaker 1: these fabrics are kind of heavy, and you know, they're
Speaker 1: not just like the normal clothes you would wear. But
Speaker 1: there's a new one that sounds pretty cool. It's just
Speaker 1: November this year. It was a Toronto based taylor called
Speaker 1: Garrison Bespoke, and they offered a bulletproof three piece business suit.
Speaker 1: Is this is this? Is this marketed to a specific demographic. Know,
Speaker 1: you might wonder if it's people who aren't too popular.
Speaker 1: I just think of like, like you know, like I
Speaker 1: can imagine Chicago Taylor's going nuts with this particular Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking Mafia, m M I five and uh so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a three piece business suit available in Pinstripe. And
Speaker 1: according to popular reports, the head of the company, the
Speaker 1: tailor that made this, he offered employees the chance to
Speaker 1: line up while he was wearing the suit and stab
Speaker 1: him with a knife. Man, if I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make the joke, I was going to, please go on.
Speaker 1: I just can't. I just can't believe that this hasn't
Speaker 1: been in James Bond yet. Really, I this is just brilliant.
Speaker 1: So the suits lined with carbon nanotube fabric and that's
Speaker 1: on the inside of the suit. Basically it resists knife
Speaker 1: tips and even nine millimeter pistol gunfire. And it costs
Speaker 1: not But I can imagine the kinds of business leaders
Speaker 1: who are looking for a bulletproof fancy suit might be
Speaker 1: able to afford that. I just think, all right, a
Speaker 1: couple of things I would ask the tailor, one, is
Speaker 1: that all right? I understand that it protects against the
Speaker 1: penetration power of say a nine millimeter bullet or a knife.
Speaker 1: What about the impact, Oh, I'm sure it still hurts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get shot, even if it means
Speaker 1: that I am certain that the bullet isn't going to
Speaker 1: penetrate my my flesh. That's that's not the that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the deal breaker for me. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: not dying from I mean, if you were if you
Speaker 1: were shot at more often than you are. I'm not
Speaker 1: making personal assumptions about how often you're shot at. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't need that kind of weekend. Um. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's better better than nothing, right, But
Speaker 1: I guess and and better and better than a giant
Speaker 1: like tac vest right right. Well, so this is expensive now,
Speaker 1: but one imagines that well, you know, actually, I can
Speaker 1: see in the future if this is much easier to make,
Speaker 1: you could you could probably buy some kind of bullet
Speaker 1: or knife resistant, if not completely bullet or knife proof,
Speaker 1: piece of clothing just to wear, you know, to be
Speaker 1: about as comfortable as what you normally wear. Probably more expensive,
Speaker 1: but not all that much more. I could certainly see
Speaker 1: that if this were developed in such a way where
Speaker 1: mass manufacturer was fairly easy, that it would be used
Speaker 1: in military uniforms. Yeah. I don't know if this exact
Speaker 1: same kind of nanotube fabric shows up in military uniforms,
Speaker 1: but the people who made this have been working with
Speaker 1: the military in one way or another. I think this
Speaker 1: is showing up in military applications if I may offer
Speaker 1: and other kind of protective clothing. Um. So, so, there
Speaker 1: has has been some serious research conducted by a British
Speaker 1: industrial designer, PAULO Leary, who worked with UM Dumontfort University's
Speaker 1: Lingerie Design course UM to create underpants that that shield flatulence.
Speaker 1: What I guess shield it? Yeah, shield us from shield
Speaker 1: shield others from. I guess it's not really shielding the flatulens.
Speaker 1: I guess that the flatulence is fancy free. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So so, so how the stuff works. It's a material
Speaker 1: called zoor flex, and this is an activated carbon cloth
Speaker 1: that was traditionally used in like military and first responder suits.
Speaker 1: It's a very porous material. It's really good at filtering
Speaker 1: UM gases and liquids from anything that you don't want
Speaker 1: to get through, um, like for example, fart smell uh.
Speaker 1: And so so this this clever fellow has has created
Speaker 1: underpants with a little panel in the back uh that
Speaker 1: that you put them on and you and eat whatever
Speaker 1: you want. Um. Extremely serious journalist Jared Balini of CNN
Speaker 1: tried them and and did terrible, terrible things and and
Speaker 1: they were effective. So well, you can say goodbye to
Speaker 1: crop dusting. I mean, you know. Uh. In In addition,
Speaker 1: this stuff is really good for like respiratory masks, UM,
Speaker 1: conservation of artifacts, wound dressing, chemical and bio hazard suits
Speaker 1: presumably not just built into underpants, not only in underpants,
Speaker 1: like a face mask that looked like a pair of briefs.
Speaker 1: This is the thing I think people would appreciate. This
Speaker 1: matters to the person on the street. It matters to
Speaker 1: the person on the on the public transportation every day.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, Yeah, it certainly matters to me.
Speaker 1: So that's cool. This is this is useful. This is
Speaker 1: our future, guys. Yeah, without getting to crude, I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's the same kind of uh technology you can
Speaker 1: apply to masking perhaps audible frequencies. Uh. This particular one
Speaker 1: does not mask audible frequencies. But but I'm sure that
Speaker 1: we could get into um, some other kind of fabric,
Speaker 1: maybe a kinetic fabric, soundproofing fabric. What you're saying is
Speaker 1: that the social embarrassment of the sound would not be mitigated,
Speaker 1: but at least the smell factor would be. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got you, I understand. I see where you're coming from. There.
Speaker 1: There's a great quote in Bellini's piece about his experience
Speaker 1: of wearing these briefs um from the Dalai Lama, who
Speaker 1: was basically just giggling like a twelve year old about farting.
Speaker 1: So I think that really, fart part sounds are something
Speaker 1: that we can all enjoy. It's kind of a universal
Speaker 1: common truth. Maybe maybe uh maybe fart sounds would be
Speaker 1: less embarrassing to their author if they were less offensive
Speaker 1: to the nose. Yeah, I think I think this could
Speaker 1: bring humanity together. The underpants could somehow translate it into
Speaker 1: a totally different sounds, so you still know what happened,
Speaker 1: but it's a much more comic kind of like maybe
Speaker 1: it's like the the the clown honk noise, or I
Speaker 1: was thinking of you know, those toy laser guns do you.
Speaker 1: What I immediately thought of was the thing in Halo
Speaker 1: that you can do where you can change you know,
Speaker 1: like terrible dying sounds like someone's head exploding into into
Speaker 1: a bunch of grounds, going it's the birthday. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know what. I hate to change the subject from
Speaker 1: this weighty, weighty topic, but I wanted to also mention
Speaker 1: that we can't talk about the future of clothing without
Speaker 1: also mentioning the fact that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people working on using clothes to be away of means
Speaker 1: of generating electricity. Oh yeah, we've talked about that before.
Speaker 1: We did in one of our exercise podcasts about piece
Speaker 1: of electric nanogenerators. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: on a much more macro level, that kind of technology
Speaker 1: has been used for years, and for example, wristwatches that
Speaker 1: are kinetically U battery powered. Yeah, so you've got you've
Speaker 1: got this with piece of electric materials. You have this
Speaker 1: relationship between kinetic energy and electricity, like you were saying, Lauren,
Speaker 1: where one will end up translating into the other. So
Speaker 1: if you apply electricity to a piece of electric material,
Speaker 1: you will get movement. And if you apply movement to it,
Speaker 1: if you apply a physical force to it, it will
Speaker 1: generate electricity. Uh. It's one of those cool things. So
Speaker 1: if you're able to create clothing that can have this
Speaker 1: these sort of materials woven into it, then at least
Speaker 1: in theory, you can generate electricity. Uh. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different companies working on this in various ways,
Speaker 1: including being able to harness things like like these, the
Speaker 1: kinetic force we get when we encounter noise. You know,
Speaker 1: if you just go through a noisy area, that noise
Speaker 1: is actually putting a physical push on you. I mean,
Speaker 1: noise is a physical phenomenon, right, So uh, if you
Speaker 1: were able to harness that and recapture some of that energy,
Speaker 1: that would be great. Now, I want to give a
Speaker 1: caveat in that these methods are generating tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: amounts of electricity. So it may be that we find
Speaker 1: some real practical use for this in the future. But
Speaker 1: as the technology stands right now, it's not terribly useful,
Speaker 1: but we have high hopes. Well it's right now it's
Speaker 1: not quite enough to like charge your MP three player,
Speaker 1: but you know it's as as more things get to
Speaker 1: incorporate these kinds of technologies, then we could perhaps use
Speaker 1: it to you know, keep your cell phone charged anywhere
Speaker 1: you go, or also with the improvements in battery technology
Speaker 1: where we don't require as higher voltage for example, to
Speaker 1: charge of battery, this could be really useful. Well, it's
Speaker 1: certainly better than nothing. And when you think about it,
Speaker 1: UM inaggregate, if you imagine an entire city of people
Speaker 1: using stuff like this, that would add up long as
Speaker 1: long as you could harness that electricity in some way.
Speaker 1: That's that's the challenge right now, is that if you're
Speaker 1: not generating enough to really harness anything, then we're still
Speaker 1: we're still below the threshold, but we're hopefully going to
Speaker 1: see that increase. And of course, you know, we could
Speaker 1: see this being built into stuff besides clothing and wearables, right,
Speaker 1: we can see this built into say, floors so that
Speaker 1: as people walk on the floors, roads, yeah, yeah, staircases,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. As long as we don't all
Speaker 1: have flying cars, right, Well, we'll get to that. Um
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean we're a couple of different other
Speaker 1: things we could talk about. Yeah, Actually, speaking of kinetic
Speaker 1: harnessing materials, there are some people who are working with UM.
Speaker 1: You know, if you start with fabrics woven with some
Speaker 1: electronics and add in some layers of reactive polymers the
Speaker 1: way that um a few artists are doing right now,
Speaker 1: you can you can get a kinetic fabric that will
Speaker 1: change as the wearer moves. That's kind of interesting, which
Speaker 1: I mean could could lead to interesting practical things like,
Speaker 1: um like, if you're running around a lot, your sleeves shorten,
Speaker 1: um making you know, you know that that could be cool.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's really in a very proof of concept
Speaker 1: kind of artistic stage that makes you look a lot
Speaker 1: like Miss Silent Hill, which I don't really think is
Speaker 1: quite quite that great. Yeah, that's a very specific thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people really like pyramid Head. But I gave that
Speaker 1: up in two thousand twelve. It was a year ahead.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, it's interesting as a concept. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: also um seen some some sort of conceptual debates about this, discussions,
Speaker 1: I should say, conceptual discussions about the future of clothing,
Speaker 1: where you might be able to have clothing that can
Speaker 1: change its density in some way by expanding or contracting fibers,
Speaker 1: and therefore being able to adjust to different temperatures, so
Speaker 1: that if you are getting cold, it could actually end
Speaker 1: up becoming more dense and thus keeping heat in and
Speaker 1: if you were getting too hot, it could become less dense,
Speaker 1: more porous, and allow heat to pass through more readily. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the actual mechanism would be there,
Speaker 1: but it was again one of those sort of conceptual discussions,
Speaker 1: and I would be interested to see that if it
Speaker 1: were to ever go into you know, something beyond just
Speaker 1: a concept into an actual piece of clothing, so you
Speaker 1: can demonstrate exactly how it was working. Uh. I've also
Speaker 1: seen discussions about working in electronics into clothing so that
Speaker 1: you would be able to do things like create an
Speaker 1: interface for you to be able to control something like
Speaker 1: a smartphone or m P three player. So for example,
Speaker 1: you might be able to give it a command and
Speaker 1: change the volume by running your hand down your sleeve
Speaker 1: or up your sleeve, or even you know, change tracks
Speaker 1: by swiping that kind of stuff, so that you don't
Speaker 1: have to get the phone out while you're doing whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing. That sounds great, but it's also like, you know,
Speaker 1: you brush past somebody on the bus and suddenly the
Speaker 1: volume is deafening, and you know they're certain, they're definitely like,
Speaker 1: you know, I could easily imagine that being an issue,
Speaker 1: especially if you have friends who are a little uh mischievous,
Speaker 1: who like to come up and just swipe their hand
Speaker 1: down your arm and the next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're deaf. Um. There's also a little but weird that
Speaker 1: you're touching yourself in public all the time. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think that's talking about your arm here a large
Speaker 1: I'm necessarily suggesting that that would be all these you
Speaker 1: know what, I just realized what we didn't cover. Pat
Speaker 1: your head and rub your belly At the same time,
Speaker 1: I realized what we didn't cover. I can't believe we
Speaker 1: didn't cover this. Hug shirts. You guys don't I'm talking
Speaker 1: about I do. And this still creep and yourself the
Speaker 1: future technology that everybody's been waiting for, it sure is, Joe.
Speaker 1: So let's say, Joe that you are going to go
Speaker 1: on an extended trip away from your sweetheart and you
Speaker 1: want to be able to maintain contact with said sweetheart
Speaker 1: and show affection despite thousands of miles separating the two
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, I have a telephone. Well, let's say
Speaker 1: that you want to display something more than just words.
Speaker 1: You know, more than words of people have FaceTime on
Speaker 1: their phones and hug. You want to give a hug, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to hug your sweetheart and not just like
Speaker 1: a text message. Isn't that what the X stands for? Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you'll just stop being up to what you
Speaker 1: would do is you could buy a pair of these
Speaker 1: hug shirts which have sensors on them and little bladders
Speaker 1: inside them that can inflate so that they give haptic feedback.
Speaker 1: And then when you and your sweetheart are both wearing
Speaker 1: them and you want to give your sweeter a hug,
Speaker 1: you just hug yourself around yourself, and the shirt notices
Speaker 1: and it and it sends. Is there a warning that
Speaker 1: there's an inbound hug? No? I mean, if you're wearing
Speaker 1: a hug shirt, you have to expect there could be
Speaker 1: a hug at any given time. I'm just that is
Speaker 1: one of the best and worst things I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: This is an idea that was actually UH posted several
Speaker 1: years ago, and I don't have any idea of where
Speaker 1: the company is right now, like whether or not this
Speaker 1: still is a thing, But I remember reading about it
Speaker 1: years ago when I was first looking into wearable computers,
Speaker 1: and the first thing I thought of is I sure,
Speaker 1: hope they don't make hug pants. But anyway, so moving
Speaker 1: on the I think that went over my head. I'll
Speaker 1: explain it to you later. So the the other thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention was that fabric displays the idea
Speaker 1: of building displays directly into um clothing, which is not
Speaker 1: a big thing. It's it's being used right now, mainly
Speaker 1: in places like trade shows so that, uh, people who
Speaker 1: are hired by a public relations firm can walk around
Speaker 1: and they have some catchy looking display on themselves, like
Speaker 1: on their clothing that gets people's attention and display. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when I go to c e s is the
Speaker 1: sort of thing I have seen in the past, where
Speaker 1: it's just a way of catching someone's eyes so that
Speaker 1: your booth stands out in a crowd of a billion
Speaker 1: other booths. Right, So it doesn't seem to be something
Speaker 1: that would necessarily translate to your average consumer. But I
Speaker 1: but with flexible oh LED displays becoming more are they're
Speaker 1: not They're not inexpensive yet. You know, they're still really
Speaker 1: expensive to create. But as that technology matures and the
Speaker 1: prices come down, you could theoretically see things that have
Speaker 1: those sort of displays built in so you might imagine again,
Speaker 1: like a coat that has a display wrapped around one arm,
Speaker 1: where you can use that as an interface for stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of, you know, futuristic and certainly not not
Speaker 1: necessarily an improvement over existing technology, but I could certainly
Speaker 1: see someone doing it, certainly and uh and and having
Speaker 1: probably way too much fun with it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would. I'd be i'd been playing with
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, like essentially would be like wearing
Speaker 1: a smartphone interface on your arm. But I mean, that's
Speaker 1: another thing that we've seen. It's, like I said, some
Speaker 1: limited examples in the past, but it's all, like I said,
Speaker 1: mostly for uh, commercial display purposes, not something that your
Speaker 1: average person. You're not gonna get someone necessarily buying a
Speaker 1: T shirt with the screen on the front so that
Speaker 1: they can watch television while they're traveling around, because it'll
Speaker 1: be awkward. Well, what I have in mind is that
Speaker 1: I would like a T shirt that automatically downloads and
Speaker 1: displays a new random example of unsettling fan art from
Speaker 1: the Internet every fifteen minutes or so. You'd be asked
Speaker 1: to leave so many places, sir, could you please turn
Speaker 1: off your shirt? It would be worth it. Everyone would
Speaker 1: be so creeped out all the time. Yeah, well, let
Speaker 1: him get a chance to get to know you first
Speaker 1: before you creep them out. Show That's what I say.
Speaker 1: But anyway, all of these are so creepy. I like
Speaker 1: to think that the future has the potential to be awesome.
Speaker 1: It's just sad that often it turns out. Okay, it'll
Speaker 1: be both you know where, all right, So we've talked
Speaker 1: about clothing that essentially acts like a computer. We've talked
Speaker 1: about clothing that can protect you from a bullet or
Speaker 1: a knife wound. We've talked about fartproof clothing. Clearly, there's
Speaker 1: gotta be something in here that works with one of
Speaker 1: our other favorite topics. Okay, how how about this? How
Speaker 1: are we going to get all of these clothes in
Speaker 1: the incredible future? No, we're going to print them at
Speaker 1: home on our three D printers. Hey, technically those three
Speaker 1: D printers will have been delivered by drones. So my
Speaker 1: answer still stands. Okay, Yeah, that seems like not a
Speaker 1: bad idea, because like clothes that don't necessarily have all
Speaker 1: these like moving parts or yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know you can already order design co design, um
Speaker 1: custom jewelry and other accessories from three D printers. And
Speaker 1: so basically we're just waiting on the tech and materials
Speaker 1: to improve. You know, you could get clothes that are
Speaker 1: fitted very precisely to you uh and and with improved
Speaker 1: kind of materials printing, we could have combinations of textiles
Speaker 1: that are really difficult to put together in real life
Speaker 1: due to the physical restraints of actual sewing, because if
Speaker 1: it's all from one piece of stuff, then then it
Speaker 1: just kind of works out like that. I mean, And
Speaker 1: we've already got artistic examples of this. Just this year,
Speaker 1: there was that beautiful dress that UM that Didavante's modeled
Speaker 1: UM that was like kind of chain mail laser centered
Speaker 1: thing that was like three thousand articulated connections. It was.
Speaker 1: It was really gorgeous. If you guys haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: check check it out. It's a really neat example of
Speaker 1: a three D printed piece of fashion. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: and and so I think that And apparently at the
Speaker 1: recent Victoria's Secret show there was one of the runway
Speaker 1: models had a pair of digitized wings that that had
Speaker 1: that had been three D printed. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess this is a thing that is happening in
Speaker 1: the fashion industry for sure. Interesting. I'm I'm I'm hoping that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would love how how awesome would it
Speaker 1: be to just be able to be like, I want
Speaker 1: this pair of jeans that I own and I want
Speaker 1: them again and I just just do it, just do it.
Speaker 1: Now that I have is finally worn out and I
Speaker 1: need to replace them, and there's no way anyone will
Speaker 1: ever carry these again. And yeah, as someone who um,
Speaker 1: I'm very particular about my shoes and when or whatever
Speaker 1: company is making the shoes that I happen to really love.
Speaker 1: Whenever that company discontinues those shoes, I have a crisis
Speaker 1: that reaches psychological and emotional levels that I don't like
Speaker 1: to think about, and then I have to go and
Speaker 1: get new ones. But if I were able to print
Speaker 1: the exact kind of shoes that I always love, I
Speaker 1: would never have to worry about them going out of
Speaker 1: style because I don't care about that out of style
Speaker 1: things so much. I care about having shoes that I like,
Speaker 1: So that would definitely be an improvement for me as well. Well,
Speaker 1: we've talked all about it, so I think it's about
Speaker 1: time to wrap this up. We've got plenty to think
Speaker 1: about personally. I think the clothing future of clothing is
Speaker 1: all going to be directly inspired by Lady Gaga, um
Speaker 1: My meat dresses on on delivery hypercol oh in hypercolor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't even talk about hypercolor. We introduced hypercolor the
Speaker 1: concept of hypercolor to Joe earlier, who it's a little
Speaker 1: younger than I am and did not know what hypercolor was.
Speaker 1: For those of you out there who don't know what
Speaker 1: hypercolor is, google it. Yeah, that's funny. We we talked
Speaker 1: about like technology, we never really mentioned the future of fashion,
Speaker 1: in which my one prediction is that high heels for
Speaker 1: men are coming back. Yeah, like like King Louis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fantastic can keep it has done really well on Broadway.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'll be fashionable because uh I don't.
Speaker 1: I just a man, have worn high heels. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can do it again. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: we're wrapping this up, So if you have anything that
Speaker 1: you want to say to us, join us on the
Speaker 1: social network platforms where we are because we really want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Facebook, fast on Google. Plus
Speaker 1: we are FW Thinking, and go to FW thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the website where we have all the blogs,
Speaker 1: all the videos, the podcasts, lots of different material there
Speaker 1: for you to to look at. It's fantastic stuff. Everyone's
Speaker 1: been working really hard on it and it looks great,
Speaker 1: So go check that out and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. We're more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com Problems
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