A number of my friends have taken to wearing some sort of fitness monitor on their wrist. These devices, they tell me, can keep track of how many steps they take in a day, what their heart rate is during different activities, the number of calories they burn (although not the number consumed), how well they slept, the number of hours they did nothing and even awaken them with an alarm. They, the more intelligent devices, even know where your are on the face of the earth in case you don’t know. This is all wonderful information, my friends say.
The magic of these devices is that they can communicate with your smart phone and thus create a record of your activity, health and who knows what else. Personally, I still have problems taking a photograph with my phone, getting a picture of my face instead of the beautiful sunset. And vice versa. But I digress. These little black (colour is optional) bands even give the wearer a little exciting tingle when it reaches some magical number like ten thousand steps per day. It is similar to the little gold star we used to get in Grade One for attendance or colouring within the lines. At my age (and the age of my peers) who needs a little tingle?
However, an article I read the other day raised some concerns about these marvellous devices. Apparently the information being transferred between your fitness device and your smart phone is open to hacking. I am unsure what the value of your identity theft information would be from a fitness recorder. Who cares if your heart rate goes down during a wait at a traffic light at the corner of John and Main Streets while you jog in place? Or alternatively, if your heart rate goes up as you are in a state of anxiety waiting for the light to change?
Does anyone, other than your bed partner, care if you had three ten minutes session of restlessness during the night - once when the cat jumped on the bed and twice when you had to get up and drain the potatoes, as it were? Would anyone benefit from knowing that you got an cute emoticon of a helicopter because you had walked up three sets of stairs that day? Of course they might also get the IP address of your smart phone but they most likely already had that.
These, along with the cost, are the reasons I do not wear one of those fitness recording devices. What I am waiting for is the next generation of personal monitors: the Head Fitness Band. At this point in our evolution we ought to be measuring our brain activity as much, if not more, than our physical activity. In the case of elder people, the brain activity may exceed the physical activity, for we often think we ought to be doing something and never quite get around to it or forget what it was we should have done until it’s too late in the day and Jeopardy! is coming on in ten minutes.
Already too many young people have forgone physical activity so the Fitness device companies need another way to capture that affluent market. The Head Fitness Band (available in many matching hair colours - courtesy of Miss Clairol) will measure and analyse the brainwaves we all emit, although some more than others. The HFB will monitor your vocabulary as an expression of your Brain Intelligence Quotient. The BIQ will calculate your fitness by computing the number of syllables in each word you use while talking and weight these based on the telephone or actual person-to-person conversations.
You guessed it - you get zero points for one-syllable words. The award scales moves upwards, peaking at 5 syllable words and then declines, quite sharply, I will adjoin, if you utilize 7 and 8 syllable expressions. This compensates for the fruitless effort of the population who endeavour to disguise their over-usage of the expressions similar to ‘like’ and ‘you know’. The HFB will offer a non-monetary compensation to people who accomplish a level of 3.7 out of 5.0 by displaying a gold star on the facade of the Band. Unfortunately for those who receive a ‘failing’ grade (the system does not actually grade users, only ‘suggests’ a requirement for additional cortexial exertion) will get a small shock, not hurtful enough to cause one to spill one’s Horton’s coffee beverage but enough to make one loudly emanate a four-syllable expletive.
No doubt many of you can see where all this collecting of information is heading. Your Smart Car - not the little two-seater - the one that drives itself, will monitor all your wearable and portable devices, compute what your Google glasses see, read your mind and take you to work if you have had a restful night and are not exhibiting a temperature beyond normal parameters and, of course, if your heart is beating in a non-irregular mode.
This is so frightening that I’m already thinking of not renewing my Smart phone contract.
