I was bitching to Leila Johnston the other day that, in the same week, I’d seen tech-blog writers refer to both “wearable glasses” and, I swear, “wearable shirts.” They meant networked wearable computing objects, of course, but they gave the strong impression of spending so little time outside the Bay Area tech community that simple things like “glasses and shirts were already wearable” just pass them by now. These are the same people who say things like “I just don’t need 21 nice meals a week.” On this page, you will see Soylent users referring to actual food as “muggle meals.” Because what the vile, off-white milk from the plastic teat of the mother of invention really needed to finish its metaphor was being surrounded by language from children’s fiction. Childike Othering from people in their twenties who really know that shirts aren’t wearable until they’re linked and declare food to be something that the lumpen common people do.

 

Cut to Robert Scoble in the shower with his Google Glass: a toy that he played with obsessively for a couple of months and then put back in the toybox.

 

Reading: FOR A NEW NOVEL, Alain Robbe-Grillet.