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Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

Call it a professional environment and I think that's where we will see the first true impact of wearable computing. Your examples are two good ones. And of course people have mentioned hospitals. Just consider every profession where a desk jockey is not the norm. That's police, firemen, first responders, military, teachers, etc. Heck, why not cashiers and even bar tenders?

Then again, I'm biased. We're building and selling our own version of wearable computing, but driven by your biological rhythms.

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Also consider that in professional environs, various pros get away with all sorts of silly attire and add-ons - from scrubs and stethoscopes to other uniforms and utility belts. You look ridiculous, but you have a job to do.

Exactly, pros do it all the time. Eventually it becomes cool. I never buy into the hype about it looking bad for a few reasons:

I wear glasses. Years ago people thought all glasses looked silly. And they were, with giant thick lenses. Now people buy non-RX glasses to look cool, even.

I saw an animated sci-fi show from around 10 years ago (Denno Coil, Japanese anime) where in order to see the AR/VR world, you wore glasses. Every single kid wore glasses. You had to in order to see the VR/AR. Once something is common, the look factor doesn't matter.

I think we're just seeing people being disappointed that Reality is still decades/centuries/possibly impossible behind Fiction, and Fiction is only pulling further away as Reality gets better computers to render Fiction with.

Yup - all the cool kids are wearing stethoscopes!

And steel toed boots. And hard hats are the latest rage

I think it even has potential for a desk job. Having your workflow preserved as what you actually see instead of what you happen to save would be a huge time saver for forgetful people like me.

Especially for artists, designers, and maybe even engineers. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to see what I was doing when I started to screw something up.

Definitely utility there, but I assume there's always room for bigger and conformable screens, gestural UIs, etc.

When you're walking around all the time, not having to hold something is a pretty huge selling point.

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