Everyday someone comes up with a new bizarre piece of technology. And the frightening thing is that we’re no longer finding these quite that bizarre. But I know that the Veldt Family Time Watch, many will agree with me, is horribly disturbing.
The Veldt Family Time Watch comes, unsurprisingly, from Japan, where people seem to be in a rush to replace humans with robots wherever possible. This new concept in smartwatches, actually goes so far as to remind its wearers to go spend some quality time with their children or other loved ones. Does the need to spend time with those we are close to no longer come from the heart that it has to be relegated to a buzz on the wrist or an alarm on a mobile phone?
Spending quality time
Imagine what this would look like: Mom is catching up with her office email when she gets a quality-time-alert and says oops, let me come back to this later. She goes in search of her kid, who’s maybe knee deep in some game. “Baby, would you come here for a moment, it’s ‘quality time’ time. Yes, you can go back to your game in ten minutes.” Or something like that. Or husband to wife: “Can you please come out of that shower now? It’s ‘quality time’ time and I have to get on a conference call in fifteen, so it has to be now.” In fact, if you’re not spending enough time with your family, will you not feel it, emotionally? Will diminishing relationships not be all the reminder you need and care about? But no, it seems we need a smartwatch to tell us.
It’ll probably be about as bizarre to the early users of such a watch at first, but it’s more than likely that they would actually get used to being reminded to turn their attention to loved ones. Soon, quality time will be a forced artefact of technology that you may find coded to run itself. Your virtual reality avatar could go spend your quality time for you, leaving you free to do what you really want to do.
On the other hand, there are some similar implementations of reminders like that on the Veldt watch that actually make sense.
Stay close
An app called Stay Close from the startup, TouchKin, comes to mind. This app doesn’t so much as remind you as it does help you keep track of a vulnerable family member’s activities through the day. For instance, a daughter living in another city might want to know whether her ailing mom remembered to take her medication or whether her dad went for his walk that day. The app takes into account the times when you’re busy by letting you send readymade messages and call later when you’re free. While it may sound as artificial as the Veldt Family Watch concept, it doesn’t turn out to be because the implementation is based on a constant keeping in touch without intrusiveness. You don’t need to be reminded that you love your dad, but rather, will know what he’s doing even while you’re busy — with mutual consent, of course.
Even without smartwatches that have to tell not-so-smart people when to go love their kids, there are technology aided ‘alerts’ peppering our lives everyday. You don’t have to look further than all those emails and messages and notifications you get telling exactly what to do on Valentine’s Day (which you probably didn’t care about in the first place) or what to send your mother on Mother’s Day or how to celebrate Diwali. The marriage of marketing and technology makes sure we get our fill of it.
(The article first appeared in The Hindu BusinessLine.)