@ideasbazaar & @stripepartners!

Adornment, enchantment, magic and ridicule!

! Simon Roberts, Founding Partner!

London, 10th December 2013! !
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Anthropologists have always been into wearables

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Wearables dress us and address society !

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Wearables extend our selves into society!

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Wearables locate us culturally and socially !

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The culture coding of clothing!

Image that illustrates the ne distinctions that can be signaled by clothes that we wear and the rich set of stories and schemas required to decode these!

Wearables consist of and conform to codes!

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The power of wearables is often in the software!

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Material matters! !

But there is also immense power in the hardware !

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Hardware!

Software! Firmware!

The power of our adornments!

Lollip[op man!

Our wearables are already smart!

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Our wearables are technologies of enchantment!

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Techniques of production are sources of power!

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The enchantment of technology is the power that technical processes have of casting a spell over us so that we see the real world in enchanted form!
! Alfred Gell!
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Our wearable future will see enchantment amplied!

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A retail person come over to talk to her. My pprt quickly zoomed in past the data outows spilling out from the customers like polluted surf falling upon oncepristine shores and focused on McKay Watson. She was beautiful, the Retail girl. A tall, straight-necked creatureI caressed McKays data!

! ! She had graduated from Tufts with a major in international affairs and a minor in Retail science. Her parents were retired professors from Charlottesville, Virginia, where she grew upShe didnt have a boyfriend at present but enjoyed the reverse cowgirl position with the last one!

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New forms of power dressing?! ! Whats the (dress) code for wearables?! ! A new role for clothing? !
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Emergent forms of power dressing !

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But where does power and control lie?!

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And does clothing become a dumb pipe?!

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Magic and technology !

A magical attitude is a by-product of technological activity!

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Magic and its discontents!

The pursuit of wearable futures is animated by magic!

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But to avoid our gadgets being ridiculed we have to demonstrate the existence of a problem to be solved by the innovation!

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Nordic walking is open to ridicule perhaps but!

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Segway!

And so is (was?) Segwaying!

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Stuff! (Hardware)! Images! (Software)! Skills! (Firmware)!

Focus on the ing! ! Innoculate your gadgets against ridicule!

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Thank you. Do stay in touch.!

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For more on skill,s image and stuff see: Consumers, Producers and Practices : Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking, Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar in Journal of Consumer Culture 2005 5: 43 ! ! For more on magic and enchantment see Alfred Gell - The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology, in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics (1992)! ! For more on gadgets and ridicule see Mike Michael - Inoculating gadgets against ridicule, in Science as Culture (6: 2, 1996)!

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! @ideasbazaar & @stripepartners!
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