The Advent of the Wearable Computer

Notes and References

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to Anita Forrer, 14 February 1920, in Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life, edited and translated by Ulrich Baer, Random House, New York, 2005, p. 61.
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• Quoted in Kate Freeman, ‘What's so great about the Pebble smartphone watch?’, Lenovo, http://mashable.com/2012/08/07.
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• ‘Mobility Poll’ in Time, vol. 180, no. 9, 27 August 2012, conducted in July 2012. The exact figures are: 17 per cent of respondents in the UK; 18 per cent in the USA; 37 per cent in Brazil; 46 per cent in China; and 57 per cent in India.
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• 3G (Third Generation) refers to the wireless network used by smartphones, which enables wireless Internet access, mobile TV and video calls, as well as mobile telephony; while 4G (Fourth Generation) is a superfast mobile broadband, which enables easier and more reliable access to the Internet and a wider range of software applications. 4G is expected to become available in the UK towards the end of 2013.
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• James Rivington, ‘Project Glass: what you need to know’, Techradar, 26 July 2012; http://techradar.com
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• University of Washington Faculty and Staff Newspaper, vol. 25, no.131, 24–30 January 2008; available online at www.uwnews.org
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• Heads-Up Display is a transparent display of data that does not require the viewer to look away from his or her usual viewpoint. The term originates from pilots being able to view information with their heads up and looking forwards, instead of having to look down at their instruments.
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• L. J. Rich, ‘Dual-focus contact lens prototypes ordered by Pentagon’, BBC News, 12 April 2012; http://bbc.com/news/technology
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• Charles Q. Chol, ‘Virtual reality contact lenses offer 3D panorama’, Discovery News, 3 February 2012; http://news.discovery.com
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• HP Labs website statement, http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/intelligent_infrastructure/ (accessed 29/08/2012).
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• Ulrich Warnke, ‘Bees, birds and mankind: destroying nature by “electrosmog”’, BioElectromagnetic Research Initiative, 2009; available online at http://bemri.org
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• Ibid. Power density is officially measured in microwatts per square metre, and Warnke gives the figure of 0.001 microwatts per square metre for natural radiation, and 10,000 microwatts per square metre for artificially propagated wireless radiation in the average European city. The frequency range that he cites is between 300MHz and 300GHz.
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• Matthew Howard, interviewed on ‘You and Yours’, BBC Radio 4, 25 January 2012. For 3G and 4G, see note 4, above.
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• For a useful summary of research on the effects of electromagnetic radiation on wildlife, see Alfonso Balmori, ‘Electromagnetic pollution from phone masts. Effects on wildlife’, Pathophysiology, 16, 2009, pp. 191–9. For specific references, see note 27, below. For the effects on humans, see notes 16 and 27 below.
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• For the effect on plants, see Andrew Goldsworthy, ‘Why our urban trees are dying’, Bio Electromagnetic Research Initiative, 2011, at www.bemri.org; for the effect on animals and humans, see Olle Johansson, ‘Evidence for effects on the immune system’, The Biolnitiative Report, (updated 2012), Section 8, available online at http://www.bioinitiative.org
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• See note 14, above. There is a vast amount of research in this area, distributed across a multiplicity of specialist journals. Interested readers may find a useful starting point on the website of the BioElectromagnetic Research Initiative, at www.bemri.org. A good, readable overview of current research into the health effects of EMR on human beings is Sarah Benson, Joining the Dots: An Overview of Adverse Public Health Trends from 1996–2009, available online from www.emrstop.org One of the most authoritative studies on the health effects of EMR is The Biolnitiative Report (2007; last updated 2012), written by a group of concerned scientists, researchers and public health professionals, and available online at: http://www.bioinitiave.org
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• For an overview of reduced cognitive functions etc., see Sarah Benson, Joining the Dots, Chapter 8 (see note 16), and Mark Anslow, ‘The gathering brainstorm’, The Ecologist, 37, 10, 2008, pp. 43–8.
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• A helpful overview of transhumanist thought is given by Nick Bostrom, ‘A history of transhumanist thought’, Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14 (1), 2005, pp. 1–25.
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• Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Duckworth, London, 2005, p. 9.
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• Ibid., p. 313f.
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• Ibid., p. 29 and pp. 361–6.
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• Three pages of acclaim preface the 2009 edition of the book.
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• Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Penguin Books, London, 1999, p. 73.
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• According to Stephen Hawking, quoted in Rick Perera, ‘Hawking: re-engineer humans or risk machine rule’, at http://archives.cnn.com/2001: ‘Humans must develop an interface that allows the human brain to be directly connected to a computer, so that the artificial brain contributes to human intelligence, rather than opposing it.’
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• For an overview of this history, see Jeremy Naydler, ‘The inhuman in our midst: reflections on the origins and development of the computer’, New View, 56, 2010.
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• This is made evident in the writings of Alan Turing, to give just one example of a major twentieth-century pioneer of the computer. See, for instance, his seminal essay ‘Intelligent machinery’ (1948) in B. Jack Copeland (ed.), The Essential Turing, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004, pp. 395–432.
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• For trees see, for example, V. Balodis et al., ‘Does the Skrunda Radio Location Station diminish the radial growth of pine trees?’, The Science of the Total Environment, 180 (1), 1996, pp. 57–64;
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• Katie Haggerty, Adverse influence of radio frequency background on trembling aspen seedlings: preliminary observations’, International Journal of Forestry Research, 2010, 2010 - see http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfr/2010/836278/; and Andrew Goldsworthy, ‘Why our urban trees are dying’, Bio-Electromagnetic Research Initiative, 2011, at www.bemri.org.
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• For bees, see W. Harst, J. Kuhn and H. Stever, ‘Can electromagnetic exposure cause a change in behaviour? Studying possible non-thermal influence on honey bees—an approach within the framework of education informatics’, Acta Systemica, 6, 2006, pp. 1–6;
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• V.P. Sharma and N.R. Kumar, ‘Changes in honeybee behaviour and biology under the influence of cellphone radiations’, Current Science, 98 (10), 2010, pp. 1376–8;
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• U. Warnke, ‘Bees, birds and mankind: destroying nature by “electrosmog”’, BioElectromagnetic Research Initiative, 2009, at http://bemri.org.
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• For sparrows, see J. Everaert and D. Bauwens, A possible effect of electromagnetic radiation from mobile phone base stations on the number of breeding house sparrows (Passer domesticus)’, Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, 26, 2007, pp. 63–72;
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• Alfonso Balmori and Orjan Hallberg, ‘The urban decline of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus): a possible link with electromagnetic radiation’, Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, 26, 2007, pp. 141–51;
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• for the breeding success of storks, see Alfonso Balmori, ‘Possible effects of electromagnetic fields from phone masts on a population of White Stork (Ciconia ciconia)’, Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, 24 2005, pp. 109–19.
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• For the percentage of the population suffering from electro-hypersensitivity, see the World Health Organisation report, Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, World Health Organisation Press, Geneva, 2006, which puts it at between 1.5 and 3 per cent. Note, however, that the WHO does not accept that electromagnetic fields have been shown to cause the symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Interested readers may find themselves convinced otherwise by consulting Section 24:F of The BioInitiative Report (updated 2012), which reviews recent electro-hypersensitivity studies, especially the groundbreaking study by D. E. McCarty et al., ‘Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: evidence for a novel neurological syndrome’, International Journal of Neuroscience, 121, 2011, pp. 670–6, and A. Marino et al., ‘Response to letter to the editor concerning “Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: evidence for a novel neurological syndrome”’, International Journal of Neuroscience, 122, 2012, pp. 402–3. See also Alasdair and Jean Philips, ‘Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS)’, at http://www.powerwatch.org.uk, which reviews current research.
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• Plato, Republic, Book VII.4, 518C-D.
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