ONLY 10 years ago, the notion of massive functionality on your wrist seemed a bit far-fetched. Even six years ago a complete office-on-the-arm prototype was greeted with incredulity. Today such an office is available in the form of a rather large wristwatch PC, though only in Japan. Even more impressive than the short time within which the concept became a product is the long list of technologies now available within a standard watch frame.

A casual walk around a few jewellers' shops, and a flick through a few catalogues, plus a search of the Web, resulted in a very impressive list. Apart from the various analogue and digital formats, the following functions are now available: push button, touch screen and voice I/O, PC access, multi-country time and date, calendar and organiser, timer/stop-watch, calculator, depth gauge, altimeter, thermometer, pedometer, GPS, camera, compass, TV/hi-fi IR controller, blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductivity, blood glucose, EKG, sound level monitor, pager, mobile phone, videophone, voice recorder, phone-call detector, computer, child tracker, emergency transmitter, radiometer, radio, TV, laser pointer, torch, slide rule, magnifying glass.

And then there is the more superficial cutsomisation with logos, people and group faces, scenes and pictures of all kinds, wrist bands, tool kits, cigarette lighters, water pistols, secret compartments, and wildly different case styles. Sadly, you don't get all of this at the same time, and some of the cases and wrist-bands are quite massive.

With many of these new devices comes a vast range of new services. Again the list is almost endless, including everything from electronic tagging and door-entry security systems to share-price changes and real-time football and cricket scores. All this functionality - seemingly from some past James Bond film - is a reality, and a significant market differentiator. Moreover, the products are selling. My guess is it will take another decade or so for me to realise my dream of all the above functionality (and more) in just one body-worn wrist unit. Right now I have to lug far too many individual technologies, and my pockets, belt and wrists are littered with a fractured set of what I can get rather than what I think I need.

While I welcome a future of intelligent and active jewellery, and everything else for that matter, I am not a fan of stone-age body adornment, and I would like to minimise my total wardrobe. I particularly look forward to the day when the weight of batteries, tools and devices about my person means I don't have to compensate by continually adjusting my clothing for equal weight distribution. At my last overseas trip I weighed in with over 3.5kg of batteries and equipment.

One interim solution to this engineering conundrum would combine the abilities of cellular radio systems with networked functionality and intelligence. A basic set of functions such as time, date, timer, calendar, plus a few sensor and monitoring capabilities, can be combined with a mobile phone for the wrist with very little memory and processing capacity. True network computing would then see all the complex and demanding functions concerned with massive databases and intelligence outsourced to the processing and storage capacity of the network. And I could then travel really light.

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk