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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 World dressed to sell SEVERAL decades ago an earth-moving plant manufacturer in America produced hats bearing the company logo. This was emblazoned on the front and used as an advertising gift for good customers. These soon became prized and sought-after items to the extent that demand outstripped supply, and almost by accident, the company discovered that people would pay to get one of its hats. At that time, a more extraordinary change of sector was hard to imagine as it gradually migrated into the clothing market. The now ubiquitous T-shirt followed, then sweaters and coats. This was probably the birth of the designer label, and what a counter-intuitive outcome! Who could have guessed that people would actually pay to advertise the goods they purchase. Today people walk about looking like animated billboards, and moreover, compete to have the latest, fashionable and communally acceptable brands of shoes and clothes. Forty years ago this was unimaginable, and impossible. The rise of the designer label now has the population of the planet vying to pay five to tenfold the market price for every form of visible and invisible item of clothing, luggage, jewellery, glasses and more. In a strange inversion of values, people now pay way over the odds to advertise the goods they purchase, and the era of "image is all" now seems to be well established. But it is only recently that the technology to do all this economically has become available. Without computer-controlled knitting, sewing and embossing machines, and a vast range of new materials, we would be constrained to a modest label on the inside, and sober patterns and colours on the outside of everything we wear and carry. And no doubt the world would be a much duller place. So what might new materials with active programming of colour and pattern through heat sensitivity or changing electrostatic charge promote? Even more radically, there is the possibility of electronically programming text, graphics, animation, and ultimately, shape and size. Arrive at the office looking like a hippie and switch to pinstripes as you walk through the door. Go to a party and switch to fancy dress on arrival. Connect your shirt or jacket to a PC and load your own pictures, animation or message. Rent out your chest, back and legs as advertising space. Integrate these now active surfaces with mobile phone, pager, organiser and computer and we then become both the medium and the message. Could it be that we will buy fewer clothes with greater programmability, and then use them as a primary means of communication. To date research into active materials is achieving very modest colour and pattern variations at slow rates of change, with only rudimentary modifications to shape possible for semi-rigid items. But we might anticipate fabricating surfaces with far greater abilities, perhaps approaching today's liquid crystal displays. Sometime over the next decade or two we are likely to see materials, including fabrics, becoming an active part of the IT infrastructure. Once active, it will be hard to resist programmable clothing, and the new means of advertising and narrowcasting they will bring. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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