December 25, 2013 • 43 mins
What's the future of clothing? From self-cleaning outfits to a suit that recharges your electronics, the crew takes a look at the clothing of the future.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future. He says. Black clothes,
white shoes, black hat, Cadillac. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon,
(00:20):
and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, clothes make the
person right, well just dead stairs. Okay, I realize I'm
saying here in a white T shirt and blue jeans. Well,
without clothes, it's hard to get people to take you seriously.
Even with clothes, it's difficult, you know, if you're giving
(00:41):
a Nobel Prize recipient lecture generally on this planet. Yes,
I've heard that it works out kind of okay on
Beta's at but I think that that's that's about that's
about it nice nice, Well, actually, though, the dumb thing is,
if you're a dog, you can get away with it
like nobody cares, unless you're goofy, in which case you
have to wear It's harder to be taken seriously as
(01:02):
a dog if you're wearing clothes. I think, well, what
would you take more seriously a dog or a person
who's naked? Okay, you know what, I'm going to just
go ahead and derail this hypothetical conversation we're having so
we can get onto the topic, which is the future
of clothing. Yeah, you know, all the things in our
environment have been getting upgraded by technology. So you used
(01:22):
to have like a notebook and a pencil. I guess
now some people still use those, but that tablet and
now we've got iPad apps that that that directly duplicate
a notebook and a pencil. Yeah, I guess you used
to have like a yelling at people, but now you
(01:42):
have a telephone or smart so now you can yell
at people over the phone. Yeah, you can yell at
people who are farther away that normally your voice wouldn't carry. Yes,
you can actually yell at people in space and they
could hear you. But it's basically other than some, you know,
ways of making them a little comp or maybe clothes
are about the same as they've been for a hundred
(02:03):
years or sure. Most of the improvements in them, I
mean have been a little bit in like zipper technology,
I suppose, but synthetics, but mostly in the manufacturing of them,
making them cheaper and more widely available in different styles, right, Yeah,
i'd say that we could definitely say like the production
of clothing has gotten a lot more high tech, but
maybe not necessarily like for the utility of the user,
(02:26):
the wear or the owner, whatever you'd call it. Yeah,
there only been a few technologies I would say that
have really advanced clothing. I mean, we could look at
specific industries and see examples, but they aren't for your
general consumer use. Like firefighters, for example, have clothing that
have and or astronauts have clothing that have much more,
(02:46):
uh important applications besides just covering the person. But those
are not things that translate to everyday clothes that you
and I would write. I mean, I guess you've got like,
I don't know, gortex or whatever. Sure, you've got some
stuff that's you know, maybe a little less flammable or
maybe it's hydrophobic or even oleophobic. I'll talk some more
(03:07):
about that in a little bit. I mean, you know,
for consumers, we've got like anti wrinkle material, sure, but
it's not I mean, it doesn't iron it. I think
I think the I think the most high tech piece
of clothing I have is actually, you know, I've got
some of gloves that have the little conductance um fingertips ys.
So that way, it's you can use a capacity of
touch screen and be able to actually manipulate it without
(03:30):
having to take your gloves off, which you know when
it starts getting cold. Is nice, especially since we all
are using phones that don't have physical buttons anymore. So,
or at least I am. So it means I need
to have something that can interact with the screen. That's interesting.
It's kind of specialty, but that's cool. Yeah, there's the
power glove. Okay, that's it's not an article of clothing.
That's a video game peripherals. The glove, isn't it. It
(03:53):
is a wearable It is wearable computing. I'll give you that.
I mean, you wouldn't turn one down if you were
out in the cold, right. I don't think a power
glove would fit me anymore anyway. What's the future of clothing, Jonathan, Well,
there's a there's a lot of different ways of looking
at this, and one of the things we want to
talk about was wearable computing. So that you know, the
power glove fits right in there in a sense, fits
(04:16):
in so it's like a computer that instead of putting
on your desk you put on your naked body. It's
a little bit of an oversimplification, but okay, you know,
I usually think of this in two major categories. I
think of passive systems and active systems. So a passive
system is clothing that has something that ends up taking
(04:36):
in information about either you or your environment and then
sending that in some way to a collection point, usually
like an app of some sort, where you can look
at that data and do something meaningful with it. Active
systems are ones that not only can interpret information about
the environment or say the person who's wearing them, but
(04:57):
actually make actual change just you, change in some way
so that it is reacting to that information as opposed
to just sending it to you. So an example there,
let's we'll go science fiction. Ey, Okay, an example there
might be that a passive system might let you know
how fast your heart is beating, and could be really
(05:18):
useful if you are doing something that's fitness related or
health related or as we talked about in our stress video.
You know, one of the things about stress is you
don't always realize yourself when you're stressed. Although I don't know,
I don't know if I would be less stressed. If
my shirt was telling me that I was stressing out, well,
I mean, it might be helpful for your your shirt
(05:40):
to remind you, like, hey, I'm taking some galvanic skin
conductance readings and um, you need to chill for a bit.
Maybe maybe maybe go outside do some yoga. I don't know, man,
now I'm stressed out, all right. But an active system
might be something more science fiction. Ye. Like, an example
that I gave before we came into the podcast room was,
you know, everyone's the first thing we thought of when
(06:03):
we thought of science fiction clothing, which is back to
the future, to where Marty McFly has the shoes that
automatically adjust his feet and the jacket that automatically adjust
to his build and will even dry itself off once
it gets wet, that kind of thing. And while the
active side is probably you know, there's not that many
examples we can point to in the real world or
(06:24):
even in in like prototype stages right now, there's a
lot going on with the passive side. And some of
this wearable computing takes the form of not like clothing,
not like shirts and pants and shoes and that kind
of thing, but stuff like a wrist bands, you know
the fitness band bands that we've talked about in the past. Um,
Google Glass is another great example where it's this wearable
(06:45):
computer that again is not I mean, if you've seen one,
you know it's not gonna be a fashion statement for
a while. Probably probably they're they're working towards it. Yeah,
I hear the next version is going to be a
little more streamlined U and core style. Just I'll be
O G walking around with mine. That's original Google glass
and and and these days a lot of the other
(07:06):
little especially fitness trackers, are coming in more and more
aesthetic versions because they realized that some people don't want
to look like they're from the nineteen eighties and right right,
and we're starting to see some interesting, uh sort of
I would say in the lab uses of of computing
and fabrics or computing and clothing. Actually got to take
(07:29):
a tour of a fabric computing lab at Georgia Tech
a few years ago, and that was really interesting seeing
how they were using conductive thread woven through materials so
that they could allow electricity to pass through the material
and use it for various purposes. Now we're still on
the very beginning stages of this kind of stuff too,
(07:51):
but you could see further down the line how that
could become useful. Uh. Some of the ones that I've
I've seen that are really interesting to me that again
are not necessarily the type of clothes that you're going
to wear for everyday use. One was the key glove,
which is a wearable, wireless, open source input device. So
think of it as an alternative to like a keyboard
(08:11):
or a track pad. It's a glove that you would
fit over one hand, and it's got all these different
sensors all along the fingers and the palm and uh
of the of the actual glove that you can use
to type stuff out, So every single joint of your
finger would be a different letter and you could Uh.
It's kind of laid out the way a stenographer's keyboard
is laid out, so that the the letters that are
(08:33):
most frequently used are a group together and uh and
the easiest places theoretically for most people to reach with
using one hand. So this could be a useful tool
for people who have mobility issues. It could be UM.
They've even added some haptic feedback to it so that
people who are visually impaired can use it. Understand what's
(08:53):
going on. What I was thinking was just that you
could be typing a document while you're out taking a
walk or on the trained or something and is sending
text without having to really take your hand off the
steering wheel. This is this has gotten, you know, well
beyond that because the videos I saw, even though the
the glove itself looked pretty primitive, I mean it was
fairly clunky, although it was an earlier build as well.
(09:14):
They explained in the video or in the text beneath
the video that in fact there are later versions that
are a little more streamlined. But because the haptic feedback,
you can even have things where you're manipulating virtual objects
and have the feedback to the gloves, so you know
when you're going too far. Uh. It can actually track
complete three access movement with your hands, so it can detect,
(09:36):
you know, when you rotate your wrist or cool, so
like like moving a little bit closer to to you know,
Tony Stark's Iron Man movie series, the three dimensional hologram, right, Yeah.
Instead of using cameras to track your movement, this is
actually using wires and some gyroscopes and accelerometers things like that,
and uh, and again, it was talking about how this
could be a great input device for people who have
(09:58):
either some sort of visual in pairman or perhaps they
have only the use of one arm, something like that.
Um is really interesting. Again, not the kind of clothing
that you and I would wear on a on an
everyday basis, but a really cool example of wearable computers.
Another really neat one was called tacit, and this is
a wrist mounted device that senses objects that are somewhere
(10:20):
between an inch away and ten feet away. So it's
designed to help people with who have well First, it
was designed to be part of a video game. The
idea that the guy had was, what if I created
a video game that was kind of like those old
text adventures where you would say things like go north,
you know, go west, open door, but it detects when
a grew is near exactly. That's in fact, he actually
(10:43):
says that in his blog about about tacit. He's like,
there's a grew in the room to the south. Um
It's it really does bring out the Zork reference. But anyway,
that the idea he had was that what if you
could go through a virtual maze and this particular wrist
mounted device would alert you when you were coming close
(11:04):
to a wall in the virtual maze by giving you
haptic feedback, you know, a little motor vibrating. And now,
originally he developed a headband that he wore, and he
said that it was effective. And he got to the
point where he thought, wait a minute, what if I,
instead of using this to manipulate UH an avatar through
a virtual environment, what if I used some form of
sensor that could detect the presence of an obstacle in
(11:27):
front of me, perhaps using something like ultrasound or some
other form of sensor like an optical sensor. And then
the feedback it gives is some form of haptic feedback,
like a vibration. And then the closer I am to
something that the stronger the vibration. And so he tried it,
and he had a headband and with the sensors and
would try going through a room blindfolded. And turned out
(11:48):
that he was able to get through rooms pretty easily,
except that anything that was lower down than say, head level,
he might still bang into, like a coffee table, the
old coffee table to the shin problem. But um, he
said that the problem, the other problem was that it
drove you nuts because you had all these little motors
connected to your head and they're constantly buzzing. He's like,
(12:08):
that drives you bonkers after about ten minutes. So that's
when he created the wrist mounted version that helps with
two problems. One the feedback is on your wrist and
on your head, and two, because you can put your
hand out in front of you, it can detect things
at a wider range of heights than say something that's
mounted to your forehead. And so the idea is that
this could eventually help people with visual impairments get around unfamiliar,
(12:32):
complex environments without the use of say an assist animal
or a cane or something like that, where they could
walk through and they would get feedback whenever they were
coming close to an obstacle, and they could then maneuver
through an environment much more easily and independently. So these
(12:52):
are examples again of wearable computers that I'm really excited
about that are showing some possibilities. And if you think
about it, you extend this outward and you think, well,
sensors are always getting smaller, and we're getting we're getting
much better at creating smaller processors. Maybe we can eventually
get to a point where this kind of functionality could
(13:12):
be built directly into clothing and not in something that's
like a wrist mounted unit that you wear. Yeah, I
think the challenges that, um, we don't usually think of
electronics as cozy or comfy, and that's for a good reason,
because usually electronic components are rigid and pointy. Yeah. Um,
but yeah, like you said, I mean as they continue
(13:33):
to shrink, I can see well okay, and especially with
the development of these kinds of fabrics that right are
are woven with electronics and also with a with different
polymers to to coat them and keep them safe and
also keep them you know, so that you can layer
them with more comfy stuff like cotton, which doesn't usually
come in conducive forms. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to find
that conductive cotton plant that where you can really, you know,
(13:55):
just run electricity through it. So but yes, I've never tried.
What happens if you try to send electricity. I'm pretty
sure it burns. Yeah, it's I don't know, it's not conductive,
it's I could I could be incorrect. Yeah, So I
have a question, Yes, will they ever make clothes that
mean I don't have to do laundry anymore. Um, I
(14:19):
would not go so far as to say you will
never ever have to do laundry. However, there I mean,
I don't do it anyway, but that the future. I
wanted to be clean, right, buy a new pack of
socks once a week. Yeah Okay, Now now we're getting
into my personal behavior where I bite socks all the time. Um. Yeah,
(14:40):
if I could just wear new socks every single time,
I totally would. I haven't reach that level of affluence.
Oh I have to wash them first, Okay. Anyway, it's
self self cleaning, self cleaning clothes. Cleaning clothes, is that
a thing? It's it's a thing that people are working on.
Who Yeah, it's kind of cool really, So we're not
talking about like robotic clothes that put themselves in the
(15:01):
washing machine. I'd imagine it's some kind of chemical kind
of It's a couple of different approaches, but yeah, you're
generally talking about something that's coding fibers in some way.
And there are two main ways of doing this. One
way is to try and make sure the clothes never
get dirty in the first place, and that's where that
hydrophobic and oleophobic kind of codings come into play. This
(15:21):
is what I was talking about earlier. Now hydrophobic and
means that it repels water. Oleophobic means it repairs, repels oils,
and that takes care of a lot of stuff that
would otherwise get your clothing dirty. And in fact, there
have been a lot of work on this for the military, mean,
because you know, if you're in the military, sometimes you
come into contact with stuff that would be hazardous to
(15:43):
you and in chemicals. You know, you might it might
be a fuel, it could be even a chemical weapon,
and you don't want that stuff soaking into your uniform
being a potential hazard, yeahor even just unpleasant. I mean
if you're if you're marching across terrain and your socks
get wet, and that's a really good quick way to
get very ill from from from a quick foot infection. Yeah,
(16:03):
you can suffer some pretty nasty, uh debilitating injuries that way.
So this kind of super repellent clothes, clothing which is
repellent to again oil and water but hopefully not to people,
allows you to wear this stuff longer without having to
worry about it getting soiled or soaked with harmful chemicals.
(16:24):
And keeping you more safe. But that's just one approach.
What if you get something dirty in the first place,
and you're like, well, what do I do now? Like
what what if I'm wearing something that isn't hyper repellent
to this stuff? And that's where you get into the
true self cleaning kind of approach that some folks in
Monash University in Australia came up with. And I apologize
(16:45):
to all our our Australian listeners if i've if Monash
is in fact, no, it's spelled Monash, but it's pronounced
grizz wobbler like well shucks, I didn't know. Sorry, um,
But anyway, they created these fibers that were coated with
something called titanium dioxide nanocrystals, and uh, it's this stuff
(17:07):
is pretty interesting and that when it comes into contact
with sunlight, it releases uh, some hydroxyl radicals which can
break down organic matter through oxidation, which basically means that
it is burning organic matter when sunlight hits it. Yeah,
it doesn't your skin molecules are wrong size, yes, so
(17:29):
it won't also won't boil boil, it won't burn wool um,
so you don't have to worry it. You could make
a you could have a wool sweater that's coated in
this stuff and it wouldn't I think cotton is also safe.
I mean, this stuff is already in use industrially um
in in paint and as a surface coating on windows. Yep, yep.
So this is a way of trying to keep windows
(17:50):
clean without having to wash them constantly. So in this case,
it would just be applied to textiles. And these guys
in Australia figured out a way of making that happen.
They said that if you were to spill red wine
on your clothing and red wines one of those infamous
stains that's really hardened out, they said that the stain
would end up being significantly faded after twenty hours in
(18:15):
the sunlight. So they were using an artificial sun, you know,
essentially they were using you you like to to make
it go away. Uh. And they put it next to
a shirt that had also been or some fabric that
had also been stained when red wine, but not treated
in this way, and saw that the stain on the
shirt that had not been treated did not change at all,
(18:36):
whereas the stain on the shirt that had been treated
had faded significantly. Other types of stains go away much faster.
Coffee apparently only takes a couple of hours, which is great.
I'm gonna be spilling coffee all over myself on purpose
just to watch it go. No, No, I'm not not again.
Fool me once. Ouch. I've got to follow up on that. It. Yeah,
(19:00):
I was about to say, okay, well maybe I'll give
you a follow up on that right now. Yeah, let's
speaking of spilling coffee on yourself. How often do y'all
spill boiling hot coffee in your lap and scald yourself?
Every every single time I go to McDonald's. Yeah, I
mean you always just forget you're supposed to drink it,
and then you pour it out and then like like
(19:21):
immediately onto the lap. Yeah, I just I just, for
some reason, every time I pick up a cup of
boiling hot coffee, I am filled with the urge to juggle.
And I don't know why. It's it's pathological. Well, I
have got a solution for you, my friend. Excellent. So
you've heard of hydrophobic fabrics. You mentioned them earlier, so
(19:42):
that they repel liquids rather than absorbing them. But apparently
the problem is this doesn't really work when liquids they're hot, right, Okay,
So normally hydrophobic materials have some kind of coating that
is that basically prevents the water from pinnach trading the
cloth weave. But these types of coatings that repel water
(20:05):
also tend to melt, and so when something really hot
goes onto a hydrophobic piece of cloth, it just goes
straight through it. Your crotch man, because what happens. But um,
so that that's bad news for you. But in two
thousand nine, a team of researchers from the University of
(20:26):
Minnesota St. Paul and uh Hong Kong Polytechnic University combined
carbon nanotubes with teflon and cotton, and together these three
items were able to produce a fabric that repels water
at up to a hundred and sixty seven degrees fahrenheit. Yeah,
so now we just have to figure out a way
(20:46):
of making sure it doesn't transfer heat effectively. And then
you're really set. Well, I mean there you be, okay,
because once you spill it all over yourself, you can,
like if it doesn't penetrate, you can brush it off
pretty quick as the heat disperses fair quickly at that point.
It's surface area related, that's true. I mean it's it's
really when it's soaks in and has extended contact with
the skin where you start to suffer some pretty nasty burns. Yeah,
(21:09):
but of course that's not the only way that future
consumer clothing might protect your body from danger. Have y'all
heard about the bulletproof suit? Only because you told me
about it right before we came into the podcast room,
and you didn't tell me, so I have no idea
what this is. Great. So we've got bulletproof vests that
are pretty darn good, right, they already exist and they're
(21:30):
highly effective armor. But it's getting lighter and more flexible
all the time. Uh. And there are several examples of
this for UH. For one example, I know if you
may have read a few years back about this UH
business that was selling the bulletproof polo shirt. Um, they say,
these fabrics are kind of heavy, and you know, they're
(21:51):
not just like the normal clothes you would wear. But
there's a new one that sounds pretty cool. It's just
November this year. It was a Toronto based taylor called
Garrison Bespoke, and they offered a bulletproof three piece business suit.
Is this is this? Is this marketed to a specific demographic. Know,
(22:14):
you might wonder if it's people who aren't too popular.
I just think of like, like you know, like I
can imagine Chicago Taylor's going nuts with this particular Yeah,
I'm thinking Mafia, m M I five and uh so. Yeah,
there's a three piece business suit available in Pinstripe. And
(22:34):
according to popular reports, the head of the company, the
tailor that made this, he offered employees the chance to
line up while he was wearing the suit and stab
him with a knife. Man, if I'm not going to
make the joke, I was going to, please go on.
I just can't. I just can't believe that this hasn't
(22:55):
been in James Bond yet. Really, I this is just brilliant.
So the suits lined with carbon nanotube fabric and that's
on the inside of the suit. Basically it resists knife
tips and even nine millimeter pistol gunfire. And it costs
not But I can imagine the kinds of business leaders
(23:19):
who are looking for a bulletproof fancy suit might be
able to afford that. I just think, all right, a
couple of things I would ask the tailor, one, is
that all right? I understand that it protects against the
penetration power of say a nine millimeter bullet or a knife.
What about the impact, Oh, I'm sure it still hurts. Yeah,
(23:39):
I don't want to get shot, even if it means
that I am certain that the bullet isn't going to
penetrate my my flesh. That's that's not the that's not
necessarily the deal breaker for me. Well, I think that
not dying from I mean, if you were if you
were shot at more often than you are. I'm not
making personal assumptions about how often you're shot at. Um.
(24:00):
I don't need that kind of weekend. Um. I'm just saying,
you know, it's it's better better than nothing, right, But
I guess and and better and better than a giant
like tac vest right right. Well, so this is expensive now,
but one imagines that well, you know, actually, I can
see in the future if this is much easier to make,
(24:21):
you could you could probably buy some kind of bullet
or knife resistant, if not completely bullet or knife proof,
piece of clothing just to wear, you know, to be
about as comfortable as what you normally wear. Probably more expensive,
but not all that much more. I could certainly see
that if this were developed in such a way where
mass manufacturer was fairly easy, that it would be used
(24:43):
in military uniforms. Yeah. I don't know if this exact
same kind of nanotube fabric shows up in military uniforms,
but the people who made this have been working with
the military in one way or another. I think this
is showing up in military applications if I may offer
and other kind of protective clothing. Um. So, so, there
(25:04):
has has been some serious research conducted by a British
industrial designer, PAULO Leary, who worked with UM Dumontfort University's
Lingerie Design course UM to create underpants that that shield flatulence.
What I guess shield it? Yeah, shield us from shield
(25:25):
shield others from. I guess it's not really shielding the flatulens.
I guess that the flatulence is fancy free. Okay, okay,
So so, so how the stuff works. It's a material
called zoor flex, and this is an activated carbon cloth
that was traditionally used in like military and first responder suits.
It's a very porous material. It's really good at filtering
UM gases and liquids from anything that you don't want
(25:47):
to get through, um, like for example, fart smell uh.
And so so this this clever fellow has has created
underpants with a little panel in the back uh that
that you put them on and you and eat whatever
you want. Um. Extremely serious journalist Jared Balini of CNN
tried them and and did terrible, terrible things and and
(26:10):
they were effective. So well, you can say goodbye to
crop dusting. I mean, you know. Uh. In In addition,
this stuff is really good for like respiratory masks, UM,
conservation of artifacts, wound dressing, chemical and bio hazard suits
presumably not just built into underpants, not only in underpants,
(26:32):
like a face mask that looked like a pair of briefs.
This is the thing I think people would appreciate. This
matters to the person on the street. It matters to
the person on the on the public transportation every day.
Let me tell you, Yeah, it certainly matters to me.
So that's cool. This is this is useful. This is
our future, guys. Yeah, without getting to crude, I wonder
(26:54):
if there's the same kind of uh technology you can
apply to masking perhaps audible frequencies. Uh. This particular one
does not mask audible frequencies. But but I'm sure that
we could get into um, some other kind of fabric,
maybe a kinetic fabric, soundproofing fabric. What you're saying is
(27:15):
that the social embarrassment of the sound would not be mitigated,
but at least the smell factor would be. Yeah, I
got you, I understand. I see where you're coming from. There.
There's a great quote in Bellini's piece about his experience
of wearing these briefs um from the Dalai Lama, who
was basically just giggling like a twelve year old about farting.
(27:36):
So I think that really, fart part sounds are something
that we can all enjoy. It's kind of a universal
common truth. Maybe maybe uh maybe fart sounds would be
less embarrassing to their author if they were less offensive
to the nose. Yeah, I think I think this could
bring humanity together. The underpants could somehow translate it into
a totally different sounds, so you still know what happened,
(27:58):
but it's a much more comic kind of like maybe
it's like the the the clown honk noise, or I
was thinking of you know, those toy laser guns do you.
What I immediately thought of was the thing in Halo
that you can do where you can change you know,
like terrible dying sounds like someone's head exploding into into
a bunch of grounds, going it's the birthday. Yeah, well,
(28:23):
you know what. I hate to change the subject from
this weighty, weighty topic, but I wanted to also mention
that we can't talk about the future of clothing without
also mentioning the fact that there are a lot of
people working on using clothes to be away of means
of generating electricity. Oh yeah, we've talked about that before.
We did in one of our exercise podcasts about piece
(28:45):
of electric nanogenerators. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
on a much more macro level, that kind of technology
has been used for years, and for example, wristwatches that
are kinetically U battery powered. Yeah, so you've got you've
got this with piece of electric materials. You have this
relationship between kinetic energy and electricity, like you were saying, Lauren,
where one will end up translating into the other. So
(29:07):
if you apply electricity to a piece of electric material,
you will get movement. And if you apply movement to it,
if you apply a physical force to it, it will
generate electricity. Uh. It's one of those cool things. So
if you're able to create clothing that can have this
these sort of materials woven into it, then at least
(29:28):
in theory, you can generate electricity. Uh. There are a
lot of different companies working on this in various ways,
including being able to harness things like like these, the
kinetic force we get when we encounter noise. You know,
if you just go through a noisy area, that noise
is actually putting a physical push on you. I mean,
noise is a physical phenomenon, right, So uh, if you
(29:52):
were able to harness that and recapture some of that energy,
that would be great. Now, I want to give a
caveat in that these methods are generating tiny, tiny, tiny
amounts of electricity. So it may be that we find
some real practical use for this in the future. But
as the technology stands right now, it's not terribly useful,
(30:14):
but we have high hopes. Well it's right now it's
not quite enough to like charge your MP three player,
but you know it's as as more things get to
incorporate these kinds of technologies, then we could perhaps use
it to you know, keep your cell phone charged anywhere
you go, or also with the improvements in battery technology
where we don't require as higher voltage for example, to
(30:36):
charge of battery, this could be really useful. Well, it's
certainly better than nothing. And when you think about it,
UM inaggregate, if you imagine an entire city of people
using stuff like this, that would add up long as
long as you could harness that electricity in some way.
That's that's the challenge right now, is that if you're
not generating enough to really harness anything, then we're still
we're still below the threshold, but we're hopefully going to
(30:58):
see that increase. And of course, you know, we could
see this being built into stuff besides clothing and wearables, right,
we can see this built into say, floors so that
as people walk on the floors, roads, yeah, yeah, staircases,
that kind of thing. As long as we don't all
have flying cars, right, Well, we'll get to that. Um
So yeah, I mean we're a couple of different other
(31:20):
things we could talk about. Yeah, Actually, speaking of kinetic
harnessing materials, there are some people who are working with UM.
You know, if you start with fabrics woven with some
electronics and add in some layers of reactive polymers the
way that um a few artists are doing right now,
you can you can get a kinetic fabric that will
change as the wearer moves. That's kind of interesting, which
(31:43):
I mean could could lead to interesting practical things like,
um like, if you're running around a lot, your sleeves shorten,
um making you know, you know that that could be cool.
Right now, it's really in a very proof of concept
kind of artistic stage that makes you look a lot
like Miss Silent Hill, which I don't really think is
quite quite that great. Yeah, that's a very specific thing. Um.
(32:08):
Some people really like pyramid Head. But I gave that
up in two thousand twelve. It was a year ahead.
But but yeah, it's interesting as a concept. Yeah. I've
also um seen some some sort of conceptual debates about this, discussions,
I should say, conceptual discussions about the future of clothing,
(32:31):
where you might be able to have clothing that can
change its density in some way by expanding or contracting fibers,
and therefore being able to adjust to different temperatures, so
that if you are getting cold, it could actually end
up becoming more dense and thus keeping heat in and
if you were getting too hot, it could become less dense,
(32:54):
more porous, and allow heat to pass through more readily. Uh.
I don't know what the actual mechanism would be there,
but it was again one of those sort of conceptual discussions,
and I would be interested to see that if it
were to ever go into you know, something beyond just
a concept into an actual piece of clothing, so you
can demonstrate exactly how it was working. Uh. I've also
(33:15):
seen discussions about working in electronics into clothing so that
you would be able to do things like create an
interface for you to be able to control something like
a smartphone or m P three player. So for example,
you might be able to give it a command and
change the volume by running your hand down your sleeve
or up your sleeve, or even you know, change tracks
(33:35):
by swiping that kind of stuff, so that you don't
have to get the phone out while you're doing whatever
you're doing. That sounds great, but it's also like, you know,
you brush past somebody on the bus and suddenly the
volume is deafening, and you know they're certain, they're definitely like,
you know, I could easily imagine that being an issue,
especially if you have friends who are a little uh mischievous,
who like to come up and just swipe their hand
(33:55):
down your arm and the next thing you know, you're
you're deaf. Um. There's also a little but weird that
you're touching yourself in public all the time. I don't know,
I think that's talking about your arm here a large
I'm necessarily suggesting that that would be all these you
know what, I just realized what we didn't cover. Pat
your head and rub your belly At the same time,
I realized what we didn't cover. I can't believe we
(34:17):
didn't cover this. Hug shirts. You guys don't I'm talking
about I do. And this still creep and yourself the
future technology that everybody's been waiting for, it sure is, Joe.
So let's say, Joe that you are going to go
on an extended trip away from your sweetheart and you
want to be able to maintain contact with said sweetheart
(34:41):
and show affection despite thousands of miles separating the two
of you. Yeah, I have a telephone. Well, let's say
that you want to display something more than just words.
You know, more than words of people have FaceTime on
their phones and hug. You want to give a hug, Yeah,
you want to hug your sweetheart and not just like
a text message. Isn't that what the X stands for? Okay,
(35:02):
So if you'll just stop being up to what you
would do is you could buy a pair of these
hug shirts which have sensors on them and little bladders
inside them that can inflate so that they give haptic feedback.
And then when you and your sweetheart are both wearing
them and you want to give your sweeter a hug,
you just hug yourself around yourself, and the shirt notices
(35:25):
and it and it sends. Is there a warning that
there's an inbound hug? No? I mean, if you're wearing
a hug shirt, you have to expect there could be
a hug at any given time. I'm just that is
one of the best and worst things I've ever heard.
This is an idea that was actually UH posted several
years ago, and I don't have any idea of where
(35:47):
the company is right now, like whether or not this
still is a thing, But I remember reading about it
years ago when I was first looking into wearable computers,
and the first thing I thought of is I sure,
hope they don't make hug pants. But anyway, so moving
on the I think that went over my head. I'll
explain it to you later. So the the other thing
(36:10):
I wanted to mention was that fabric displays the idea
of building displays directly into um clothing, which is not
a big thing. It's it's being used right now, mainly
in places like trade shows so that, uh, people who
are hired by a public relations firm can walk around
and they have some catchy looking display on themselves, like
(36:32):
on their clothing that gets people's attention and display. Yeah,
like when I go to c e s is the
sort of thing I have seen in the past, where
it's just a way of catching someone's eyes so that
your booth stands out in a crowd of a billion
other booths. Right, So it doesn't seem to be something
that would necessarily translate to your average consumer. But I
(36:55):
but with flexible oh LED displays becoming more are they're
not They're not inexpensive yet. You know, they're still really
expensive to create. But as that technology matures and the
prices come down, you could theoretically see things that have
those sort of displays built in so you might imagine again,
like a coat that has a display wrapped around one arm,
(37:18):
where you can use that as an interface for stuff. Um,
it's kind of, you know, futuristic and certainly not not
necessarily an improvement over existing technology, but I could certainly
see someone doing it, certainly and uh and and having
probably way too much fun with it. Yeah, I mean
I'm sure I would. I'd be i'd been playing with
that kind of stuff, like essentially would be like wearing
(37:40):
a smartphone interface on your arm. But I mean, that's
another thing that we've seen. It's, like I said, some
limited examples in the past, but it's all, like I said,
mostly for uh, commercial display purposes, not something that your
average person. You're not gonna get someone necessarily buying a
T shirt with the screen on the front so that
they can watch television while they're traveling around, because it'll
(38:02):
be awkward. Well, what I have in mind is that
I would like a T shirt that automatically downloads and
displays a new random example of unsettling fan art from
the Internet every fifteen minutes or so. You'd be asked
to leave so many places, sir, could you please turn
off your shirt? It would be worth it. Everyone would
(38:23):
be so creeped out all the time. Yeah, well, let
him get a chance to get to know you first
before you creep them out. Show That's what I say.
But anyway, all of these are so creepy. I like
to think that the future has the potential to be awesome.
It's just sad that often it turns out. Okay, it'll
(38:45):
be both you know where, all right, So we've talked
about clothing that essentially acts like a computer. We've talked
about clothing that can protect you from a bullet or
a knife wound. We've talked about fartproof clothing. Clearly, there's
gotta be something in here that works with one of
our other favorite topics. Okay, how how about this? How
are we going to get all of these clothes in
(39:06):
the incredible future? No, we're going to print them at
home on our three D printers. Hey, technically those three
D printers will have been delivered by drones. So my
answer still stands. Okay, Yeah, that seems like not a
bad idea, because like clothes that don't necessarily have all
these like moving parts or yeah, I mean, I mean,
(39:28):
you know you can already order design co design, um
custom jewelry and other accessories from three D printers. And
so basically we're just waiting on the tech and materials
to improve. You know, you could get clothes that are
fitted very precisely to you uh and and with improved
kind of materials printing, we could have combinations of textiles
that are really difficult to put together in real life
(39:49):
due to the physical restraints of actual sewing, because if
it's all from one piece of stuff, then then it
just kind of works out like that. I mean, And
we've already got artistic examples of this. Just this year,
there was that beautiful dress that UM that Didavante's modeled
UM that was like kind of chain mail laser centered
thing that was like three thousand articulated connections. It was.
(40:10):
It was really gorgeous. If you guys haven't seen it,
check check it out. It's a really neat example of
a three D printed piece of fashion. But um, you know,
and and so I think that And apparently at the
recent Victoria's Secret show there was one of the runway
models had a pair of digitized wings that that had
that had been three D printed. So I don't know,
(40:31):
I guess this is a thing that is happening in
the fashion industry for sure. Interesting. I'm I'm I'm hoping that.
I mean, I would love how how awesome would it
be to just be able to be like, I want
this pair of jeans that I own and I want
them again and I just just do it, just do it.
Now that I have is finally worn out and I
need to replace them, and there's no way anyone will
(40:53):
ever carry these again. And yeah, as someone who um,
I'm very particular about my shoes and when or whatever
company is making the shoes that I happen to really love.
Whenever that company discontinues those shoes, I have a crisis
that reaches psychological and emotional levels that I don't like
(41:14):
to think about, and then I have to go and
get new ones. But if I were able to print
the exact kind of shoes that I always love, I
would never have to worry about them going out of
style because I don't care about that out of style
things so much. I care about having shoes that I like,
So that would definitely be an improvement for me as well. Well,
we've talked all about it, so I think it's about
time to wrap this up. We've got plenty to think
(41:36):
about personally. I think the clothing future of clothing is
all going to be directly inspired by Lady Gaga, um
My meat dresses on on delivery hypercol oh in hypercolor. Yeah,
we didn't even talk about hypercolor. We introduced hypercolor the
concept of hypercolor to Joe earlier, who it's a little
younger than I am and did not know what hypercolor was.
(41:57):
For those of you out there who don't know what
hypercolor is, google it. Yeah, that's funny. We we talked
about like technology, we never really mentioned the future of fashion,
in which my one prediction is that high heels for
men are coming back. Yeah, like like King Louis. Yeah,
fantastic can keep it has done really well on Broadway.
I don't know that I'll be fashionable because uh I don't.
(42:19):
I just a man, have worn high heels. I don't
know if I can do it again. All right, guys,
we're wrapping this up, So if you have anything that
you want to say to us, join us on the
social network platforms where we are because we really want
to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Facebook, fast on Google. Plus
we are FW Thinking, and go to FW thinking dot com.
That is the website where we have all the blogs,
(42:41):
all the videos, the podcasts, lots of different material there
for you to to look at. It's fantastic stuff. Everyone's
been working really hard on it and it looks great,
So go check that out and we will talk to
you again really soon. We're more on this topic in
the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com Problems
(43:13):
brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future. He says. Black clothes,
white shoes, black hat, Cadillac. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalbon,
(00:20):
and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, clothes make the
person right, well just dead stairs. Okay, I realize I'm
saying here in a white T shirt and blue jeans. Well,
without clothes, it's hard to get people to take you seriously.
Even with clothes, it's difficult, you know, if you're giving
(00:41):
a Nobel Prize recipient lecture generally on this planet. Yes,
I've heard that it works out kind of okay on
Beta's at but I think that that's that's about that's
about it nice nice, Well, actually, though, the dumb thing is,
if you're a dog, you can get away with it
like nobody cares, unless you're goofy, in which case you
have to wear It's harder to be taken seriously as
(01:02):
a dog if you're wearing clothes. I think, well, what
would you take more seriously a dog or a person
who's naked? Okay, you know what, I'm going to just
go ahead and derail this hypothetical conversation we're having so
we can get onto the topic, which is the future
of clothing. Yeah, you know, all the things in our
environment have been getting upgraded by technology. So you used
(01:22):
to have like a notebook and a pencil. I guess
now some people still use those, but that tablet and
now we've got iPad apps that that that directly duplicate
a notebook and a pencil. Yeah, I guess you used
to have like a yelling at people, but now you
(01:42):
have a telephone or smart so now you can yell
at people over the phone. Yeah, you can yell at
people who are farther away that normally your voice wouldn't carry. Yes,
you can actually yell at people in space and they
could hear you. But it's basically other than some, you know,
ways of making them a little comp or maybe clothes
are about the same as they've been for a hundred
(02:03):
years or sure. Most of the improvements in them, I
mean have been a little bit in like zipper technology,
I suppose, but synthetics, but mostly in the manufacturing of them,
making them cheaper and more widely available in different styles, right, Yeah,
i'd say that we could definitely say like the production
of clothing has gotten a lot more high tech, but
maybe not necessarily like for the utility of the user,
(02:26):
the wear or the owner, whatever you'd call it. Yeah,
there only been a few technologies I would say that
have really advanced clothing. I mean, we could look at
specific industries and see examples, but they aren't for your
general consumer use. Like firefighters, for example, have clothing that
have and or astronauts have clothing that have much more,
(02:46):
uh important applications besides just covering the person. But those
are not things that translate to everyday clothes that you
and I would write. I mean, I guess you've got like,
I don't know, gortex or whatever. Sure, you've got some
stuff that's you know, maybe a little less flammable or
maybe it's hydrophobic or even oleophobic. I'll talk some more
(03:07):
about that in a little bit. I mean, you know,
for consumers, we've got like anti wrinkle material, sure, but
it's not I mean, it doesn't iron it. I think
I think the I think the most high tech piece
of clothing I have is actually, you know, I've got
some of gloves that have the little conductance um fingertips ys.
So that way, it's you can use a capacity of
touch screen and be able to actually manipulate it without
(03:30):
having to take your gloves off, which you know when
it starts getting cold. Is nice, especially since we all
are using phones that don't have physical buttons anymore. So,
or at least I am. So it means I need
to have something that can interact with the screen. That's interesting.
It's kind of specialty, but that's cool. Yeah, there's the
power glove. Okay, that's it's not an article of clothing.
That's a video game peripherals. The glove, isn't it. It
(03:53):
is a wearable It is wearable computing. I'll give you that.
I mean, you wouldn't turn one down if you were
out in the cold, right. I don't think a power
glove would fit me anymore anyway. What's the future of clothing, Jonathan, Well,
there's a there's a lot of different ways of looking
at this, and one of the things we want to
talk about was wearable computing. So that you know, the
power glove fits right in there in a sense, fits
(04:16):
in so it's like a computer that instead of putting
on your desk you put on your naked body. It's
a little bit of an oversimplification, but okay, you know,
I usually think of this in two major categories. I
think of passive systems and active systems. So a passive
system is clothing that has something that ends up taking
(04:36):
in information about either you or your environment and then
sending that in some way to a collection point, usually
like an app of some sort, where you can look
at that data and do something meaningful with it. Active
systems are ones that not only can interpret information about
the environment or say the person who's wearing them, but
(04:57):
actually make actual change just you, change in some way
so that it is reacting to that information as opposed
to just sending it to you. So an example there,
let's we'll go science fiction. Ey, Okay, an example there
might be that a passive system might let you know
how fast your heart is beating, and could be really
(05:18):
useful if you are doing something that's fitness related or
health related or as we talked about in our stress video.
You know, one of the things about stress is you
don't always realize yourself when you're stressed. Although I don't know,
I don't know if I would be less stressed. If
my shirt was telling me that I was stressing out, well,
I mean, it might be helpful for your your shirt
(05:40):
to remind you, like, hey, I'm taking some galvanic skin
conductance readings and um, you need to chill for a bit.
Maybe maybe maybe go outside do some yoga. I don't know, man,
now I'm stressed out, all right. But an active system
might be something more science fiction. Ye. Like, an example
that I gave before we came into the podcast room was,
you know, everyone's the first thing we thought of when
(06:03):
we thought of science fiction clothing, which is back to
the future, to where Marty McFly has the shoes that
automatically adjust his feet and the jacket that automatically adjust
to his build and will even dry itself off once
it gets wet, that kind of thing. And while the
active side is probably you know, there's not that many
examples we can point to in the real world or
(06:24):
even in in like prototype stages right now, there's a
lot going on with the passive side. And some of
this wearable computing takes the form of not like clothing,
not like shirts and pants and shoes and that kind
of thing, but stuff like a wrist bands, you know
the fitness band bands that we've talked about in the past. Um,
Google Glass is another great example where it's this wearable
(06:45):
computer that again is not I mean, if you've seen one,
you know it's not gonna be a fashion statement for
a while. Probably probably they're they're working towards it. Yeah,
I hear the next version is going to be a
little more streamlined U and core style. Just I'll be
O G walking around with mine. That's original Google glass
and and and these days a lot of the other
(07:06):
little especially fitness trackers, are coming in more and more
aesthetic versions because they realized that some people don't want
to look like they're from the nineteen eighties and right right,
and we're starting to see some interesting, uh sort of
I would say in the lab uses of of computing
and fabrics or computing and clothing. Actually got to take
(07:29):
a tour of a fabric computing lab at Georgia Tech
a few years ago, and that was really interesting seeing
how they were using conductive thread woven through materials so
that they could allow electricity to pass through the material
and use it for various purposes. Now we're still on
the very beginning stages of this kind of stuff too,
(07:51):
but you could see further down the line how that
could become useful. Uh. Some of the ones that I've
I've seen that are really interesting to me that again
are not necessarily the type of clothes that you're going
to wear for everyday use. One was the key glove,
which is a wearable, wireless, open source input device. So
think of it as an alternative to like a keyboard
(08:11):
or a track pad. It's a glove that you would
fit over one hand, and it's got all these different
sensors all along the fingers and the palm and uh
of the of the actual glove that you can use
to type stuff out, So every single joint of your
finger would be a different letter and you could Uh.
It's kind of laid out the way a stenographer's keyboard
is laid out, so that the the letters that are
(08:33):
most frequently used are a group together and uh and
the easiest places theoretically for most people to reach with
using one hand. So this could be a useful tool
for people who have mobility issues. It could be UM.
They've even added some haptic feedback to it so that
people who are visually impaired can use it. Understand what's
(08:53):
going on. What I was thinking was just that you
could be typing a document while you're out taking a
walk or on the trained or something and is sending
text without having to really take your hand off the
steering wheel. This is this has gotten, you know, well
beyond that because the videos I saw, even though the
the glove itself looked pretty primitive, I mean it was
fairly clunky, although it was an earlier build as well.
(09:14):
They explained in the video or in the text beneath
the video that in fact there are later versions that
are a little more streamlined. But because the haptic feedback,
you can even have things where you're manipulating virtual objects
and have the feedback to the gloves, so you know
when you're going too far. Uh. It can actually track
complete three access movement with your hands, so it can detect,
(09:36):
you know, when you rotate your wrist or cool, so
like like moving a little bit closer to to you know,
Tony Stark's Iron Man movie series, the three dimensional hologram, right, Yeah.
Instead of using cameras to track your movement, this is
actually using wires and some gyroscopes and accelerometers things like that,
and uh, and again, it was talking about how this
could be a great input device for people who have
(09:58):
either some sort of visual in pairman or perhaps they
have only the use of one arm, something like that.
Um is really interesting. Again, not the kind of clothing
that you and I would wear on a on an
everyday basis, but a really cool example of wearable computers.
Another really neat one was called tacit, and this is
a wrist mounted device that senses objects that are somewhere
(10:20):
between an inch away and ten feet away. So it's
designed to help people with who have well First, it
was designed to be part of a video game. The
idea that the guy had was, what if I created
a video game that was kind of like those old
text adventures where you would say things like go north,
you know, go west, open door, but it detects when
a grew is near exactly. That's in fact, he actually
(10:43):
says that in his blog about about tacit. He's like,
there's a grew in the room to the south. Um
It's it really does bring out the Zork reference. But anyway,
that the idea he had was that what if you
could go through a virtual maze and this particular wrist
mounted device would alert you when you were coming close
(11:04):
to a wall in the virtual maze by giving you
haptic feedback, you know, a little motor vibrating. And now,
originally he developed a headband that he wore, and he
said that it was effective. And he got to the
point where he thought, wait a minute, what if I,
instead of using this to manipulate UH an avatar through
a virtual environment, what if I used some form of
sensor that could detect the presence of an obstacle in
(11:27):
front of me, perhaps using something like ultrasound or some
other form of sensor like an optical sensor. And then
the feedback it gives is some form of haptic feedback,
like a vibration. And then the closer I am to
something that the stronger the vibration. And so he tried it,
and he had a headband and with the sensors and
would try going through a room blindfolded. And turned out
(11:48):
that he was able to get through rooms pretty easily,
except that anything that was lower down than say, head level,
he might still bang into, like a coffee table, the
old coffee table to the shin problem. But um, he
said that the problem, the other problem was that it
drove you nuts because you had all these little motors
connected to your head and they're constantly buzzing. He's like,
(12:08):
that drives you bonkers after about ten minutes. So that's
when he created the wrist mounted version that helps with
two problems. One the feedback is on your wrist and
on your head, and two, because you can put your
hand out in front of you, it can detect things
at a wider range of heights than say something that's
mounted to your forehead. And so the idea is that
this could eventually help people with visual impairments get around unfamiliar,
(12:32):
complex environments without the use of say an assist animal
or a cane or something like that, where they could
walk through and they would get feedback whenever they were
coming close to an obstacle, and they could then maneuver
through an environment much more easily and independently. So these
(12:52):
are examples again of wearable computers that I'm really excited
about that are showing some possibilities. And if you think
about it, you extend this outward and you think, well,
sensors are always getting smaller, and we're getting we're getting
much better at creating smaller processors. Maybe we can eventually
get to a point where this kind of functionality could
(13:12):
be built directly into clothing and not in something that's
like a wrist mounted unit that you wear. Yeah, I
think the challenges that, um, we don't usually think of
electronics as cozy or comfy, and that's for a good reason,
because usually electronic components are rigid and pointy. Yeah. Um,
but yeah, like you said, I mean as they continue
(13:33):
to shrink, I can see well okay, and especially with
the development of these kinds of fabrics that right are
are woven with electronics and also with a with different
polymers to to coat them and keep them safe and
also keep them you know, so that you can layer
them with more comfy stuff like cotton, which doesn't usually
come in conducive forms. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to find
that conductive cotton plant that where you can really, you know,
(13:55):
just run electricity through it. So but yes, I've never tried.
What happens if you try to send electricity. I'm pretty
sure it burns. Yeah, it's I don't know, it's not conductive,
it's I could I could be incorrect. Yeah, So I
have a question, Yes, will they ever make clothes that
mean I don't have to do laundry anymore. Um, I
(14:19):
would not go so far as to say you will
never ever have to do laundry. However, there I mean,
I don't do it anyway, but that the future. I
wanted to be clean, right, buy a new pack of
socks once a week. Yeah Okay, Now now we're getting
into my personal behavior where I bite socks all the time. Um. Yeah,
(14:40):
if I could just wear new socks every single time,
I totally would. I haven't reach that level of affluence.
Oh I have to wash them first, Okay. Anyway, it's
self self cleaning, self cleaning clothes. Cleaning clothes, is that
a thing? It's it's a thing that people are working on.
Who Yeah, it's kind of cool really, So we're not
talking about like robotic clothes that put themselves in the
(15:01):
washing machine. I'd imagine it's some kind of chemical kind
of It's a couple of different approaches, but yeah, you're
generally talking about something that's coding fibers in some way.
And there are two main ways of doing this. One
way is to try and make sure the clothes never
get dirty in the first place, and that's where that
hydrophobic and oleophobic kind of codings come into play. This
(15:21):
is what I was talking about earlier. Now hydrophobic and
means that it repels water. Oleophobic means it repairs, repels oils,
and that takes care of a lot of stuff that
would otherwise get your clothing dirty. And in fact, there
have been a lot of work on this for the military, mean,
because you know, if you're in the military, sometimes you
come into contact with stuff that would be hazardous to
(15:43):
you and in chemicals. You know, you might it might
be a fuel, it could be even a chemical weapon,
and you don't want that stuff soaking into your uniform
being a potential hazard, yeahor even just unpleasant. I mean
if you're if you're marching across terrain and your socks
get wet, and that's a really good quick way to
get very ill from from from a quick foot infection. Yeah,
(16:03):
you can suffer some pretty nasty, uh debilitating injuries that way.
So this kind of super repellent clothes, clothing which is
repellent to again oil and water but hopefully not to people,
allows you to wear this stuff longer without having to
worry about it getting soiled or soaked with harmful chemicals.
(16:24):
And keeping you more safe. But that's just one approach.
What if you get something dirty in the first place,
and you're like, well, what do I do now? Like
what what if I'm wearing something that isn't hyper repellent
to this stuff? And that's where you get into the
true self cleaning kind of approach that some folks in
Monash University in Australia came up with. And I apologize
(16:45):
to all our our Australian listeners if i've if Monash
is in fact, no, it's spelled Monash, but it's pronounced
grizz wobbler like well shucks, I didn't know. Sorry, um,
But anyway, they created these fibers that were coated with
something called titanium dioxide nanocrystals, and uh, it's this stuff
(17:07):
is pretty interesting and that when it comes into contact
with sunlight, it releases uh, some hydroxyl radicals which can
break down organic matter through oxidation, which basically means that
it is burning organic matter when sunlight hits it. Yeah,
it doesn't your skin molecules are wrong size, yes, so
(17:29):
it won't also won't boil boil, it won't burn wool um,
so you don't have to worry it. You could make
a you could have a wool sweater that's coated in
this stuff and it wouldn't I think cotton is also safe.
I mean, this stuff is already in use industrially um
in in paint and as a surface coating on windows. Yep, yep.
So this is a way of trying to keep windows
(17:50):
clean without having to wash them constantly. So in this case,
it would just be applied to textiles. And these guys
in Australia figured out a way of making that happen.
They said that if you were to spill red wine
on your clothing and red wines one of those infamous
stains that's really hardened out, they said that the stain
would end up being significantly faded after twenty hours in
(18:15):
the sunlight. So they were using an artificial sun, you know,
essentially they were using you you like to to make
it go away. Uh. And they put it next to
a shirt that had also been or some fabric that
had also been stained when red wine, but not treated
in this way, and saw that the stain on the
shirt that had not been treated did not change at all,
(18:36):
whereas the stain on the shirt that had been treated
had faded significantly. Other types of stains go away much faster.
Coffee apparently only takes a couple of hours, which is great.
I'm gonna be spilling coffee all over myself on purpose
just to watch it go. No, No, I'm not not again.
Fool me once. Ouch. I've got to follow up on that. It. Yeah,
(19:00):
I was about to say, okay, well maybe I'll give
you a follow up on that right now. Yeah, let's
speaking of spilling coffee on yourself. How often do y'all
spill boiling hot coffee in your lap and scald yourself?
Every every single time I go to McDonald's. Yeah, I
mean you always just forget you're supposed to drink it,
and then you pour it out and then like like
(19:21):
immediately onto the lap. Yeah, I just I just, for
some reason, every time I pick up a cup of
boiling hot coffee, I am filled with the urge to juggle.
And I don't know why. It's it's pathological. Well, I
have got a solution for you, my friend. Excellent. So
you've heard of hydrophobic fabrics. You mentioned them earlier, so
(19:42):
that they repel liquids rather than absorbing them. But apparently
the problem is this doesn't really work when liquids they're hot, right, Okay,
So normally hydrophobic materials have some kind of coating that
is that basically prevents the water from pinnach trading the
cloth weave. But these types of coatings that repel water
(20:05):
also tend to melt, and so when something really hot
goes onto a hydrophobic piece of cloth, it just goes
straight through it. Your crotch man, because what happens. But um,
so that that's bad news for you. But in two
thousand nine, a team of researchers from the University of
(20:26):
Minnesota St. Paul and uh Hong Kong Polytechnic University combined
carbon nanotubes with teflon and cotton, and together these three
items were able to produce a fabric that repels water
at up to a hundred and sixty seven degrees fahrenheit. Yeah,
so now we just have to figure out a way
(20:46):
of making sure it doesn't transfer heat effectively. And then
you're really set. Well, I mean there you be, okay,
because once you spill it all over yourself, you can,
like if it doesn't penetrate, you can brush it off
pretty quick as the heat disperses fair quickly at that point.
It's surface area related, that's true. I mean it's it's
really when it's soaks in and has extended contact with
the skin where you start to suffer some pretty nasty burns. Yeah,
(21:09):
but of course that's not the only way that future
consumer clothing might protect your body from danger. Have y'all
heard about the bulletproof suit? Only because you told me
about it right before we came into the podcast room,
and you didn't tell me, so I have no idea
what this is. Great. So we've got bulletproof vests that
are pretty darn good, right, they already exist and they're
(21:30):
highly effective armor. But it's getting lighter and more flexible
all the time. Uh. And there are several examples of
this for UH. For one example, I know if you
may have read a few years back about this UH
business that was selling the bulletproof polo shirt. Um, they say,
these fabrics are kind of heavy, and you know, they're
(21:51):
not just like the normal clothes you would wear. But
there's a new one that sounds pretty cool. It's just
November this year. It was a Toronto based taylor called
Garrison Bespoke, and they offered a bulletproof three piece business suit.
Is this is this? Is this marketed to a specific demographic. Know,
(22:14):
you might wonder if it's people who aren't too popular.
I just think of like, like you know, like I
can imagine Chicago Taylor's going nuts with this particular Yeah,
I'm thinking Mafia, m M I five and uh so. Yeah,
there's a three piece business suit available in Pinstripe. And
(22:34):
according to popular reports, the head of the company, the
tailor that made this, he offered employees the chance to
line up while he was wearing the suit and stab
him with a knife. Man, if I'm not going to
make the joke, I was going to, please go on.
I just can't. I just can't believe that this hasn't
(22:55):
been in James Bond yet. Really, I this is just brilliant.
So the suits lined with carbon nanotube fabric and that's
on the inside of the suit. Basically it resists knife
tips and even nine millimeter pistol gunfire. And it costs
not But I can imagine the kinds of business leaders
(23:19):
who are looking for a bulletproof fancy suit might be
able to afford that. I just think, all right, a
couple of things I would ask the tailor, one, is
that all right? I understand that it protects against the
penetration power of say a nine millimeter bullet or a knife.
What about the impact, Oh, I'm sure it still hurts. Yeah,
(23:39):
I don't want to get shot, even if it means
that I am certain that the bullet isn't going to
penetrate my my flesh. That's that's not the that's not
necessarily the deal breaker for me. Well, I think that
not dying from I mean, if you were if you
were shot at more often than you are. I'm not
making personal assumptions about how often you're shot at. Um.
(24:00):
I don't need that kind of weekend. Um. I'm just saying,
you know, it's it's better better than nothing, right, But
I guess and and better and better than a giant
like tac vest right right. Well, so this is expensive now,
but one imagines that well, you know, actually, I can
see in the future if this is much easier to make,
(24:21):
you could you could probably buy some kind of bullet
or knife resistant, if not completely bullet or knife proof,
piece of clothing just to wear, you know, to be
about as comfortable as what you normally wear. Probably more expensive,
but not all that much more. I could certainly see
that if this were developed in such a way where
mass manufacturer was fairly easy, that it would be used
(24:43):
in military uniforms. Yeah. I don't know if this exact
same kind of nanotube fabric shows up in military uniforms,
but the people who made this have been working with
the military in one way or another. I think this
is showing up in military applications if I may offer
and other kind of protective clothing. Um. So, so, there
(25:04):
has has been some serious research conducted by a British
industrial designer, PAULO Leary, who worked with UM Dumontfort University's
Lingerie Design course UM to create underpants that that shield flatulence.
What I guess shield it? Yeah, shield us from shield
(25:25):
shield others from. I guess it's not really shielding the flatulens.
I guess that the flatulence is fancy free. Okay, okay,
So so, so how the stuff works. It's a material
called zoor flex, and this is an activated carbon cloth
that was traditionally used in like military and first responder suits.
It's a very porous material. It's really good at filtering
UM gases and liquids from anything that you don't want
(25:47):
to get through, um, like for example, fart smell uh.
And so so this this clever fellow has has created
underpants with a little panel in the back uh that
that you put them on and you and eat whatever
you want. Um. Extremely serious journalist Jared Balini of CNN
tried them and and did terrible, terrible things and and
(26:10):
they were effective. So well, you can say goodbye to
crop dusting. I mean, you know. Uh. In In addition,
this stuff is really good for like respiratory masks, UM,
conservation of artifacts, wound dressing, chemical and bio hazard suits
presumably not just built into underpants, not only in underpants,
(26:32):
like a face mask that looked like a pair of briefs.
This is the thing I think people would appreciate. This
matters to the person on the street. It matters to
the person on the on the public transportation every day.
Let me tell you, Yeah, it certainly matters to me.
So that's cool. This is this is useful. This is
our future, guys. Yeah, without getting to crude, I wonder
(26:54):
if there's the same kind of uh technology you can
apply to masking perhaps audible frequencies. Uh. This particular one
does not mask audible frequencies. But but I'm sure that
we could get into um, some other kind of fabric,
maybe a kinetic fabric, soundproofing fabric. What you're saying is
(27:15):
that the social embarrassment of the sound would not be mitigated,
but at least the smell factor would be. Yeah, I
got you, I understand. I see where you're coming from. There.
There's a great quote in Bellini's piece about his experience
of wearing these briefs um from the Dalai Lama, who
was basically just giggling like a twelve year old about farting.
(27:36):
So I think that really, fart part sounds are something
that we can all enjoy. It's kind of a universal
common truth. Maybe maybe uh maybe fart sounds would be
less embarrassing to their author if they were less offensive
to the nose. Yeah, I think I think this could
bring humanity together. The underpants could somehow translate it into
a totally different sounds, so you still know what happened,
(27:58):
but it's a much more comic kind of like maybe
it's like the the the clown honk noise, or I
was thinking of you know, those toy laser guns do you.
What I immediately thought of was the thing in Halo
that you can do where you can change you know,
like terrible dying sounds like someone's head exploding into into
a bunch of grounds, going it's the birthday. Yeah, well,
(28:23):
you know what. I hate to change the subject from
this weighty, weighty topic, but I wanted to also mention
that we can't talk about the future of clothing without
also mentioning the fact that there are a lot of
people working on using clothes to be away of means
of generating electricity. Oh yeah, we've talked about that before.
We did in one of our exercise podcasts about piece
(28:45):
of electric nanogenerators. Sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
on a much more macro level, that kind of technology
has been used for years, and for example, wristwatches that
are kinetically U battery powered. Yeah, so you've got you've
got this with piece of electric materials. You have this
relationship between kinetic energy and electricity, like you were saying, Lauren,
where one will end up translating into the other. So
(29:07):
if you apply electricity to a piece of electric material,
you will get movement. And if you apply movement to it,
if you apply a physical force to it, it will
generate electricity. Uh. It's one of those cool things. So
if you're able to create clothing that can have this
these sort of materials woven into it, then at least
(29:28):
in theory, you can generate electricity. Uh. There are a
lot of different companies working on this in various ways,
including being able to harness things like like these, the
kinetic force we get when we encounter noise. You know,
if you just go through a noisy area, that noise
is actually putting a physical push on you. I mean,
noise is a physical phenomenon, right, So uh, if you
(29:52):
were able to harness that and recapture some of that energy,
that would be great. Now, I want to give a
caveat in that these methods are generating tiny, tiny, tiny
amounts of electricity. So it may be that we find
some real practical use for this in the future. But
as the technology stands right now, it's not terribly useful,
(30:14):
but we have high hopes. Well it's right now it's
not quite enough to like charge your MP three player,
but you know it's as as more things get to
incorporate these kinds of technologies, then we could perhaps use
it to you know, keep your cell phone charged anywhere
you go, or also with the improvements in battery technology
where we don't require as higher voltage for example, to
(30:36):
charge of battery, this could be really useful. Well, it's
certainly better than nothing. And when you think about it,
UM inaggregate, if you imagine an entire city of people
using stuff like this, that would add up long as
long as you could harness that electricity in some way.
That's that's the challenge right now, is that if you're
not generating enough to really harness anything, then we're still
we're still below the threshold, but we're hopefully going to
(30:58):
see that increase. And of course, you know, we could
see this being built into stuff besides clothing and wearables, right,
we can see this built into say, floors so that
as people walk on the floors, roads, yeah, yeah, staircases,
that kind of thing. As long as we don't all
have flying cars, right, Well, we'll get to that. Um
So yeah, I mean we're a couple of different other
(31:20):
things we could talk about. Yeah, Actually, speaking of kinetic
harnessing materials, there are some people who are working with UM.
You know, if you start with fabrics woven with some
electronics and add in some layers of reactive polymers the
way that um a few artists are doing right now,
you can you can get a kinetic fabric that will
change as the wearer moves. That's kind of interesting, which
(31:43):
I mean could could lead to interesting practical things like,
um like, if you're running around a lot, your sleeves shorten,
um making you know, you know that that could be cool.
Right now, it's really in a very proof of concept
kind of artistic stage that makes you look a lot
like Miss Silent Hill, which I don't really think is
quite quite that great. Yeah, that's a very specific thing. Um.
(32:08):
Some people really like pyramid Head. But I gave that
up in two thousand twelve. It was a year ahead.
But but yeah, it's interesting as a concept. Yeah. I've
also um seen some some sort of conceptual debates about this, discussions,
I should say, conceptual discussions about the future of clothing,
(32:31):
where you might be able to have clothing that can
change its density in some way by expanding or contracting fibers,
and therefore being able to adjust to different temperatures, so
that if you are getting cold, it could actually end
up becoming more dense and thus keeping heat in and
if you were getting too hot, it could become less dense,
(32:54):
more porous, and allow heat to pass through more readily. Uh.
I don't know what the actual mechanism would be there,
but it was again one of those sort of conceptual discussions,
and I would be interested to see that if it
were to ever go into you know, something beyond just
a concept into an actual piece of clothing, so you
can demonstrate exactly how it was working. Uh. I've also
(33:15):
seen discussions about working in electronics into clothing so that
you would be able to do things like create an
interface for you to be able to control something like
a smartphone or m P three player. So for example,
you might be able to give it a command and
change the volume by running your hand down your sleeve
or up your sleeve, or even you know, change tracks
(33:35):
by swiping that kind of stuff, so that you don't
have to get the phone out while you're doing whatever
you're doing. That sounds great, but it's also like, you know,
you brush past somebody on the bus and suddenly the
volume is deafening, and you know they're certain, they're definitely like,
you know, I could easily imagine that being an issue,
especially if you have friends who are a little uh mischievous,
who like to come up and just swipe their hand
(33:55):
down your arm and the next thing you know, you're
you're deaf. Um. There's also a little but weird that
you're touching yourself in public all the time. I don't know,
I think that's talking about your arm here a large
I'm necessarily suggesting that that would be all these you
know what, I just realized what we didn't cover. Pat
your head and rub your belly At the same time,
I realized what we didn't cover. I can't believe we
(34:17):
didn't cover this. Hug shirts. You guys don't I'm talking
about I do. And this still creep and yourself the
future technology that everybody's been waiting for, it sure is, Joe.
So let's say, Joe that you are going to go
on an extended trip away from your sweetheart and you
want to be able to maintain contact with said sweetheart
(34:41):
and show affection despite thousands of miles separating the two
of you. Yeah, I have a telephone. Well, let's say
that you want to display something more than just words.
You know, more than words of people have FaceTime on
their phones and hug. You want to give a hug, Yeah,
you want to hug your sweetheart and not just like
a text message. Isn't that what the X stands for? Okay,
(35:02):
So if you'll just stop being up to what you
would do is you could buy a pair of these
hug shirts which have sensors on them and little bladders
inside them that can inflate so that they give haptic feedback.
And then when you and your sweetheart are both wearing
them and you want to give your sweeter a hug,
you just hug yourself around yourself, and the shirt notices
(35:25):
and it and it sends. Is there a warning that
there's an inbound hug? No? I mean, if you're wearing
a hug shirt, you have to expect there could be
a hug at any given time. I'm just that is
one of the best and worst things I've ever heard.
This is an idea that was actually UH posted several
years ago, and I don't have any idea of where
(35:47):
the company is right now, like whether or not this
still is a thing, But I remember reading about it
years ago when I was first looking into wearable computers,
and the first thing I thought of is I sure,
hope they don't make hug pants. But anyway, so moving
on the I think that went over my head. I'll
explain it to you later. So the the other thing
(36:10):
I wanted to mention was that fabric displays the idea
of building displays directly into um clothing, which is not
a big thing. It's it's being used right now, mainly
in places like trade shows so that, uh, people who
are hired by a public relations firm can walk around
and they have some catchy looking display on themselves, like
(36:32):
on their clothing that gets people's attention and display. Yeah,
like when I go to c e s is the
sort of thing I have seen in the past, where
it's just a way of catching someone's eyes so that
your booth stands out in a crowd of a billion
other booths. Right, So it doesn't seem to be something
that would necessarily translate to your average consumer. But I
(36:55):
but with flexible oh LED displays becoming more are they're
not They're not inexpensive yet. You know, they're still really
expensive to create. But as that technology matures and the
prices come down, you could theoretically see things that have
those sort of displays built in so you might imagine again,
like a coat that has a display wrapped around one arm,
(37:18):
where you can use that as an interface for stuff. Um,
it's kind of, you know, futuristic and certainly not not
necessarily an improvement over existing technology, but I could certainly
see someone doing it, certainly and uh and and having
probably way too much fun with it. Yeah, I mean
I'm sure I would. I'd be i'd been playing with
that kind of stuff, like essentially would be like wearing
(37:40):
a smartphone interface on your arm. But I mean, that's
another thing that we've seen. It's, like I said, some
limited examples in the past, but it's all, like I said,
mostly for uh, commercial display purposes, not something that your
average person. You're not gonna get someone necessarily buying a
T shirt with the screen on the front so that
they can watch television while they're traveling around, because it'll
(38:02):
be awkward. Well, what I have in mind is that
I would like a T shirt that automatically downloads and
displays a new random example of unsettling fan art from
the Internet every fifteen minutes or so. You'd be asked
to leave so many places, sir, could you please turn
off your shirt? It would be worth it. Everyone would
(38:23):
be so creeped out all the time. Yeah, well, let
him get a chance to get to know you first
before you creep them out. Show That's what I say.
But anyway, all of these are so creepy. I like
to think that the future has the potential to be awesome.
It's just sad that often it turns out. Okay, it'll
(38:45):
be both you know where, all right, So we've talked
about clothing that essentially acts like a computer. We've talked
about clothing that can protect you from a bullet or
a knife wound. We've talked about fartproof clothing. Clearly, there's
gotta be something in here that works with one of
our other favorite topics. Okay, how how about this? How
are we going to get all of these clothes in
(39:06):
the incredible future? No, we're going to print them at
home on our three D printers. Hey, technically those three
D printers will have been delivered by drones. So my
answer still stands. Okay, Yeah, that seems like not a
bad idea, because like clothes that don't necessarily have all
these like moving parts or yeah, I mean, I mean,
(39:28):
you know you can already order design co design, um
custom jewelry and other accessories from three D printers. And
so basically we're just waiting on the tech and materials
to improve. You know, you could get clothes that are
fitted very precisely to you uh and and with improved
kind of materials printing, we could have combinations of textiles
that are really difficult to put together in real life
(39:49):
due to the physical restraints of actual sewing, because if
it's all from one piece of stuff, then then it
just kind of works out like that. I mean, And
we've already got artistic examples of this. Just this year,
there was that beautiful dress that UM that Didavante's modeled
UM that was like kind of chain mail laser centered
thing that was like three thousand articulated connections. It was.
(40:10):
It was really gorgeous. If you guys haven't seen it,
check check it out. It's a really neat example of
a three D printed piece of fashion. But um, you know,
and and so I think that And apparently at the
recent Victoria's Secret show there was one of the runway
models had a pair of digitized wings that that had
that had been three D printed. So I don't know,
(40:31):
I guess this is a thing that is happening in
the fashion industry for sure. Interesting. I'm I'm I'm hoping that.
I mean, I would love how how awesome would it
be to just be able to be like, I want
this pair of jeans that I own and I want
them again and I just just do it, just do it.
Now that I have is finally worn out and I
need to replace them, and there's no way anyone will
(40:53):
ever carry these again. And yeah, as someone who um,
I'm very particular about my shoes and when or whatever
company is making the shoes that I happen to really love.
Whenever that company discontinues those shoes, I have a crisis
that reaches psychological and emotional levels that I don't like
(41:14):
to think about, and then I have to go and
get new ones. But if I were able to print
the exact kind of shoes that I always love, I
would never have to worry about them going out of
style because I don't care about that out of style
things so much. I care about having shoes that I like,
So that would definitely be an improvement for me as well. Well,
we've talked all about it, so I think it's about
time to wrap this up. We've got plenty to think
(41:36):
about personally. I think the clothing future of clothing is
all going to be directly inspired by Lady Gaga, um
My meat dresses on on delivery hypercol oh in hypercolor. Yeah,
we didn't even talk about hypercolor. We introduced hypercolor the
concept of hypercolor to Joe earlier, who it's a little
younger than I am and did not know what hypercolor was.
(41:57):
For those of you out there who don't know what
hypercolor is, google it. Yeah, that's funny. We we talked
about like technology, we never really mentioned the future of fashion,
in which my one prediction is that high heels for
men are coming back. Yeah, like like King Louis. Yeah,
fantastic can keep it has done really well on Broadway.
I don't know that I'll be fashionable because uh I don't.
(42:19):
I just a man, have worn high heels. I don't
know if I can do it again. All right, guys,
we're wrapping this up, So if you have anything that
you want to say to us, join us on the
social network platforms where we are because we really want
to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Facebook, fast on Google. Plus
we are FW Thinking, and go to FW thinking dot com.
That is the website where we have all the blogs,
(42:41):
all the videos, the podcasts, lots of different material there
for you to to look at. It's fantastic stuff. Everyone's
been working really hard on it and it looks great,
So go check that out and we will talk to
you again really soon. We're more on this topic in
the future of technology. Visit Forward Thinking dot Com Problems
(43:13):
brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.