MIT Invents A Social
Network You Can Wear
SOCIAL TEXTILES IS FASHION THAT
BREAKS THE ICE FOR YOU.
Fashion
has always been a good way to break the ice. Spot someone at a party wearing
something you like; go up and compliment them on it. Easy. But a new project
called Social Textiles wants to turn fashion into a social network you can wear, alerting you when a
friend is nearby, and lighting up around the like-minded to attract their
attention.
This
is the latest joint from MIT's Tangible Media Group and Fluid Interface Group, a
design team that between them has given us everything from reinvented power cords to shapeshifting displays. The Social
Textiles team started with a group of MIT students—Viirj Kan,
Katsuya Fujii, Judith Amores, and Chang Long Zhu Jin—who wanted to try to solve
a simple problem: how can tech make social media more tangible?
"If you think about it, our Facebook and Twitter
profiles reach and even impact thousands of people every day, but it doesn't
feel like it," Kan, representing the group, tells me. "But while the
way we represent ourselves in social media is intangible, what we wear isn't.
We wanted to see if we could merge the two to create social catalysts."
Right now, Social Textiles is a T-shirt, although
theoretically, it could be any type of clothing. On the front of the shirt is a
pattern printed in thermochromatic ink, with a thin circuit membrane
underneath. Pairing to your smartphone thru
Bluetooth, the Social Textile shirt detects when other people are in the room
who share your interests, and sends a buzz through the shirt's collar when
you're within 12 feet of each other.
But it goes one step further than that. If you actually
touch the person you're simpatico with, by clapping them on the shoulder or
shaking their hand, a capacitive sensor in the T-shirt can tell. Then, the
Social Textiles shirt lights up, revealing symbols on the front of the shirt showing
what you and your new friend have in common.
"Depending on how the ink pattern is designed,
Social Textiles can communicate anything you want," Kan explains. "It
could tell two people who have just met that they both like jazz, or that they
both go to MIT." Going further, it could tell two people who just met if
they were a match on OKCupid, were compatible organ donors, or more. The
technology that drives the T-shirt is cheap and affordable; what Social
Textiles could communicate is only limited by the designer working with it.
For
many, fashion is already something of a way of communicating to others that
you're part of a secret club. Social Textiles could take that concept to the
next level, buzzing and flashing on the club floor when a like-minded club kid
bumps into you. But the Social Textiles team also sees their invention being
useful at more structured events like freshman meet-and-greets, company
picnics, industry conferences, and so on. After all, meeting new people is hard
enough. Why not let your clothes do some of the work for you?
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042387/mit-invents-a-social-network-you-can-wear
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