Web and mobile services try to understand users’ needs and goals by analyzing how they interact with their platforms. For example, smartphones collect online data from users on a large scale and at low cost.
Policymakers have responded by imposing mechanisms to mitigate the risks inherent in technology companies that store and process their citizens’ private information, such as health data.
Wearable devices are now becoming a more important element in this discussion due to their ability to continuously collect data without the wearer necessarily being aware of it. Wearables such as smart watches collect a range of measurements of your well-being, such as sleep patterns, activity levels and heart condition.
Today there are wearable devices to obtain high-quality data on brain activity, eye trackers and the skin (to detect temperature and sweat). Consumers can purchase small devices to measure the body’s responses, which a few decades ago were only available to research institutions.
Although wearables are commercially focused on health monitoring, researchers have long envisioned capturing other types of data about a user. A computer that could collect useful information about a person’s brain activity, heart and skin function, or their movement patterns could understand an enormous amount about the user.
But it’s AI that could be a game changer. Smaller wearables combined with AI algorithms to process the data can provide tools that amplify and amplify our goals and achievements in life. But there are also disadvantages to all this information gathering.
Daily routines
Let’s imagine a world where wearables play a more prominent role every day. Smart beds can wake us up at the perfect time to feel rested by measuring our body temperature, breathing and brain activity. Intelligent kitchens can help us eat healthier by preparing a tailor-made diet based on chemical signals in our bloodstream (biomarkers). A smart bike would automatically shift gears based on the changing slope of the terrain and based on our fitness levels, to support an effective workout.
Smart glasses could analyze the reactions of the students in our eyes and our overall eye movements to give us content we are likely to enjoy (supported by AI algorithms). Video calls could evolve into full-body 3D holograms of friends and family. Finally, immersive entertainment could be projected into our living rooms or exist in headsets to become 360-degree experiences instead of being limited to flat screens.
While it may seem futuristic, hardware manufacturers are already trying to get screens and devices out of our hands. For example, at the Mobile World Congress 2024, several smartwatches were showcased, an AI pin device created by the company Humane that can eliminate the need for a screen by projecting images onto the user’s hands, or the Air Glass 3 XR smart glasses.
Other companies have also recently released head-mounted devices, such as the Ray-Ban Meta, the Apple Vision Pro or the Meta Quest 3. A device known as the Galea Project is a kind of helmet that can be attached to XR headsets to capture images of facial muscles, brain, eyes, skin and heart.
This is clearly more drastic than a smart ring or smart glasses. It allows researchers to investigate what future digital services could look like if computers were given access to a range of data from the human body. This data would go far beyond what they currently have access to – like what we do on our smartphones.
Overall, body data from wearables could fundamentally change the way we interact with computers and the internet. In 2007, the audience at an Apple product launch was wowed when Steve Jobs scrolled on an iPhone for the first time, introducing an intuitive interaction that the entire world would eventually take for granted.
Likewise, replacing smartphones with wearables and headsets would free up our hands and require new forms of interaction with technology. Current prototypes propose using the gaze of our eyes to point and hand gestures in the air to click. However, this implies that these systems must continuously collect data about the user’s body.
Digital sovereignty
Large data sets based on human body responses could unlock the design of digital tools that fit seamlessly into our daily lives with capabilities that are deeply personal. Think of the smart bed and the intelligent kitchen that can propose a tailor-made diet.
The next wave of the internet is being designed around data decentralization – where users could potentially have more control over how their data is used. This could prevent misuse of personal information.
For example, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee, has been working on something called Solid. This open source initiative allows people to process their data on personal web servers and choose which organizations have access to it.
Rather than having people create an account for every service they want to use, Solid would provide a protocol to build what the project calls personal online data storage. This would be a way to let users host their personal data on their own computers or, alternatively, choose a trusted provider to host it based on their reputation and physical location.
To truly strengthen these initiatives, proactive legislation on digital sovereignty – the right of an individual to control their own digital data – would be needed. This would guarantee an internet that really takes privacy seriously.
In the age of wearables and powerful AI systems, a decentralized approach to the internet would be crucial to allow citizens to enjoy the benefits of these technological advances while retaining ownership of their data. This would move us toward citizens’ ability to make active decisions about where their data is stored, who has access to it, and for what purposes.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Luis Quintero does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.