Everybody loves these Fuelbands and other activity tracker because they supply you with troves of data about your everyday life. Sometimes, however, it’s a little bit too much information.
Your fitness wristband knows when you’re having sex. If it’s sensitive enough to detect minute movements while you’re sleeping, it can certainly pick up on the patterns of intercourse. Plus how else do you explain getting a half hour of exercise late at night without taking a single step. Fast Company‘s Michael Grothaus just published a lengthy feature not only about the fact that your wristband is keeping up with your sex life but also the implications of such data collection. Fitness wristbands, amazing as they are, not only know when you have sex, they could also tell when you fake an orgasm and possibly alert your spouse or significant other if you’re having an affair. (At least you’ll get an accurate count of how many calories you just burned.)
If this all sounds horrifying, that’s because it is. But as Grothaus points out, it’s an inevitable consequence of the rise of wearable computing. While fitness wristbands are the main culprits now, we can look forward to imminent arrival of the smartwatch era and, in the more distant future, wired clothing and even data-collecting patches that stick right to your skin. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. This fitness wristband trend is complicated enough, the best thing you can do is figure out what your data means and how to protect it. That is, unless you want people to know your sex habits 24 hours per day, seven days per week, it is. Then again, that’s exactly what some people want. [Fast Company]
Picture: Flickr/kawanet