I had the good fortune the other night to catch David Rose, author of the new book, “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things” (See Amazon link here) on the Jon Stewart show (see link to the clip here).  At first, I had no idea what his book was about but as he got to talking, I was “enchanted” with his proposal.
He started out by making a statement that really hit home for me: we spend TOO much time on our phones. Our phones, while they do incredible things for us in all areas of our lives, have become a crutch, in a way, to our living and experiencing FULLY. Â A perfect example of this is when I teach a yoga class and there I see it: the phone propped at the front of the yoga mat, while the practitioner begins his or her practice. He went on to describe the premise for his book, which is essentially that we have an opportunity to move the functionality we love in our phones to the objects where this functionality makes the most sense. He was speaking mainly about the applications we put on our phones; things that remind us of things, give us support, educate us, inform us or do any host of other things. Why not put this functionality in the actual object to which it’s related?
I’ll let you watch the clip for yourself but it got me to thinking of the kinds of yoga and wellness related “mergers” between technology and product that I’d love to see. Disclaimer: I’ve not read his book but this is just a stream of consciousness list of ideas based on my own personal experience, comments made to me by students and clients and just my own sense of what would be wonderful to have:
A mirror that tells you that you look great just the way you are;
A yoga mat that says, “Welcome back” when you step on it;
A bed that lets you log in the time you go to bed, when you rise and allows you to record a personal intention for the day;
A refrigerator that can suggest a meal based on the ingredients inside;
A credit card that asks you to take a step back before spending over $100 or some limit you’d set for yourself;
A desk chair that buzzes to remind you to stand up every hour or a time interval you’d set for yourself.
You can see where this is going, right? There are endless ways we can integrate the functionality we want into the items we use so that we can wean ourselves off of our phones and start looking straight ahead again, while still getting the value that all the phone’s functionality provides.
When I first heard the term, “Enchanted Objects,” I thought of the singing dishes, candelabras and clocks in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” This is what we’re talking about!
What would you create to better your health and wellness?