The Future of Fashion

Let's cross our fingers that these predictions come true!
courtesy of Vice Magazine

BODY RECORDERS
Remember that Dave Chappelle skit about the “home stenographer”? Well, you’ve got about two more years to enjoy life without one. Two years, according to Moore’s Law, is how long it takes to double the storage capacity of a microchip. According to this schedule, 200 gigs will fit comfortably on a slender iPod by 2011. By 2013, you’ll be able to squeeze this storage capacity into an iPod shuffle, and by 2015 it’ll be something the size of a ladybug. Combine your 200 gigs with a tiny camera and microphone, and you’ve got a wearable recorder that can document your entire life—video and audio—for a week straight. If you dial down the input to nannycam-quality video and audio, you can do a month. It’ll take a while for this new device to go mainstream, and in the interim it’ll get christened with one of those regrettable modern nonwords like “blog,” “sexting,” “splorg,” or “prok.”

Perhaps this doesn’t seem like much of a fashion issue, but consider the evolution of Bluetooth. It took one long weekend in 2005 for the Bluetooth Fairy to sweep the land, depositing chunky little headsets in every third person’s earhole. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but where I live this kind of head bling is as much a fashion statement as fat gold chains or propeller beanies. Likewise, next decade’s personal body recorders will slip into mainstream fashion through the pioneering advocacy of jerks and boors. You think it’s rude having the person behind you at the bank yammering away on their Bluetooth? Try having the person behind you recording everything in his or her line of sight, including your own ass.

This issue—privacy—will dictate design. In just a few years, you’ll be able to walk into any Target in America, plop down $39.95, and walk out with a 200-plus-gig body recorder disguised as a shirt button. But at some point, a well-publicized privacy/security breach (women’s restroom? airport?) will force Congress to mandate some sort of recording signifier, similar to how every cell phone in Japan (allegedly) makes an audible “click” when used for photography. My guess is it’ll be a little red blinking light, kind of like the trashy LED lapel pins now sold at dollar stores. Overnight, everyone will have little blinking red lights on their shirts, hats, and shoes (upskirt videography being only one of many scourges loosed by the new technology).

Here’s how it will play out. You’ll good-naturedly bad-mouth your friend’s new Personal Recorder Information Collection Knickknack right up until the day (in June 2016) when you lose one of your epaulettes. Where is it? Don’t panic. All your friend will have to do is give a simple voice command to the recorder’s search engine, and a chipper little computer voice will tell you that you left your epaulette back at the Applebee’s where you both had lunch two hours ago and would you like it to IM the restaurant manager?

Suddenly these devices won’t seem quite so trashy. Two weeks later, you’ll be a convert, and very soon afterward you’ll forget what the world was like when you couldn’t archive and search every conversation, meal, or trip to Petco. For a while you’ll turn it off when you use the john, but eventually you’ll record everything, just like Saint Peter and Santa Claus. With all these blinking little lights everywhere, it’s going to look a lot like Christmas.

ASSVERTISEMENTS
There can’t be anything shocking about this one. After years of Juicy Couture tracksuit pants and Victoria’s Secret hot pants and countless other ass-writing knockoffs, is it any surprise that advertisers of the near future will view the human caboose as prime commercial real estate? MIT Media Lab has already pioneered something called “flexible display technology” to broadcast video ads on jackets and shirts. Asses are but a short leap away. Plus, there’s a financial incentive to this particular fashion trend. Say you earn four-tenths of a penny for every obnoxious Viagra ad your bum flashes at passing pedestrians. That’s still nearly 50 cents an hour. Do even two hours of walking a day, and you’ve paid half a utility bill every month. Can you and your ass afford not to advertise?

BONUS: The blinking pixels keep your rear warm in cold climates.
DOWNSIDE: You are still very much a creep if you stare at anyone else’s ass ad.