Smart watches and dumb watchers

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the technology world is excited about the prospect of smart watches.

Now that rumors suggest Google and LG are both planning on jumping into the smart watch war to compete with Samsung and Apple it's time to stop thinking of this thing as a time-telling piece. Yes, these gadgets will go around people's wrists and probably display the time.

[From The Smartwatch Is Not a Watch - Rebecca Greenfield - The Atlantic Wire]

I have to tell you this story. Some years ago, I was at a dinner at IBM in Zurich. A chap from their research labs was showing off a Linux-powered watch. The chap was Swiss, and I imagine unfamiliar with the British sense of humour. When he'd finished demoing the watch's ability to show some news and contacts, or whatever, he asked if we had any questions. “Yes", I said, straightfaced, "does it tell the time?". I’d said it as a joke, of course, and expected a laugh. But… ”No,” he told me, entirely seriously, they couldn't load the "clock" programme because they'd run out of memory!

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen megabytes