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"...a lot of people find adventure on the Internet. That's their idea of being interactive. My idea of being interactive is going on out and doing it on the street."
- Harlan Ellison

Heartshirt  
  A shirt that was able to detect heart sounds and display associated colors.  

This would be a great shirt to own. I'm imagining every person in a marathon wearing one of these shirts.

Recently, Philips Electronics came out with a network of sensors woven into ordinary clothing, like underwear. The sensors are linked to a battery and transceiver, so that if certain conditions are met based on biometric data gathered (like irregular heart rhythm), an alarm could be sent via Bluetooth, RFID or other wireless protocol. This product was developed as part of the Ambient Intelligence initiative in Europe, which explores ubiquitous computing and machines with context awareness. But this is how Rucker imagined it.

Della's first present was an imipolex sweatshirt called a heartshirt…The heartshirt was an even dark blue, except for a few staticky red spots drifting about.

"It can feel your heartbeat … look." Sure enough there was a big red spot on the plastic shirt just over her heart, a spot that spread out into an expanding ring that moved on over her shoulders and down to her sleeves. Her heart beat again, and a new spot started - each beat of her heart started a new red splash in the blue heartshirt.

From Wetware, by Rudy Rucker.
Published by Avon Books in 1988
Additional resources -

One way it might work is to hear the main sounds from the chest cavity, and then radiate them from the center using some sort of algorithm. It would be more cool if it actually had the sensitivity to monitor the rush of blood to the extremities.

Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This |

Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Wetware
  More Ideas and Technology by Rudy Rucker
  Tech news articles related to Wetware
  Tech news articles related to works by Rudy Rucker

Heartshirt-related news articles:
  - Underwear Detects Heart Problems
  - Scentsory Chameleon Bodysuit: Biometric Fashion
  - MEMSwear Fall Fashion - Bluetooth-enabled Motion Detection Shirt
  - Electronic Underwear Monitors Your Heart
  - Geo-View ECG-Shirt - So Close To A Heartshirt
  - Bio-Shirts From Korea Monitor Athletes
  - T-Qualiser Club Shirt Has Electro- Gobbledi- Googescence
  - Smart Bra Does Breast Cancer Screening
  - Vital Jacket Heart (Monitoring) Shirt Via Rudy Rucker
  - Smart Fabrics For Biomonitoring

Articles related to Medical
Mind-Control Lights At Vancouver Olympics
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy For Iraq Vets
App Turns iPhone Into Autodoc (Almost)
Vitalsens Continuous Medical Monitoring

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