Just Speak into the Shirt Cuff

Now wait. Before you dismiss these tips as the detritus from some far-out prognostication du jour, consider the source. Serious scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, physicists, engineers, chemists, computer specialists--people with PhDs!--are developing clothing that will think, talk and transmit vital information.

Just as DuPont developed Dacron, bringing us polyester and other synthetics in the 1950s, corporate America is behind this push. Backing the MIT research are companies, including Nike, that view clothing as equipment, designed to improve or monitor performance. But the applications go well beyond the sports bra that measures your pulse or alerts you to dehydration. The fibers that go into business suits will soon incorporate such workaday tools as cell phones and Palm Pilots. High fashion it's not--yet. Designers who fuss over the drape of fine fabrics are not exactly poised to wire their exquisitely tailored garments, perhaps because there's no word on how we'll clean them.

Still, wearable intelligence is about to transform the material world. Above all, fashion establishes identity, says Valerie Steele, curator of the museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. Few people depend on deep ridges on their shoes for traction, and no one weighing more than 82 pounds needs the snug fit of spandex. Wearing either tells the world who you are. And smart clothing is the future benchmark of cool, Steele says. Without it, "you look like a strange Luddite, like, why don't you have a cell phone wired into your suit?"

The market potential of these innovations is huge, says Jud Early, a vice president and director of research and development at TC Squared, a North Carolina nonprofit that seeks to improve competition in U.S. companies. "Once the technological breakthroughs are made, these products can become mainstream, certainly," he says.

For now, Michael Hawley, an MIT professor of media technology, suffers the indignity of juggling his cell phone, Palm Pilot and laptop. Since MIT is the top spot for such research, he travels constantly, lecturing and consulting with other techno-brains. It's Brazil this week, China before that. (He keeps a photograph of a Miss Universe in his office so he'll be sure to recognize her in an airport somewhere and instantly sweep her off her feet.) Soon, he promises, we'll all have "wearable objects"--MIT code for clothing with these devices built in. Our bodies will be part

of the package, serving as data networks, or

informational go-betweens. Instead of exchanging business cards, we'll merely shake hands to transmit the usual info, plus other useful morsels. (Would it pay to know the person you're doing business with once dated your sister and it ended badly?) Likewise, the sole of your shoe, better a Rockport walker than a Manolo Blahnik stiletto, might provide access to stock reports or real-estate stats. "Makes more sense than a laptop," Hawley observes. "Tie your shoes and you're hooked up."

With an annual budget of $30 million--90% of it from corporate sponsors such as Nike, Levi Strauss & Co. and Swatch--research on at least 200 separate projects at the MIT Media Laboratory takes place in a stark concrete building designed by I.M. Pei. A bust in its lobby by French sculptor Auguste Rodin is one of the few objects that is not wired for sound (smell, taste, etc.). Here, the employee coffee machine not only thinks, it talks. Reacting to tiny chips on the bottom of a user's cup, it customizes their caffeine, and if desired, provides musical accompaniment. "Good morning, Alexandra," it chirps to one Media Lab staffer. "I am making your coffee with milk, no sugar, the way you like it. While it's brewing, I will turn on your favorite radio program, NPR."

Among the men here, it's easy to recognize the senior scientists because they all have beards. Many of the junior scientists look too young to shave. That's all right: What they're doing looks more like play than work. Alex Pentland, the lab's academic director, insists that while his staff does invent musical squeeze balls that teach babies to love Beethoven . . . or musical Play-Doh . . . it has have every bit as much credibility as colleagues who ponder new ways to blow up the universe. The MIT imprimatur helps, Pentland says. So does the fact that their field is expanding so drastically, producing stunning advances in chips and other micro-communications units.