How Google Wants to Turn Everything Into a Wearable

(mellow downbeat music)

Every tech company wants to sell you a wearable.

Usually it's a watch or a bracelet or a pair of glasses

or who knows what else.

But what if that wearable could be

something you're already wearing?

Like this shirt.

That's the idea behind Project Jacquard

which comes out of Google's top secret ATAP division

and is designed to put technology

into the things you already put on every day.

[Ivan] Project Jacquard is about

weaving interactive surfaces using

industrial processes existing today,

with the textile and yarn industry.

[David] Conductive textiles aren't new

or even all that hard to make.

Google's challenge is to make these fabrics at scale.

And if it can, we might all be

wearing smart shirts in the future.

[Ivan] We can take any piece of textile,

silk, wool, any design,

and then weave interactive areas into that textile.

[David] Google's first partner

for Project Jacquard is Levi's

and they don't have any concrete plans yet

but they do have these big ideas.

What if you could talk to your phone

with just a single swipe on your arm?

What if, instead of being something on your wrist

or an add-on to your shoes,

your fitness tracker could just be your shoe.

And what if all that were totally invisible?

One day I realized just by taking a phone,

by placing the phone in my jacket,

this jacket by definition becomes a smart jacket.

It's that they're not connected.

So what we're trying to do is just to

build this connection.

So your mobile communication

and the garments you wear become one single thing.

[David] Exactly what that one thing will be

appears to still be in development.

Still, both companies say it's time to think about

a future where all our clothes are connected.

And they both say that future isn't so far away.

When so much of our lives now exists in the digital space,

as well as the physical environment we're living in,

we are deeply engaged with the digital environment.

The blue jeans of the future

might be talking to the Cloud.