{"id":26511,"date":"2015-11-29T23:45:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T04:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=26511"},"modified":"2015-12-09T20:37:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T01:37:40","slug":"all-geek-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2015\/11\/29\/all-geek-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"All Geek to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a>Planet of the Gizmos<\/strong><\/p>\n

The coming of fall brings with it once again the scent of burning leaves mixed with the ineffable exudations of trade shows (PepCom, Consumer Electronics, PhotoPlus Expo), revealing the technological wonders up for imminent release. These devices, many of them with their debuts timed for the holiday season, get previewed by the consumer-electronics press, of which, as previously reported<\/a>, I’ve become a frequently bemused member.<\/p>\n

And while you might think I’d stick out at these events due to my age, I can’t help but note a surprisingly strong geezer component \u2014 dare I say it, even a geriatric component \u2014 of the CE press corps. No walkers in evidence so far, but more than a few graybeards. Happy to see other members of my cohort keeping up with the times, but I’d expect swarms of youngsters at these showcases, so this is … odd. More on that age issue anon.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

As a human servant of two cats, I get drawn to cat-related tech, though we have managed to keep our two feline companions healthy and relatively gadget-free. (We do have ID chips in each of them, but no electronic toys, feeding systems, or other tech.)<\/p>\n

\"A.<\/a>

A. D. Coleman selfie with digital cat ears, 9-10-12.jpg<\/p><\/div>\n

I don’t know that Necomimi Brainwave Cat Ears<\/a> actually qualify as feline tech \u2014 they’re meant for humans, not cats. Even though TIME<\/em> Magazine selected them as one of the “50 Best Inventions of the Year” in 2011, I can’t imagine wearing them by myself, and find it hard to envision two or more people sitting around reading each other’s transient feelings by watching them twitch. But hey, I’m old-school; I actually consider it my husbandly job to pay attention to my wife’s facial expressions and body language so as to sense her moods without digital assistance, and wouldn’t consider asking her to wear even a mood ring to make that easier.<\/p>\n

At that expo an observant Jew (meaning one wearing a yarmulke) with whom I rode down in the elevator as we departed opined, upon my inquiry, that these couldn’t serve as a substitute yarmulke, even though they’d detect who was truly attending to the Torah at schul<\/em> and whose mind was really elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\"Ripple<\/a>

Ripple Maker cappuccino with cat image<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps they’ll find a market among people who like to dress up as cats during sex play. Or you might wear them while breakfasting at home with your significant other, drinking a cup of cappuccino fresh from your Ripple Maker<\/a> \u2014 with your choice of image right there on its foam. You can choose from their growing library of caffeine artwork (for some reason they include Frida Kahlo). But with this machine in tandem with its smartphone app you have the ability to upload and input the image of your choice \u2014 your own cat, for example, or your mom, or Sasha Grey \u2014 personalizing it as you see fit.<\/p>\n

All while chewing some seven-grain bread hot from your Selfie Toaster<\/a>, which can burn your likeness and\/or that of your sweetie onto the sliced bread of your choice. At the moment the company has to make the plate that adds the image to your toast, but the option of uploading your own, varying them, and achieving that effect digitally surely lies not far ahead.<\/p>\n

\"Selfie<\/a>

Selfie Toaster<\/p><\/div>\n

I forecast a brand-new platform for creative imaging here: pictures on food. Let’s see how this plays out.<\/p>\n

Is It Hackable?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The recent incident in which a disgruntled self-described “stoner high school student” accessed the personal email account of the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency<\/a> \u2014 some clown named John Brennan, self-evidently incompetent \u2014 provides sufficient proof that it takes nothing more than a teenage degree of cleverness and determination to access just about anything put into digital form.<\/p>\n

Given that fact, you will perhaps appreciate my standard question to the “internet everywhere” advocates I meet during this fall’s round of new-tech expos: Is it hackable?<\/p>\n

\"Digitsole<\/a>That certainly stopped the rep for Digitsole<\/a> in his tracks at Pepcom’s Holiday Spectacular! East<\/a> at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City on September 30th. Via the dedicated Digitsole Bluetooth 4.0 app (Android and iOS), these innersoles enable the wearer to adjust the temperature of the soles on cold days. So I wanted to know whether a practical joker, or someone with more malicious intent, could commandeer the controls and give me an electronic hotfoot.<\/p>\n

After laughing and recouping his composure, the rep explained that even if someone did hack my soles, they would have a very hard time overriding the built-in upper limit to the temperature control. So they might manage to make my feet sweat, but probably couldn’t carry out a threat to burn them.<\/p>\n

I consider this the elephant in the room for the emerging “wearable” industry, in which entrepreneurs fall all over themselves and trip over each other in their mad rush to colonize every square inch of your body with Bluetooth-connected rings, watches, eyeglasses, clothing, and other accoutrements. This already runs from cradle to grave, with Bluetooth-enabled onesies at the starting gate and devices at the finish line to measure your rate of decomp in your coffin and even stream video thereof. (Okay, I made the last one up, but just you wait and see.)<\/p>\n

\"Mimo<\/a>

Mimo Smart Baby Monitor<\/p><\/div>\n

You will not find hackability mentioned in the product reviews at Wareable<\/a>, nor does it ever come up in commentary on either wearable tech or the “smart” appliances celebrated mindlessly in the IoT (Internet of Things) sector. I’ll venture a guess as to the reason for that: Security takes a back seat to the glitz and glam of making something perfectly functional in its analog state into a “smart” and\/or “wearable” iteration of itself. Yet if I had a newborn I’d certainly want some guarantee that your Bluetooth-enabled Mimo baby-monitoring onesie<\/a> can’t get hijacked by someone threatening to terrorize my child through its speaker before slipping it onto our little prince or princess and tucking him or her in for the night.<\/p>\n

According to Charles Ornstein’s November\u00a0 17, 2015 report, ProPublica, “Privacy Not Included: Federal Law Lags Behind New Tech,”<\/a> the federal privacy law known as HIPAA doesn’t cover home paternity tests, fitness trackers, or health apps, among other exceptions. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (a landmark 1996 patient-privacy law) “only covers patient information kept by health providers, insurers and data clearinghouses, as well as their business partners.” As a result, providers of a wide variety of health- and wellness-related products and services who publish websites that store such information for access by their clients have no governmental oversight of their security measures and lapses thereof. DNA information stored at a genealogy website, paternity-test result stored online by the maker of that test, sexual activity info stored at the site of Fitbit \u2014 all have been compromised in recent years. And that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

So I don’t see this as an idle question, nor do I use it as a way of teasing harried reps at tech expos. I consider it a way of testing the awareness of and attention to security issues in the brave new world of IoT and wearables. And the answers I get I don’t find in the least reassuring.<\/p>\n

Dulling the Cutting Edge
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"PDN<\/a>Where are the PhotoPlus Expos<\/a> of yesteryear? The ones I’ve attended for most of the past decade strike me as a mere shadow of their former robust self. I suppose the big guns \u2014 Nikon, Canon, Leica, Contax, Samsung \u2014 need a U.S. showcase for their latest high-end equipment, as do the makers of all the related accessories, from tripods to camera bags. Not to mention the vendors of tchotchkes for the studio-photography trade: backdrops, customized wedding albums, and the like.<\/p>\n

Yet the energy in photography has moved elsewhere, so much so that I no longer find PhotoPlus instructive, as I once did. I learn more about the current state of the medium and its immediate future from the digital-tech expos, even though they don’t center themselves around digital imaging. Here’s what I took away from PhotoPlus this October:<\/p>\n