When I was a kid, the cartoon “Battle of the Planets” was a huge deal for me and my friends. One of the many cool things about the show was that “the G-Force members stay in contact through a wrist-band communicator device.”
In grade one, I still remember how I convinced a bunch of my classmates to create “wrist communicators” out of paper, tape and crayons that would be modeled on the G-Force example.
For some reason, our teacher didn’t agree that having a bunch of her students whispering into their wrists throughout her class was a great idea and made us throw them out. But the idea of how cool a wrist communicator would be took root early in my formative brain.
Later on, maybe around grade six or seven, I came into possession of one of these bad boys…
Now, in hindsight, I realise that watch was probably a big part of why I never had a girlfriend in those years. 😉
A watch like that is a very visible, ever-present indicator of your geekiness in a way that watching cartoons and playing on computers and reading comic books wasn’t.
I eventually gave up the calculator watch, probably as much due to peer pressure as anything, but the idea of a powerful wrist communicator device never left me.
That’s why I became extremely excited when I saw that the Pebble (in essence a 21st Century calculator watch) was being released on the crowd-funding site, Kickstarter. Apparently a lot of other geeks felt the same way as the Pebble quickly became the most successful offering in Kickstarter’s history – with their initial goal of raising $100 000 being absolutely demolished by 69 000 backers who gave a total of $10 000 000 towards the project!
I was one of those 69 000 backers and after many delays, my watch arrived yesterday! So far, it’s pretty basic – you can download a few different watchfaces, control the music on your smartphone via bluetooth, receive texts and other notifications on your wrist (meaning you don’t have to pull out your phone every time it buzzes). There’s not even a calculator app – yet. (I’m being a bit harsh – some reviews are raves!)
But my grade one dreams of having a wrist communicator are one step closer to reality and as I’ve said many many times over the past five years since I got my first iPhone 3S, it feels like I’m living in the future.
I’m also happy to report that I not only got a girlfriend but found a wife. Luckily she knew what she was getting into as her first text to my new watch shows…
