You Are What You Wear: Wearable Tech, Quantification and the Future of Human Identity

My name is Louis Cardoe. I’m 6 '4 or 192.5 in cm. I weigh invariably between 87.5 - 92kg. I weigh myself bi-weekly to generate that range.I have a Garmin Forerunner 55 that tracks my health metrics. I sleep on average 7hr 32 minutes every night, average 48BPM, and walk about 11,000 steps every day. It has 15 different varieties of workout options, and my VO2 max is labelled ‘supreme’. Don’t even ask me about stress metrics. That’s at zilch. It tells me I hit 2hrs 30 of REM last night, my body battery is back at full — the mouth tape and magnesium are working.My Lingo Glucose Tracker monitors blood sugar. It fluctuates with a pint, a pizza or a fistful of Percy Pigs. I exercise rigorously to nullify the glucose spikes. I’ve hit my Lingo Score 5 days in a row. I am perfectly equalised.All of this is fed into my Vitality insurance policy — I am on my fourth consecutive week of achieving a maximum 12 points. I’m now Platinum, and I’m going to watch Marty Supreme for free with my girlfriend (real) as a benefit.My name is Louis Cardoe. I am a quantified man. According to the numbers, I’m verging on perfection.So why did nobody turn up to my birthday party? Wearables. We all know somebody who has one. We’ve all suffered through a sermon or two on the virtues of a smart watch/ring/earring/eyepatch. But it goes further. The industry is Tardis-like – with millions of products categorised under the same pithy word. The wearable tech market was valued at around $70-90 billion in 2024, with projections placing it well over $200 billion, potentially reaching $300-$950 billion by 2030-2035.It’s an industry that covers each and every part of the human body — with analysis and control divided across every nook and cranny. Navigate your very own dreams with the LucidCatcher. Say goodbye to prescription lenses with IXI’s autofocus lenses. Never lose battery again with China’s newest sustainable wearable tech — the EcoFlow Power Hat — that allows users to simultaneously charge two USB devices through panels in the brim.Track your exercise with the WearM.ai camera that monitors movement quality and helps prevent injury. Turn your Patek into Pa-tech with the Dedondi smart watch buckle that tracks data such as steps, VO2 max and GPS monitoring. Allow the Thea smart ring to listen to your voice tone, detect stress levels, and play calming music to chill you out.Wear WIRobotics and it lifts your legs for you — reducing the energy needed to walk by 20%. PlaudAI is a small pin that records all your conversations and transcribes them to a companion app.You push the button and we’ll do the rest. A Brave New WorldBroaching the whole topic is to strain a bowl of spaghetti with a mere wooden spoon. Possible — but incredibly arduous — and some strands will sliver down the drain.And those metaphorical durum-wheat-missives exist in the form of privacy concerns, data harvesting, the line between surveillance and analysis. Is the whole pursuit of optimisation just a rejection of the most incredible natural technologies that exist in your head, shoulders, knees and toes, (knees and toes)? Sociologists, in particular, continue to ponder these boundaries: man/cyborg, work/leisure, public/private, nature/culture, body/self. What is more ‘real’ — a recorded conversation or my memory of it?As is often the case with twenty-first century technology, one man’s revelation is another’s revile.But such a large market, such a large audience, shouldn’t be reserved to simply the inventors. The wearables market is one that is nebulous and ripe for innovation; it’s simply a question of revisiting why we crave these innovative forms of tech, before we venture into the what, how and should we. We All Just Want To Feel Like James BondOur obsession with wearables starts with its ‘forefathers’: the eyeglass and the watch/clock. The eyeglass was humanity’s first wearable technology that gave us the ability to best Mother Nature — to subvert disability, or old age, and equalise the disadvantage of bad eyesight. The wristwatch put one of civilisation’s greatest innovations — the clock — on the wrists of men and women around the world. The effects of that were huge. The shift from ‘not knowing the time’ to ‘knowing the time’ may seem relatively insignificant today, but sociologist Neil Postman reckoned in Amusing Ourselves to Death that it in fact made us question our own relationship with God and nature. “The clock made us into time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded.” In other words, wearables didn’t just change what we could do, but also changed how we understood ourselves. Remember that next time you check your empty wrist for the time when you’ve forgotten to put on your watch.The point here is that wearable technology isn’t simply something that attaches itself to the body, but to the mind. Innovators in the sector don’t look at what part of the body they can innovate, but what part of life. It’s not corporeal real estate they look for, but they are trying to make frustrations redundant. You can’t remember what exactly was said? There’s your AI Pin transcribing. You’re sleeping badly? Here’s an app to tell you why. Frustrated with having to type out your thoughts? Here comes the Neuralink.So in reality, wearable innovation comes through an analysis of human experience — and therefore gives ample opportunity for businesses across the board to assess their user/guest/customer experiences and question whether certain parts of that journey can be elevated through the use of technology.A well-known example is Disney’s MagicBand — a simple smartwatch for kids that can guide them through the company’s theme parks, with safety features, pre-paid balances and tracking software that gives parents peace of mind and kids the ability to roam. Such a conceptually simple device is there essentially to make sure the whole magic of the experience isn’t broken by real life problems; payment rigmarole and getting lost isn’t very Mickey Mouse.In hospitality situations, how could technology help to accentuate pleasure, or presence in incredible destinations? ‘Switching off’ is one of the hardest challenges that holiday makers face, so we could suggest a sensory device that creates a navigation system that goes beyond physical or digital maps. The 2025 video game Ghost of Yotei, for instance, eschews the conventional use of a GPS-style map for an in-game wayfinding system that leads through sonic cues — you literally follow the song of the wind. This sort of technology already partially exists for dementia patients, so why not use it to gamify urban and natural exploration? Especially in well-trodden destinations, a curated and unobtrusive guide around the city that leads one’s senses can create more special and serene experiences for guests. What makes ideating around ‘body-based’ technology so interesting is that we don’t always have to look to the future state, but can retrospectively inspect human needs that other technologies have long claimed to have satisfied. Case in point above: Google Maps makes wayfinding relatively painless, but nothing beats the human yearning to go where the wind takes you.Crucially, wearable tech isn’t simply loved because of its functional potential. It is also fun.It makes us feel like James Bond / Inspector Gadget / Kim Possible et al. Its novelty makes it exciting to read about, and imagine a life using. But while many of these technologies are coming to the fore, their adoption rates are the tricky part. As an example, The Google Glass was (and still is) a truly revolutionary concept, but its early adopters were called “Glassholes” and found themselves preemptively banned by several bars and public venues. $1,500. No clear-use case. Impractical. Frankly useless for the day-to-day.That said, if I ever got the chance to try one out, I would. In fact, say I was offered the chance to rent one – say, when I venture on a kayak around the Stockholm Archipelago – so that I could record my experience, get live AR feedback about what I’m seeing, and seamlessly communicate with my fellow kayakers, I would.Tech innovators and hospitality companies should be working together more in this regard. It’s a win-win situation — your tech company gets an invaluable opportunity to either test new technologies, or immerse potential customers (and naturally similar customer segments) into the brave new worlds they envision. For your hospitality player, it’s both an opportunity to demonstrate a proactive approach to offering new experiences, and a way to stand out from competitors through collaborative partners. Tech companies are still the masters of forward thinking, so an organic partnership between the respective leaders of both industries is one that can offer more than ‘solutions’, and actually fresh perspectives of what experience can be for both entities. We All Just Want To Feel Like LeBron JamesIf my slightly unhinged introductory paragraph didn’t quite get it across — wearable adoption can also be linked to the increasingly blurry line between wellness and high performance. It was not too long ago that both ‘wellness’ and ‘exercise’ were modes of leisure. Across humanity’s myriad civilisations: massages, meditations, pleasure baths, ayahuasca designed to relax the body and mind; while sport, exercise and training would entertain, train and push the human physique and psyche to new levels of performance.It’s in sports where the line started to blur. As professional sports (or extremely competitive geo-political “amateur” sports in the form of Cold-War era Olympics) grew, the margins of competitive difference became smaller. And when the margins get smaller, you need a new means to gain an advantage. So professional sports looked towards analytics and data capture, using medical grade technologies to analyse and locate the best athletes and craft them into a perfected version of themselves, harnessing raw talent into diamonds. Films like Moneyball explain it to us laymen but the crucial drive to understand is that sport thereon shifted from a pure game of talent, to one that could be manipulated and quantified.It’s unromantic to say, but sport benefited from this. It raised the stakes and made sports science a thing. This in turn grew into a consumer-facing market that keeps growing and growing. What started with the humble pedometer has grown into various high-tech ways to capture data: Accelerometers. Gyroscopes. GPS. ECG. SpO₂.This is one of the most exciting parts of the wearable market — it gives the technology of the future to the masses. No fancy tests, no high-end equipment, simply a watch that can track your ‘vitals’.So then, where can we go with this from here? The technology has been made (to an extent) ubiquitous, so how do we premiumise it?The simple way is to offer something others can’t; capture new data, or change a habit: Nike have just given the ‘average Erling’ the opportunity to emulate Haaland himself with the new ‘Mind Shoe’, “designed for pre-game and post-game, [it] helps athletes feel calm, focused and present”. This is the stuff Bryan Johnson gets out of bed for; technology that follows the path of the ‘eyeglass’ — providing humans with ways to heighten life, push limitations and reverse the arrow of time by, seemingly, hypnotising your feet. With this form of tech, the branding writes itself. If your device solves a unique problem, or focuses on a unique area of specificity, then that should be at the forefront of the brand. The product is the distinctiveness. A first taste of ‘progress’ is the premium.The other way to premiumise has already been alluded to in this article. It isn’t about the data or the technology, but about how you use it. Users today are privy to more data than ever before so can brands provide innovative ways of understanding it?This isn’t simply ‘[insert brand] Wrapped’. Especially as AI has proliferated across UX, the ability to harvest more data — and, crucially, interpret it in more interesting and innovative ways — has added a sense of novelty to the space. That said, there are already some genuinely compelling players in the market. Your ex-colleagues favourite obsession, Strava, recently acquired UK-based start-up Runna, an AI-based running coach that tailors training plans for people looking to complete their first race. A sensible acquisition considering that over one billion Strava runs were recorded in 2024, with 43% of Strava users wanting to conquer a big race or event in 2025. As a current Runna subscriber, I can already speak to why the app works: it’s easily flexible and dynamic around your plans each week, integrates with smart tech to intuitively gauge your progress and also holds you accountable. Despite the infinite multiverse of online training plans or coaching apps, this is the first fitness example I’ve found of a ‘digital PT’.It does beg the question: why does the data have to be interpreted by AI? Wearables are a brilliant way to offer brands the opportunity to give their customers counsel. In the case of fitness, the average person is not a data scientist, so why not develop an experience that puts people in touch with one? Weekly or monthly catchups with scientific experts (or even the best in the world) backed up by AI-integrated programming. The phantasmic vision of yourself as a sports star, or less cynically as a very healthy human being, can be best achieved through being treated like one, as opposed to being told by numbers that you are one. Qualitative feedback is always more exciting than quantitative after all.Back to the ‘quantified man’ — and the objective of this piece — is the real question less about how brands can tap into wearable technology, and more about where they stand on the matter? We All Just Want To FeelWe are the data-based society. One estimate suggests around 402 million terabytes of data are generated every day, with global data creation growing at about 26% annually and around 90% of the world’s data created in the last two years. [Statista]. Another projection puts 2025 data creation at roughly 181 zettabytes, equivalent to about 1.45 trillion gigabytes per day, with volumes doubling roughly every three years. [G2]. Moreover, about 25% of organizations make nearly all strategic decisions data-driven, while 44% make most decisions data-driven. [Design Rush].Crucially, I’ve also justified using a pretty generalising statement purely using cherry-picked stats. This is the way we talk to each other these days. Data is the gospel.It can’t be a coincidence that the rise in mental illness such as anxiety and depression has happened during this era. Michel Foucault famously made the psychological parable of the ‘Panopticon’: a theoretical structure of control that caused inmates to police themselves, because they are under the illusion of constant surveillance. This was further extrapolated by Gilles Deleuze in 1990 (equally French and equally depressive) who suggested that we now all exist in a society of control, where surveillance no longer produces obedient subjects through visibility but dividuals who police themselves through information flows. A dividual is a person broken into data fragments: credit scores, biometrics, engagement metrics and probabilities. Perhaps it is no surprise that the French word for a ‘sensor’ is ‘capteur’.This is a vitally important aspect to consider when it comes to wearables because a society obsessed with quantification is one to fear. Constant tracking can undermine one’s intuitive sense of self or enjoyment of activities, and truly risks creating a self-image which veers further away from reality. Especially with AI in the mix now, the quantified self can live more and more through the data; if my decisions are heavily influenced by (sycophantic) AI suggestions from my wearable, is that me or the machine or a mix?As wearable technology becomes as proliferated as mobile phones, luxury brands could take a similar approach towards that technology. Certain parts of hospitality experiences or events could be wearable-free — no AI pins recording conversations, no metric tracking watches — celebrating presence and human memory. The aforementioned fitness app could encourage a run a week without tracking the metrics. Brands should be looking for opportunities to bring people back to the real world, tap into the analogue in tandem with the digital. Give your customers the opportunity to ditch the automatic for a moment and use the gears again, Foucault himself said that the way out of this ‘self-control’ was “not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.”This is particularly interesting because luxury in its essence is the refusal of the everyday. It is the elevation of the ordinary experience into the extraordinary. So the issue that wearables face is not that they are simply competing against each other, but they are also competing against the sensibilities of human nature. It is difficult to provide a luxurious, or elevated ‘wearable’ experience because quite often, it jars with the human element of enjoyment. Transcendence happens from within, it can’t be bolted on.There’s a scene in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) that had a prescient take on video technology. ‘Videophony’ fails because people become acutely self-conscious and horrified by how they look on screen. Callers hate that they have to constantly seem attentive, which is psychologically taxing. Therefore, as a fix, the telecommunications industry introduces "High-Definition Masking" that allows users to project an artificially flattering composite image of themselves during calls. The end result? Consumers reject the tech and retreat en masse to the old telephone, where nobody knows what you are doing while you talk, which also in turn becomes a status symbol of "anti-vanity". See the revival of ‘snail mail’ for a real life example of this.Wearables risk suffering the same fate. Technology should develop compassionately with human needs. People are deleting Instagram, because the social tech has made us lonelier; buying dumb phones to get away from smart ones; what’s to stop people from taking off their smartwatch to reconnect with their bodies? "Tech should be your servant, not your master.” says Dr Alex Maxell to the BBC, "wellbeing should be a personal choice, and what works for one person might not necessarily work for you". Collecting a bespoke set of data for one person is personalisation; pushing them in the same direction as everyone else is the purest form of homogenisation.Evidently it’s not just wearables, but also technology in general that could do with a bit more humanity infused in it. Hermès has just given its website a makeover, with several elements being ‘hand-painted’: “summoned by the call of the open sea, the Hermès spirit inspires new tales where fantasy and whimsy flow together like water”. Fantasy and whimsy are words that are incongruent with the modern world, which is quite frankly ridiculous as we’ve developed tools that can imagine Ballerina Cappucina and immerse people into virtual realities. That’s what makes both words so valuable. Wearables don’t have to be about turning us into cyborgs, but there are millions of opportunities for brands across the board to use it to enhance different parts of the human experience: connection, exploration, introspection, learning and plenty more.The answer in the end lies in curation: it’s not about how much tech we can attach to our bodies, or how far we can push our potency; but more about how we choose to use it. Arguably, the best devices will be low-visibility, low-fidelity, low-impact on our lives, supporting experience rather than finding ways to replace it.The day of the cyborg can wait for now: wearables don’t need to turn us into something else. The white heat of wearable technology burns in the direction of us feeling more like ourselves. Matter Of Form is a design consultancy specialising in brand and experience, with deep expertise across luxury sectors. To understand more around how we deliver value and meaningful business change, get in touch with one of our consultants via hello@matterofform.com.

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