Pull the Plug: Making a Case Against Wearable Tech

Once upon a time, nerds didn’t know they were dressing like nerds, which actually made their ensembles kind of cool. But there is no way to look cool in wearable tech. Even AirPods. (Especially AirPods?)

Why, you ask? It’s just all so ugly! Maybe this goes without saying, but let’s say it anyway: From Fitbits and Apple Watches to Oura rings and the monstrosity that is the Oakley Meta Vanguard—wraparound specs that look like a castoff from a ­Jared Leto–starring Tron sequel—wearable ­devices are uniformly clunky and inelegant no matter how streamlined their design or modest their footprint. They’re the 21st century’s answer to a pocket protector and suspenders with none of the charm. Think of Mark Zuckerberg in a thick-framed pair of Meta glasses or Tim Cook wearing the Apple Vision Pro—the love child of the Patriot Act and a pair of ski goggles—on the cover of, yes, Vanity Fair. It’s impossible to picture without wanting to stuff either one inside a locker.

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True, the annals of fashion are littered with ill-advised accessories: leg warmers, trucker hats, Livestrong bracelets. But the very act of putting on a wearable—of willingly adorning oneself with a tiny computerized narc—is an act of surrender. By default, these devices mark the wearer not only as a geek, but as a try-hard and an egoist. Wearable tech is for people who can think of nothing more fascinating than the minutiae of their own body, people who can’t simply take a stroll around the neighborhood unless it “counts” for something—unless it gives them points in an invisible competition they’re playing against themselves.

Which, to be fair, is not entirely their fault. In many cases, the robot tail wags the living dog by tricking it—tricking us—into caring about obscure metrics, then gamifying the process of improving them. Two years ago I’d never even heard of a VO₂ max. But after a late-night deep dive into my health app revealed that I have one; that unbeknownst to me, my watch had been keeping tabs on it for years; and—horror of horrors—that mine was merely above average rather than high, optimizing this questionably important measure became a personal obsession.

I am a geek, and a try-hard, and an egoist. I’d love to throw my watch into the East River. But I can’t, because I’ve grown accustomed to knowing how many imaginary flights of stairs I climbed yesterday (so many!) and just how deeply I slept last night (not very!). The watch hasn’t transformed me into a monster, but it’s enhanced my preexisting monstrous conditions: a thirst for validation, a need to be constantly graded and evaluated.

Things could be worse. I could be addicted instead to the pervert glasses manufactured by Google and Meta or the ones to come from Apple and Snap. Anecdotally, I’ve read that wearable computers like these are a godsend for people with visual impairment. This is good for them. But nobody else could ­possibly have a compelling reason to put on Meta ­glasses. These devices are morally questionable as well as aesthetically heinous; at least when dirtbags attempt to use their smartphones to take creepshots of strangers, it’s possible to catch the attempted voyeurs in the act.

Computer glasses erase that prospect. They’re the embodiment of Daniel Lavery’s immortal evisceration of Black Mirror: “What if phones, but too much?”

We already live in a hall of black mirrors. Screens have invaded our taxis, our billboards, our children’s toys, our very refrigerators. There’s a “smart” version of everything from washing machines and light bulbs to window coverings and umbrellas. My grill has an app. Tech has crept into every facet of everyday life, like an invisible fog of ones and zeros. All that, and you need a leather belt with a tiny computer inside that tells you when you’ve eaten too much? Isn’t that what a regular belt is supposed to do?

No more! If this is smart living, I’d ­rather be dumb.

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