This Week in Moore's Law: Under Armour Develops a 'Smart Shirt' That Measures Vital Signs

Several months back I wrote about an interesting new technology for boxing that would allow gloves to be implanted with smart strips containing an algorithm to more accurately tally punches in conjunction with a smart vest that would communicate with these receivers. If you didn't read it, it's probably because of run on sentences like the above, but nevermind my discontent.

Under Armor, the same company UFC WW champ Georges St. Pierre has advertised himself for, recently partnered with Zephyr Technology to create something very similar: a smart shirt called the E39, which contains a "bug" holding 2GB's of storage that measures acceleration and change of direction. However, it doesn't stop there. While the video detailing what the E39 does is vague, and light on details, it's worth transcribing:

Heart rate, breathing rate, skin surface temperature, and accelerometry in three different directions....a trainer can actually look at these g'force's and say 'hey yea, you're moving the right way, you're moving exactly the way you moved last week.

I think it's really cool to say, 'we can measure your potential. We can show you where you could be'...they'll be able to track it. Their trainers will be able to track it. Even recruiters and colleges will be able to track it. People will be able to communicate to each other, and compare it to each other, and have a new world around social interaction around their athletic performance.

No word on whether or not it can measure sodium content in an athlete's sweat the way yet another type of 'smart vest' has been able to do. But we're seeing a wealth of new technologies primed to have a veritable impact on sports in the near future. Performance can now literally be measured, and I don't mean "literally" in the way Joe Rogan means that Cain Velasquez "literally has no weaknesses". No, I mean 'literally'.

Ever the luddite, I'm not sure I like the idea of recruiters taking the reductionist route, and measuring performance according to raw data. If raw data were truly meaningful in the context of athletic performance, the Wonderlic scores might actually be worth a damn (Alex Smith and Matt Leinart, I'm looking at you).  

But alas, Moore's law continues chugging along. Shirts aren't the only thing getting "smart": so is paint (a technology relying on protocells: if you want an idea of what protocells are, think back to this scene, and no that's not a joke). It's also a sign of ubiquitous computing and the concept of 'everyware'. If our shirts are becoming iPads, how much longer until the octagon floor protests "I'm afraid I can't do that"?