Kieran Long: This year The Telegraph newspaper ran some stories about working conditions in Tesco distribution warehouses. One of the things that they were talking about were the WT4000 wearable devices manufactured by Motorola that people in their distribution warehouses would wear. Basically they measure how many times you put something in a box on a production line.
Whenever I show this product, people are shocked that we think of wearable technology as the lovely things that you publish on Dezeen like Nike Fuel bands. Actually wearable technology is a reality for thousands of working people in this country. It’s a kind of neo-Fordist, time and motion study-type device that means people can get fired if they don’t put enough things in a box. A brilliant piece of industrial design but also a very frightening one.