Model, Ex-Spy Pioneers Wearable Tech

Nov. 16, 2000 -- For former Czech spy Katrina Barillova, wearing chic, miniature high-tech devices was more than just haute couture — it was a way of life.

“During communism, you had to make your own fashion. As a young girl, I learned to sew clothes for myself,” she says. “Later on, when I became an agent, I integrated different sensors and listening devices into the lining of my own clothes, belts or accessories.”

You could almost call Barillova, 27, a model spy. As a teenager, she took classes in espionage and science, with a modeling career on the side.

‘I Was a Teenage Spy …’

“At 14, I was given a set of psychological and physical tests and I started training and taking classes on top of high school duties — not instead,” she says.

While training in the art of espionage, Barillova also began modeling during her teen years. The stress from two pressure-cooker jobs — along with her accelerated science classes — became so great she nearly didn’t graduate from high school. But she stuck with it.

Then communism fell, and suddenly Barillova’s Cold War spy skills weren’t in much demand. So when she was 18, she headed to the United States.

After several mundane jobs, including bagging groceries and working as a nanny in a rural Oregon, she landed a job as a private detective in Los Angeles. There, she was able to hone her spying skills and fine-tune her fashion sense.

During her stint as a private eye, she met business partner Alex Lightman, with whom she co-founded Charmed Technology, an MIT Media Lab spinoff based in Beverly Hills, Calif. The company aims to make chic, wearable computers.

“People are afraid of technology, afraid of looking like robots,” she says. “That’s where the fashion side comes in. If you make it look like accessories or clothing or everyday objects, people are not so opposed to it.”

Geek ChicHer company, with help from an outside team of researchers, is developing a line of computers that go beyond function into fashion accessories such as belt buckles and necklaces for men and women.

The main product line Charmed Technology has developed is the CharmIT, a three-piece wearable computer. A wallet-sized central processing unit, featuring a 600-megahertz Intel processor and a 350-megabyte IBM Microdrive, hangs from the user’s waist. A combination hand-held keyboard/mouse unit, called the “Twiddler,” lets users enter and process information. And a small eyepiece acts as the tiny computer screen, projecting images on a half-silvered mirror. Though small in size, the miniature LCD monitor projects images quite large because of its proximity to the eye, says Barillova.

The system runs on an open-source, Linux-based operating system called Nanix, which is designed for small wireless Internet devices to optimize multimedia add-ons such as cameras, Global Positioning System receivers, MP3 files, and broadband streaming audio and video.

Other high-tech accessories Charmed is working on include choker necklaces that function as cell phones and voice recorders. Barillova says sensitive microphones embedded in large orb-like stones would pick up even the softest of voices, and users could listen through a small earpiece. In the future, the company hopes to develop lapel pin or necklace-sized computers that could store its users’ biographical information so the data could be exchanged among people with compatible units, like electronic business cards.

On Your SleeveThe first beta-version of the CharmIT will be available at the end of this year, says Barillova. But fashion mavens shouldn’t expect to get their hands on one this holiday season. The first models will be stripped-down units sans software for use by researchers and programmers. By spring of next year, consumer models should be available to the general public, the company says.

Barillova said the company plans to make the basic unit free, but to charge about $70 a month for a subscription to the wireless service. “Which isn’t that expensive, considering that that you get a computer, a cell phone, internet access, and television and radio reception,” Barillova says.

For Barillova, wearable computers are just the beginning.

“Fashion and technology will be truly indistinguishable from each other,” she says. “As the technology shrinks, it will let us integrate it into fashion.”

She sees wearable computers becoming more attuned to users’ preferences, allowing people to connect health monitors and get customized medical information such as blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. Eventually, they could become physical digital assistants.

“It will be able to analyze the toxins in your sweat to help you monitor your diet,” she said. “Tasks you have to do, have to remember … if you wear your computer as part of your purse, it observes you, and in time, it will remember your preferences, your likes and dislikes.”

Get SmartCharmed is looking closely at advances in silicon manufacturing, which could lead to a new way of looking at the basic component of microchips. Rather than cubes or chips, the silicon will take the form of long fibers that could be sewn into a fabric.

Imagine a fabric made out of hollow fibers or tubes that hot or cool water can flow through. “That fabric could be made into undergarments to [electronically] regulate temperature,” Barillova says.

“Designers are definitely excited,” she says. “We plan on working with big designers when we popularize the technology.”

But with all of the talk of wearing computers, is there a chance the computers will take over our lives? Barillova thinks not. “Everyone is in control of their life,” she says. “It’s up to every individual how he or she wants to organize his life … and you can always turn it off.”