Leuty Parker

Tag: #technology

  • New Direction; SWT vs Medi-tech

    The future of fashion isn’t just about aesthetics anymore… it’s about intelligence!

    From designing and selling fashion inmy BA degree, I constantly found myself moving beyond traditional garment #design and towards something a bit more functional. This shift became even more interesting as I sawthe rapid rise of #athleisure, where the audience increasingly expected their clothes to do more than simply look good. The bigger question: what if sportswear evolved beyond performance apparel into performance technology? Could the next generation of garments actively monitor, support, and even enhance our health?

    This shift isn’t about shock, and turning people into superheroes through futuristic gadgets. It’s about #designing products that subtley work in the background, to help us better understand our bodies, identify potential #health concerns earlier, and enhance our overall wellbeing. This is where smart wearable technology (#SWT) becomes really exciting.

    Brands like @KYMIRA are leading this evolution, blurring the boundaries between fashion, sportswear and healthcare through scientifically driven innovation. Alongside pioneers such as @Tala and @NowYouLive, these companies are demonstrating that the future of fashion isn’t just about what we wear, it’s about what our clothing can do for us. Redefining the relationship between design, performance and health, and I’ll be exploring each of them in more depth in future posts.

    And over the last few years, #med-tech has undergone a remarkable transformation, where #healthcare is no longer focused solely on digitising patient records or replacing outdated systems. Instead, we’re entering a new era of intelligent technologies that combine #AI, #robotics, advanced #sensors and #biological data to support faster diagnoses, personalised treatments and continuous health monitoring. Rather than existing as isolated innovations, these technologies are increasingly becoming connected #ecosystems, integrating hardware, software and real-time physiological data to improve clinical decision-making and long-term patient care.

    For someone interested in SWT, this represents an incredibly exciting direction. The boundaries between fashion, engineering and medicine are beginning to blur. #Clothing is evolving from something we simply wear into something that interacts with us, collecting data, communicating with healthcare professionals and adapting to our individual needs. Smart textiles, embedded #biosensors and AI-powered wearables are opening the door to garments that can monitor heart rate, analyse posture, detect early signs of illness and support rehabilitation, all without disrupting everyday life.

    This is why I believe the future of fashion lies beyond traditional apparel. Designing for sport was only the beginning. The next frontier is creating garments and wearable devices that become part of our healthcare infrastructure, products that are as beautifully designed as they are clinically valuable. It is no longer just about creating clothes that enhance performance; it is about developing intelligent companions that help us live healthier, longer lives.

    My new direction is to explore the emerging world of smart wearable devices and robotic healthcare technologies, not simply as medical innovations, but as the next evolution of design itself. From AI-powered health monitors and smart textiles to robotic rehabilitation systems and adaptive prosthetics, these innovations are redefining what it means to wear technology. They are not designed to make us superhuman; they are designed to make healthcare more proactive, personalised and seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives.

    Because perhaps the most exciting fashion trend of the next decade won’t be defined by colour palettes or silhouettes, it will be defined by intelligence.

  • Leonardo

    Mixing tech, innovation and the arts feels like a natural fit . In 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was founded; it’s an independent U.S. federal agency, a wee bit far from a Scottie, but it’s the US’s largest public funder of arts and arts education.

    The NEA gives grants to artists and organizations around the US (50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S.)… but it’s worth considering whether similar opportunities could extend to international artists (i.e. Scotland)? Expanding globally could strengthen their mission of inclusivity and connect U.S. arts with a broader, more diverse creative community.

    Alongside funding, the NEA encourages and supports research into the impact of the arts, it runs national initiatives, and promotes artists through various honours like Jazz Masters and National Heritage Fellowships. Working with government agencies and non-profits it’s projects aim to connect arts, communities, and public life.

  • Memes

    LOL, it’s obvious that I used chat GBT to perfect my past post content. Everyone does it, don’t be in denial…

    Internet memes may seem like simple jokes or viral images, but they actually reveal something much deeper about modern culture. A meme is best understood as a unit of cultural information that spreads through imitation and adaptation online. These digital fragments evolve rapidly as people share, remix, and reinterpret them, turning memes into a living form of communication.

    Across the internet, memes exist within distinct communities—each with its own humour, language, and purpose. Some revolve around everyday frustrations, such as bad driving, while others grow within highly specific fandoms or gaming cultures where insider knowledge strengthens group identity. In more personal communities, memes serve an even deeper role, helping people share experiences, cope with challenges, and find validation among others with similar lives.

    Technology is also reshaping meme culture. Artificial intelligence is beginning to generate its own meme-like content, creating a strange mix of fascination and humour as humans react to the unpredictable outputs of machines. At the same time, memes are increasingly used for political commentary, allowing complex ideas to be shared quickly through simple, recognisable formats.

    Despite the chaos and variety of meme culture, one powerful trend stands out: communities dedicated to positivity. In these spaces, memes are deliberately used to uplift, motivate, and highlight moments of kindness. Ultimately, memes are far more than fleeting internet jokes—they are evolving cultural signals that reveal how people connect, express identity, and make sense of the digital world together.

  • Tesla update

    My interest in the automotive industry developed during a university module focused on Nissan, where I explored the company’s growing investment in autonomous vehicle technology. Using this industry. Tesla was a particular interest in innovative design and iteration with technology….

    Tesla is facing major challenges, including falling demand and heavy price cuts in the UK to attract customers. The company’s valuation largely depends on investor belief that it will succeed in autonomous driving, but confidence has been shaken by a disappointing Robotaxi rollout and criticism of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology.

    Unlike competitors such as Waymo, which use multiple sensors (cameras, radar, lidar), layered AI systems, detailed maps, and built-in safety redundancies, Tesla relies on a simplified approach. Its FSD system primarily depends on camera vision with minimal redundancy or external safety layers, increasing the burden on AI perception and decision-making.

    Philosopher Luciano Floridi argues this design choice may present fundamental limitations, raising doubts about whether Tesla’s strategy can reliably achieve fully autonomous driving.

  • Intelligence

    There’s an ongoing debate about AI intelligence: some believe it will outsmart humans, while others argue it merely mimics us. I don’t hold a fixed view—I just know AI is incredibly useful, especially tools like ChatGPT, even if we don’t fully understand how they work.

    Because AI sits at the forefront of business research, it’s often compared with human and animal intelligence. One example is the “Animal/AI Olympics,” which tests problem-solving across species and AI agents using maze-like tasks in simple 3D environments. Similar tests are used with animals—and even in human neuropsychological assessments.

    I experienced this myself after a brain injury, when a neurologist tested my memory and problem-solving through mazes and drawing tasks. While basic navigation is easy, more complex challenges, like manipulating objects or understanding cause and effect, require common sense. These are difficult for less-evolved animals and still extremely hard for even advanced AI.

    This is well captured by my mother’s old phrase: “very intelligent, but no sense.”

    Intelligence involving higher-level reasoning is often seen as more advanced, yet closer inspection shows that different intelligences have entirely different profiles of skills. One challenge for AI is convincing us it is human-like.

    A useful metaphor is the octopus. Octopuses (or octopi) are highly intelligent: they use tools, plan escapes, and adapt to new situations. Their intelligence doesn’t resemble ours, yet it is remarkably effective. Unlike mammals, they have a distributed nervous system one central brain and one in each arm allowing semi-independent action.

    Octopus intelligence feels almost alien: efficient, decentralised, and fundamentally unlike human cognition. In this sense, AI may be best understood not as a lesser human mind, but as a genuinely different—almost alien—form of intelligence

    AI is difficult to understand not because it evolved on another planet or in some distant galaxy. In a sense, it is an alien—but one that evolved alongside us. We created it deliberately, designing it in the hope that it might give us a glimpse into deeper forms of understanding and intelligence.

  • The Black Swan Effect

    The Black Swan effect refers to rare, unexpected events that have huge impacts, and only seem obvious in hindsight. It’s like the butterfly effect; small or unpredictable triggers lead to dramatic, far-reaching consequences.

    In short, it explains how humans underestimate the likelihood of extreme situations, but rely heavily on past data.

    Important attributes include unpredictability; nothing in the past clearly points defined the future.

    It concludes to really big consequences; PESTLE (as learned in my MSc: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental) or cultural. It’s only afterwards when it becomes obvious and should have been expected.

    Black Swanevents can instantly transform entire industries, markets, technologies, and even society itself.

  • Meta diaries #1.5

    This post is dedicated to exploring the limitations and drawbacks of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

    While the technology is undeniably groundbreaking; beautifully designed, powerful, and far ahead of many competitors; no innovation is without compromise. As impressive as they are, Meta glasses also raise practical concerns that deserve attention, especially in relation to accessibility, usability, privacy and long-term impact on the job market.

    A major drawback is the lack of physical support or in-person guidance. There are no trained experts you can visit to walk you through setup or troubleshoot issues face-to-face, which makes the learning curve steeper than it needs to be.

    Good for this blog (i can share my own experience step by step) but I’m no technician or Meta engineer. I’m simply a customer navigating the product in real time, passing on both what works and what goes wrong. If and when I do find solutions, I’ll document them here too, so others don’t have to go through the same trial-and-error.

  • Future Focus

    Wearable technology has become increasingly popular, with its commercial viability significantly boosted by the introduction of the Apple Watch. This innovation allowed a tech company, Apple, that was already renowned for its aesthetic focus in various other, more tech-focussed products, to diversify its product range, creating opportunities for clusters and various expansion avenues. The Apple Watch significantly contributes to job creation from a CSR perspective.

  • AI & creativity

    This is a big argument; will AI (artificial intelligence) replace creativity.

    Being creative is too natural, connected to the human condition.

    This falls into the chaos & irrationally of our actions & emotions. This is also felt in pain & suffering. To be human is to be creative, & vice versa.

    AI doesn’t have an unconscious mind , where a lot of art speaks so loudly. This is found in historical pieces, where the message is conveyed by the skill.

    What a computer can do, is manage data. Therefore it can replace jobs that are not creative, like self checkouts.

    AI is sublime at getting things theoretically perfect, but it doesn’t think like humans do. That’s things that we’ve learned from our mistakes.

    There’s a split between the deep AI machine bots (what we think about now, when we talk about AI) and what is called “Go-fi” (Good Oldfashioned AI) which believes that there should be more progressming combined, more human input.