BEWARE AN ELECTRONIC SHOCK!

It's amazing just what you can read in the daily newspaper, in my case the Melbourne Sun-Herald, especially when you're relaxing with a cup of coffee at your favourite Coffee Shop, after a morning's shopping.

(Please note that the bra pictured is NOT the so-called prototype "smart bra").

The headline did it for me:   

SMART BRA MAY STOP WOMEN OVEREATING

(I'll quote the article ver batim - with acknowledgement to who ever wrote it, although there was no indication as to who that might have been or which news agency it came through.)

"MICROSOFT researchers (who else????) have designed a smart bra that monitors a woman's mood in an attempt to prevent "emotional overeating".

The bra contains several removable sensors that monitor heart rate, breathing, skin activity and movement.

In theory, the bra could determine when a wearer is stressed and likely to look to food for relief, Microsoft researchers claim.

It would feed the data to a smartphone app via bluetooth and provide interventions such as breathing exercises to help the wearer beat their urge.

The researchers said the bra predicted emotions "significantly better than chance" after testing it on four women for four days.  They compared the physiological data to the women's self-reported emotions.

"Based on these results, we conclude building a wearable, physiological system is feasible," the researchers wrote.

But they said a real-world smart bra would need to be made more comfortable and have better battery life.

Analysts view wearables as the next frontier in technology.  Already there are wristbands that monitor well-being."

I don't know about you but technology seems to be going into areas that not even Captain Kirk (or even Mrs Kirk) envisioned.

How would you launder a bra that has a battery in it, in the first place?   Would the next step be possibly reducing the size of this "bra" to such an extent that it was not even necessary but where a chip could be implanted into a woman instead?    What if it got crossed wires and read a woman's mood incorrectly?  (Just like a lot of men!)

Anyway, women know their emotions.   They can read their bodies a lot easier than Microsoft researchers imagine.   Our bodies react in certain ways to protect us, to shield us and to allow us to confront, cope and then manage our situations.  

A "smart bra" - could this be going too far?  Are we becoming a nation of people who MUST have gimmicks for every use and occasion?  (Even uses that are preposterous?)