Ready for the ultimate public display of affection?

Electronic emoticon jackets

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

Technology is ever-advancing, but it’s nice to see that some aspects of it remain the same—that being the need to connect. People nowadays get criticized for being socially disconnected, but as someone who is living and loving this technology revolution, I encourage people not to see it as a disconnect, but rather an evolution in how we establish and maintain relationships. The people over at Rapido Connected Wear, a company sponsored by Samsung, obviously think the same way.

Their line of outerwear allows people to text emoticons and messages that will change the way your jacket looks. From patterns to colours, your lover or friend can let you know their mood or just tell you how much they miss you, and have you instantly aware of their feelings. It’s like having your ears ring, taken to the next level!

The jacket works via its connection to a specialized app. A user can send a message to another user and have that message interpreted into one of many animated emoticons. Messages such as “I love you,” will result in a beating heart you can literally wear on your sleeve! While “I miss you,” will cause the jacket to animate a rainfall of blue tears. For now, the technology is limited to the sleeve, and so far hasn’t yet been adapted to display readable messages.

One cool thing that has been done with the technology is its ability to colour scan: if you see a particular shade that you’d like to share with someone, simply scan it with your phone (or if you have an emoticon jacket of your own, you can simply touch the sleeve cuff to the desired colour) and send the colour to your loved one. The jacket will then display it on your sleeve.

Truth be told, there’s not much practical application to Rapido’s new brainchild. It doesn’t cure any diseases, or make life easier in any way we seem to think technology is supposed to. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that allowing couples, families, and friends to share and just generally play around and entertain each other is probably worth a lot more than a new software program to encrypt your emails, or a one-player game on your iPhone that allows you to manage a vault. People often forget that sometimes technology should just be fun, and nothing is more fun than turning your friend’s jacket the exact shade of barf green that you found in a restaurant’s ham and pea soup.