Let’s decide that apples should be called selppa (because inversions are fun of course). With this new word in hand, we head to our local farmer’s market and request selppa from every vendor who sells red, crisp fibrous fruit. As you can imagine, inquiring about selppa proves moot, making this word useless for communication as any word is only as useful as its likelihood to be generally understood.

Let’s take this concept of semantic unclarity and apply it to one of the buzziest buzzwords in Silicon Alley. *Enter wearable technology stage left*. It seems as though this term tends to defeat the purpose of language, leaving people more confused than clarified when used. When one mutters, “wearable tech” the most common images that come to mind are smartwatches and Google Glass. The informed consumer may think of a Ralph Lauren Polo Tech shirt, or a hacker/maker may think of the lilypad and an Instructables project. Communication, ideation and advancement often become difficult when we all draw different references for the same term.

If you go to a store and ask politely, “where can I buy some wearable tech, please?” They might either point you out the door, or to their local display of Jawbones and Fitbit. These specific biometric trackers are just the beginning of where wearable technology can go. However, it seems as though we don’t have the vocabulary for universally communicating different types of products under that larger category. From haptic feedback blazers à la Billie Whitehouse, to 6th sense projection systems, the term wearable technology is becoming less and less specific, falling into a Tower of Babel-like confusion of tongues.

With this in mind, it seems useful to start being specific about wearables and sharing these specific terms and perceptions with others until we come to unified conclusions about meaning. At The Crated, we observe wearable technology falling into two categories. There are consumer products and enabling technologies for wearable tech. See the chart below to see how the term wearable tech can be broken down into several different categories.