Proactive

Applications that perform tasks for the user without needing his or her attention.

Non-Wearable examples

Auto-complete is an application of proactive technology that we're all familiar with. Every time you start typing, it does a little research into what you've typed in the past that resembles what you're typing now, and allows you to skip the steps of retyping it all again. In Word, I don't ever have to type my full name - I merely type "Ryan," hit enter, and "Ryan D. Williams" is entered for me. It not only reduces the load on my memory (in case I had a lot of middle names), but also reduces the time I spend typing my name.

Appointment harvester

One of the biggest drawbacks to having a PalmPilot is that every appointment has to be painstakingly entered, even if it's only of tangential interest. This results in only the critical appointments being entered. The appointment harvester eliminates this problem by locating events from various sources, including central databases, and adding them to your calendar on a low-priority basis. This would be useful if it downloaded the IAP schedule because you could, if you're bored, look for an event starting soon and attend it. It could also do things like display events scheduled for a particular location, and do so on a context-sensitive basis so you can view all the events associated with the room you've just entered, or with the person you're talking to.

Electronic Performance Support System

Quality control is very important to the chicken industry. The wearable computer aids quality-control workers by displaying relevant information and orders on a small head-mounted display. It also handles logging of data from an array of sensors. Instead of reading off the temperature and logging it in a book along with date, time, and location, the worker merely needs to stick the sensor in the chicken. The system handles the rest.