Fit to burst.

I like to run, it gets rid of the day's frustrations, keeps me fit (ish) and most important of all, let's me eat pizza whenever I want. Sometimes I need extra motivation, be that new shoes or apparel to get back out there and run some more. Sometimes I need more and recently it was in the form of wearable technology. The big deal in running and health for 2014 and beyond is wearable technology telling you how much you've achieved, how many steps you've taken, how many calories (all the technology is US based) you've burned, how many flights of stairs you've ascended and how well you've slept. Most of this is collated and sold by the main players, Fitbit, Nike, Jawbone and now a host of new entrants like Sony and LG, are looking to sell you technology for something you didn't know you needed, until that belt feels a little tight and that top button becomes constrictive.

The big markets for this technology, are Boomers and corporate types needing a dig to the love handles, to motivate movement away from the computer. Yet at anywhere from $130 to $150 a pop for a rubber wristband with Bluetooth connectivity, the outlay needs serious consideration as to whether this is another ab roller or rowing machine gathering dust in the garage or collapsed under the bed. As an early adopter on all things cool in technology I had to have one and invested in a Fitbit Force ( not yet available in Australia) and wore it proudly on my wrist while cruising the halls of corporate land. I had it set for the minimum 10,000 steps per day and showed off the digital display to anyone vaguely interested in why I was wearing this piece of black rubber. At times I felt like a Fitbit spruiker but whenever there was interest, purchase validation and motivation for continued use, rose in proportion with the lycra outfit worn by the questioner.

Once set up, tethered to my iPad and attached to my non dominant hand I couldn't stop watching my daily progress and gaining understanding of how difficult it is, to achieve 10,000 steps in a normal office environment. This spurred me to get up and walk around the room, making sure my arms were swinging by my side but the office was not big enough to accumulate the distances I had set for myself. This left only one option, the outside, to move around via a run, a walk to a sandwich shop at least 4 kilometres away or a vigorous session of rolling out pizza dough, which I found out one night, accumulated 500 steps.

The whole point of the wearable technology trend will be the recording of our daily lives, bringing into focus our shortcomings, thinking we are fitter than the guy sitting next to us at work, that the lunchtime stroll to the sandwich shop is enough and that 25 metre sprint for the train is a weekly speed workout. If nothing else, the drill Sargent attached to my wrist is pushing me hard, for the time being. Yet like all before them, the fitness bands, watches that follow and eventually that electronic T shirt, have a history, of dormant fitness rowers, TV treadmills and collapsible cycles to contend with, while adding the aggravating wrinkle of pointing out we haven't come close to any real exercise by rolling out the pizzas. Will there be drawers filled with wristbands in the future?

Bubblegum.

Music has many landscapes, some you never admit exploring unless you are in the privacy of your own home. Bubblegum music was such a landscape because it was a guilty pleasure of catchy choruses, infectious riffs, addictive melodies and goofy lyrics. No one ever admitted liking bubblegum music because it didn't have the cache of the starving artist honing their skills in the subways of New York or the underground of London, think "Clapton is god" scrawled across the tiles at Islington station in 1967. No one talked openly about the Archies, the Monkees or The Partridge Family, let alone the 1910 Fruitgum Company and this continues today, through to Hanson and The Backstreet Boys. Yet someone had to be listening, the Beatles were outsold by the Monkees in 1967, the year of the epiphanous Sgt Pepper and again in 1969 by the Archies, after Abbey Road and Let it Be were released. By 1997 Hanson with "In an mmm bop they're gone, Mmm bop, ba duba dop" had again fooled the music cognoscente by becoming a worldwide hit that know one owned up to listening to or owning.

Those guilty pleasures of singing bubblegum in the shower have today been taken over by furtive glances at the the iPhone or the tablet waiting for your time penalty to finish so that you can attempt the next level of Candy Crush or better still hurl an Angry Bird at a bunch of farm animals. Yes bubblegum has gone online and no matter what people say about the inanity of Fruit Ninjas, Bejewelled, Doodlejump or Berserker Stickman, millions of people are playing the games. In the privacy of their homes, in lunch breaks, while waiting for the bus, whenever there is a break in meetings, in the toilets but no one admits it. Angry Birds was the most downloaded APP on the web for nearly two years, more than Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Maps, and when you take in the various iterations like Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Seasons, the top ten looked not unlike the pop charts whenever a bubblegum song hit number one.

When the Monkees and The Partridge Family hit the small screen and Hanson hit MTV with the boys being pushed around in shopping trolleys, it wasn't about competing with the established music scene, it was about escape, smiling at their antics and leaving your credibility at the door. For how else were you meant to sing the choruses without guilt, why else would you spend your hard earned cash, if not to eat that most delicious of chocolates without worrying about the diet. For a three minute singalong or a fifteen minute diversion, depending on you skill level on Tetris, you can leave behind everything else and where you once had to just sit and daydream to lose yourself, some developer is now working on your next escape. Daydreams and delicious treats, you know are not good for you, have always been, in the end, good for you. "Hey hey, we're the Monkees".

Unplugged.

Was a time this meant Eric Clapton on acoustic guitar, MTV getting a second go at rock guitarists without amps and pulling the cord from the kettle. Today the unplugged movement is about quiet, it's about no interruptions and it's about non contactability. Like the slow food movement, evoking long lunches under the Tuscan pines with unlimited vino, unplugged is all about taking back what has been taken away, time. Time taken up by the myriad of tech toys and applications overwhelming many to the point of exhaustion. Digital detoxing is a movement gaining focus for many who can't shake the need to turn off, not just the Angry Birds or Candy Crush but the work and social connections, that have become ubiquitous in our lives.

Used to be holidays and travel disconnected us all, with only the lonely postcard as a tether to home. Times have changed and today it's not about the physical freedom from work but the mental freedom to not feel obligation, to not feel the need to connect that finds people looking for WiFi free destinations. Once found the "cold turkey" of disconnect leaves many in a sweat thinking what others are saying about them on Facebook. As drastic as total escape sounds, there are other ways to ease into more control and it can start as easily as leaving your charger behind on a weekend trip, this will surely focus your energy on only the most important matters to conserve that all important battery.

If you can't unplug from your email list, can't resist tweeting, poking, liking, posting, instagraming, tagging, commenting or pinning, it begs the question about how self absorbed you are and how unconnected you are from real life? Unplugging relies on alternatives, you will have to talk with people, maybe shake hands, certainly have a discussion over a meal and maybe even have time to exercise, read a book and rejoin society. Ask yourself, "what's the worst that can happen, if I unplug for a while"? Maybe start with a morning or better still an afternoon, after all, research shows us 3pm is the lowest productivity period of the work day, so what are you doing online?

Why not show total commitment and your undivided attention and stop taking the phone into meetings, take your best friend at work to lunch and talk about your social life without referring to the social APPs and consider doing your body a favour with some exercise, it's much harder to answer the phone when you are out of breath? Why not steal a pen from office stationary and start prioritising the activities list giving you the most freedom from technology and try and integrate one each day.

Unplugged brought a whole new meaning to high octane rock and roll and it can mean as much if you can only turn off the automatic synch to Assassin's Creed, Clumsy Ninja or Bloomberg News and hide those gadgets for a while. To some it may be death, for others it may just be faking death but once you broadcast your intentions, you'll be surprised how many join you in your commitment. I'm not dead, I've just stopped tweeting for a while. :-)))

Secrets, who cares?

My parents are concerned with privacy, my Dad riles at the fact so many companies have his name on a list and he receives mail, junk or otherwise from all directions. He thinks his privacy has been impinged and is scared of what it means to his future. Why do they know so much about me, is a typical question from his generation along with some of my friends who have similar concerns. Yet overall, the majority of people I talk to, don't care at all. Especially if we're not talking about trade secrets (think eleven herbs and spices) or financial information (think credit card theft), then generations Y and beyond, have no concern about everyone knowing everything. The social media storm that has infiltrated every corner of our lives gives great scope for snooping and I wondered if people were prepared to walk the talk and be as open as they say?

Straw polls from anyone under 35 and discussions with my nieces and nephews certainly give credence to the fact, no one cares about their secrets, in fact secrets seem blasé when anyone is online. With Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, loyalty programs, online shopping, tracking APPs, Google search et al, there are enough ways to find out information that used to be the domain of your family doctor, lawyer or Grandparents. It's not only Santa who knows if you've been naughty or nice, it's most everyone else. Yet there is no tidal wave of information flooding my emails on the secret lives of my friends and colleagues. There are no salacious accounts of wrong doings, no tattle tale accounts of secret journals with romantic details or life plans not eventuated, no reckonings of opportunities lost, past or foreboding and certainly no enlightenment or advantages to be had with any of this knowledge.

A discussion with a legal friend, lamented the "young" generation putting their employment livelihood under stress with Facebook posts that left nothing to the imagination. This is a short term legacy lament with no future, no future because the soon to be employers will be of the same generation, with the same Facebook posts, totally unconcerned. I realised after more discussions and random visits to online sites and communities what seems important to me is meaningless to others and vice versa. Past providing gossip, information important to me is most likely of no interest to anyone else, so why go to the trouble of keeping it so secret? My parents would argue, why go to the trouble of making it public?

As the social side of technology blurs into all aspects of business and life, we'll see an even more open environment regarding information once deemed private and personal and the attitudes that govern our thinking today will seem antiquated in the future. In fact it's too late to shut the gate but don't worry, I won't come snooping. You're stuff is private and it will stay that way because I honestly don't care, do you?