A company has created a wearable hotspot called TieFi to encourage children to get closer to their dads on this year’s Father’s Day.
TieFi works by capturing your home WiFi signal and re-routing it through a small transmitter built into a tie. The strength of the signal is just over 10 feet, thus forcing any tech-addicted member of the family to get closer to the hotspot.
BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH ‘SLOW TECH’
It may sound like a paradox, but studies show that families are increasingly disconnected. One of the latest expressions of this fear comes from Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur now a partner with Google Ventures.
Kraus warns that, ‘technology tangled’ people are progressively creating a “culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us” – family included. He offers an alternative approach, what he calls “Slow Tech,” to alter the purpose of lifestyle technologies which he believes should focus on making real connections and encouraging kids to be ‘mindful’.
TIEFI: DEVELOPED TO BRING DADS AND CHILDREN CLOSER TOGETHER
In a promotional video for TieFi, the company Grip Limited asked several fathers about the challenges of spending time with their children.
Many dads pointed to the lack of interaction and ‘face to face communication’. In the video, they discuss how their kids spend most of their time glued to a screen and prefer to send them a text message from the basement, instead of literally voicing their needs.
When asked what they desired for Father’s Day, they all expressed the will to spend time with their families. After listening to such testimonials of fathers feeling that their children were prioritizing their tablet over the person right in front of them, Grip Limited re-imagined a classic gift for the 21st Century.
A TIE FOR THE DIGITAL ERA
TieFi is, in fact, a mini wireless router integrated into a man’s necktie to encourage children to get close to dad. The company allows you to download instructions and create your own wearable hotspot.
Could TieFi, revert – even if just for a day- what MIT professor Sherry Turkle says about people expecting “more from technology and less from each other”?
