New York Times blogger KJ Dell'Antonia has a piece on the Motherlode parenting blog about Memi, a new smart bracelet that aims to selectively inform users– in this case, women, and especially working mothers– of important calls and messages, while filtering out others. Dell'Antonia writes:

I love my smartphone, and it’s enabled me to work in a way I wouldn’t have dreamed possible a decade ago. But when I can, I prefer to put it away entirely in favor of my family, my hike, my book or a long-term writing assignment…. But there are times when we simply can’t disconnect entirely, whether it’s because we’re able to leave work only if we’re available for questions, or because we’re waiting for the phone call from our father at the hospital…. [The problem is] if you’re reachable by anyone, too often, you’re reachable by everyone.

The Memi is the kind of simple, effective product that I’ve found myself wanting again and again, something that would allow me to leave the phone off the table even when there’s something urgent afoot…. Using the associated app, users can set one of three distinct vibrations on the bracelet to notify them of particular calls, texts and alerts. A double tap silences the vibration….

“There are a lot of products out there, and coming, designed to help people be more connected,” Leslie Pierson, one of the creators of the Memi, told me. “We wanted to make something for the person who wants to be less connected to all the noise that’s out there, and more connected to what’s really important at the moment.”

Unlike many wearables, it really looks like a piece of jewelry. (One of the cofounders worked in the fashion industry.) There's no display, no OLED, no controls other than an on/off/test button and LED. As they explain in their FAQ,"We focused on delivering a bracelet that is discrete and unobtrusive because we want to reduce the digital disruption in your life, not increase it."

That intentionality is important: on their Kickstarter page they say that

We live an always-on life, bombarded by constant digital distractions.  Wouldn’t it be refreshing to put your phone away and fully engage at work, at home, with friends—or recharge your own batteries every now and then?  With MEMI, you can unplug just enough and still have peace of mind that those who need you can still get through….

The best part is you can customize the people – like your boss, babysitter, parents, or significant other – who 'break through' to your bracelet via an app so that you can put your phone away without worrying you’re going to miss something important.

And the gendered aspect is also not insignificant, not because men don't appreciate good design or wear jewelry (and indeed the smartwatch market is starting to pay more attention to creating devices that don't look like phablets that have gotten the shrunken-head treatment– witness the new Pebble Steel, to take but one example). "Women miss phone calls all the time because, unlike men, we don’t have a convenient place to store our phones," they explain. "Our purses are like black holes – they make it impossible to hear the ringer or feel the vibration when our phones are on silent." So you could argue that for men the smartwatch is a status symbol and geeky luxury item, but not a necessity. For women, though, a wearable device is.

While I use the present tense to describe it, I should also note that while they had a successful Kickstarter campaign, and you can pre-order, it's not actually available yet.

I think it's telling that Dell'Antonia expresses a desire to better control her phone and who gets through to her in physical and spatial terms: something that "would allow me to leave the phone off the table." It's worth noting that we do effectively wear our phones; it's just that the experience of wearing them is not always a positive thing. With smartphones, connectivity becomes an embodied thing, and we genuinely feel the gravitational pull of our digital lives through the devices in our pockets and purses. Like Bilbo Baggins and the ring, carrying it around with us, always having it on, making ourselves over-accessible, can eventually make us feel stretched and thin.

The other notable thing is how she describes it as "Wearable Tech That Lets You Disconnect." The oxymoron there is obvious, but it's as impossible as contemplative computing: which is to say, not impossible at all.