CAN WEARABLES GET BEYOND FITNESS BANDS? My latest Bloomberg View column looks at what’s hindering progress in wearable technology.

Technology watchers have been proclaiming wearables the next big thing since at least the 2013 debut of Google Glass. The rapid sales growth of fitness bands and smartwatches has intensified that conviction. But to fulfill its potential, wearable technology has to be good for more than tracking workouts or getting notifications on a wristwatch.

Defined loosely as tiny computers worn somewhere on the body, wearable tech still needs its graphical user interface, its browser, its broadband, its VisiCalc, its Google, its Amazon: the enabling technologies and unique benefits that make it essential and easy to use. Early adopters of Apple’s headline-grabbing smartwatch are, after all, using it mostly for telling time and getting notifications — not exactly world-changing applications.

“Where we are with wearables is about where we were with the Internet in 1993,” says Amanda Parkes, the chief of technology and research at Manufacture New York and a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab.