Most people feel anxious when their smartphone is out of arm's reach. But what if it was actually on your arm, woven into the very fabric of your sweater? Sportswear designers Under Armour are already on the case. They recently unveiled their touchscreen t-shirt concept, Armour39, which measures your athletic performance.It's just one recent example of how design, technology and science are coming together to form a new generation of consumer products that look set to shape the future. 
Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief of design magazine Dezeen, says that wearable technology will be a defining feature of future design. Fairs points to the likes of MC10, whose founder Professor John Rogers designed the stretchable circuit, and whose mission statement is to "extend human capabilities by making high-performance electronics virtually invisible, conformal, and wearable". The Biostamp is a digital temporary tattoo that stretches and twists seamlessly with our bodies to monitor our health. 
While augmented reality devices such as Google Glass may for now be the preserve of middle-aged men from Silicon Valley, Fairs is convinced this sort of technology will be the norm in years to come. Among Google's early competitors is the Vuzix smart glasses. Vuzix M100, which won the award for "Best of Innovations" in the design and engineering category at CES 2013, sync with apps on your smartphone and display them before your eyes. 
One step on from wearable technology is technology concealed inside the body altogether. In this way, Tokyo designers Takram have devised a solution to a future where drinking water is scarce. The Shenu: Hydrolemic System includes inserts for your nasal cavity to preserve water lost through breathing, a urine condenser and a radiating collar to lower body temperature and abate perspiration.
The emergence of sophisticated 3D-printing tools is also likely to shape consumer technology in unexpected ways, says Design Museum curator Deyan Sudjic. While domestic 3D printers are largely "just making combs and shoehorns" for now, Sudjic says that in the future we will be using them to manufacture much more complex devices. The CubeX Duo, which won "Best Emerging Tech" at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, is one of the more accessible 3D printers around, designed to be used at home by the average consumer. 
As 3D printing advances, so too will our ability to produce accurate 3D digital models. For those of you whose skills are lacking in the digital design department, the FARO Focus3D is a high-speed laser scanner that can create three dimensional digital models of existing objects, meaning that we can produce exact measurable copies of whatever we want. 
Industrial designer Ross Lovegrove says that the best future designs will be a marriage of science, health and manufacturing, the likes of which we are beginning to see with relatively low-cost and stylish health monitoring devices. Award-winning company Fitbit specializes in products to aid fitness, in particular the Fitbit Flex, a wireless-enabled wearable tracking device that measures your daily movements. Lights on the device indicate how you are stacking up against your personal goals. 
Lovegrove says that the outwardly unassuming Nike Flyknit running shoes are also an indication of the shape of things to come in terms of the design thinking that went into building. "The way they are woven. They put strength and structure where it is required. There are no aglets so they only need to be constructed with one material," he says. 
The Nest thermostat is another device that brings together elegant design with super-smart technology. It has the ability to remember, to learn about your lifestyle and adjust the temperature of your environment accordingly. Designed by former king of the iPod Tony Fadell, the thermostat turns down while you are away and can be controlled remotely via your smartphone. It looks cool too. 
Of course the next step from learning about your lifestyle is actually feeling it. These headphones from Neurowear can read your subconscious mind. Yes, really. With a sensor that measures brainwaves they detect your mood and select music from your playlists to match it. 
But the future isn't all high-tech gadgetry. Some of the best innovations will still draw heavily on technology from the past. This is modern-day clay oven won the coveted D&AD award earlier this year. Designers have given a 21st century makeover to a product whose age-old function is still the best. By inserting a porous stone disc, it acts in the same way as a traditional wood fired oven. 
Another update of an ancient yet unbeatable design -- the wheel. Devised by Vitamins design, this is the first ever foldable wheelchair wheel, earning it this year's transport Design of the Year Award at London's Design Museum. 
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- Newt Gingrich: Democrats see an opportunity to win back control of the House
- He says Republicans will be painted as opponents of entitlement programs
- Gingrich: GOP shouldn't look for a deal to rein in entitlement spending and raise taxes
- Gingrich: Agenda should be a future of innovation in contrast to past government failures
Editor's note: Newt Gingrich is a co-cost of CNN's new "
(CNN) -- Now that the urgent business of the government shutdown and the debt ceiling is over, it is a good time for Republicans to stop and think. Below is an excerpt from the strategy memo I shared with House Republicans Wednesday morning on the situation currently facing the Republican Party. I believe that with the right approach and an emphasis on a better future for all Americans, we can win and govern in 2014, 2016, and beyond, but that it will take some profound rethinking of how to make our case to the American people.
The current situation
The left, broadly speaking -- President Barack Obama, most of the news media, left-wing interest groups, Democrats --believes it sees an opportunity to create a wave election similar to those of 1994, 2006, 2010 and retake majority control of the House of Representatives.
Their goal is to describe the Republican Party as an unacceptably radical party and defeat individual candidates by suppressing Republican turnout, driving independents away from Republicans and maximizing turnout of the Democratic base.
In particular, efforts to control spending in Medicare and Medicaid and to reduce or eliminate funding for left-wing activities will consistently be described as radical and unacceptable. Reading the polls after the recent government shutdown, the left believes (mistakenly, I think) that this model is now even more likely to succeed.
Those same polls also reveal extraordinary opportunity for Republicans. The fact is that Americans are fed up with Washington, not just with Republicans. They believe America is on the wrong track, and Obama's approval rating is now among lowest of his presidency.
While Republicans are currently on defense, the failures and costs of Obamacare, the continuing weak economy in jobs and take-home pay, growing government debt, and inevitable failures of bureaucratic big government will only make it more obvious that Washington and the bureaucracy is hopelessly broken. And the Democrats have very publicly reaffirmed themselves as the party of big government bureaucracy, most recently with the launch of Obamacare.
Republicans could respond to these failures of government by becoming the Party of Austerity. But the Party of Austerity can rapidly reduce its supporters as people are told what the austerity means for them personally. Policies of pain almost never work in the absence of a large crisis. They might also play into the Democrat caricature of Republicans as radical and unacceptable.
There is a different strategy, however, which could dramatically unlock the current policy gridlock in Washington and create a new conversation in which Americans find the Republican Party to once again be the party of hope and opportunity (as it was in the Reagan years and in the 1994 Contract with America campaign).
An historic opportunity
The dramatic breakthroughs in science, technology, and entrepreneurship are creating new policy opportunities for a better future with a better economy, more take-home pay, better health, more learning, greater national security, a better, smaller, modernized government, and a balanced federal budget.
In Washington insider terms, this sounds like a fantasy or an impossibility. In the dynamic world outside Washington, all of these capabilities are increasingly obvious but outside the political news media, the political language, and the thinking of politicians and their staffs and their consultants.
This historic opportunity requires a very substantial change in the thinking and behavior of Republicans, and there will be enormous resistance to the change.
A key Republican goal should be to have 80% of all communications for the next four years be positive -- about exciting breakthroughs, exciting opportunities, and a better future for virtually all Americans.
Nothing would do more to defeat the left's current strategy than a positive Republican Party focused on opportunities for the future.
Offering Americans a better future
Our premise is that new science, technology, and entrepreneurship can lead to:
● A rapidly growing economy with more jobs, more take-home pay and more economic opportunity;
● A new system of better learning at lower cost for your entire lifetime;
● A dramatic improvement in health outcomes and reduced costs leading to longer lives, greater independence for the elderly, and a dramatic increase in high-value jobs marketing American health innovations throughout the world;
● A modernized government that is much less expensive, more effective, and more reliable and accountable;
● A better environment through sound science, entrepreneurship, and focused problem-solving;
● A stronger, leaner, less wasteful national security system;
● A balanced budget within a decade through a combination of:
-- greater economic growth;
-- more government revenues from a larger economy and from royalties from energy and other natural resources;
-- dramatic modernization of government to reduce waste and eliminate fraud;
-- breakthroughs in health dramatically lowering the cost of health care;
-- returning power to the states and to the people.
Budget Conference strategy
Republicans in the Budget Conference should focus first on economic growth, second on increased revenue through increased energy royalties, third on modernizing government to reduce fraud and theft, and fourth on dramatic opportunities for better health outcomes at lower costs.
A tax increase for entitlement cuts agreement is a pain-pain agreement and can't possibly achieve our goals or be supported by the American people.
There is no democracy in our lifetime that has sustained an austerity-led reform program.
We need a new model of budget breakthroughs and this formula creates a new focus on a positive, opportunity-oriented future.
What we are proposing is to replace the argument of more versus less with an argument of better future versus failed present.
Today we have Republicans who want more savings and less taxes versus Democrats who want less savings and more taxes. Neither side is arguing for rethinking the fundamentals, learning from non-Washington developments, and modernizing government systems and policies.
Better future vs. failed present would be a profound change in the very nature of the national debate.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Newt Gingrich.
