I recently watched Moon, one of the best films I’ve seen in some time. It centers on the main character, Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), the sole staff member (along with robot, Gerty) at the moon-based outpost of Lunar Industries, a company that harvests a newly discovered energy source, helium-3, from moon regolith, to provide 70 percent of Earth’s energy needs. We come to know Sam, to see his loneliness, his love for his family and his longing for home as he whittles wood, exercises, performs his work duties and receives time-delayed messages from his wife back on Earth. 
 

About mid-way through the film (partial spoiler alert!) because of a series of events, a Sam look-alike shows up and we learn, along with Sam, that both he and the  “new”  Sam are iterations of a series of Sam clones, based on the original Sam, all implanted with the same memories from the  “real”  Sam’s life. Watching the two clones struggle to come to grips with each other and themselves makes you question deeply what it means to be human, the role of memory and where the line between humans and technology should lie. And that’s not only because of the Sams. Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) seems to have achieved a level of emotional depth surprising for a robot. Gerty expresses feelings via onscreen emoticons, and makes some decisions that seem to go beyond the scope of  “artificial intelligence.” 
 

Moon doesn’t really seem like science fiction, and it’s easy to understand why, as new and amazing technologies seem to crop up every day. A few weeks ago, here on Earth, I visited JAY AHR in New York City, where artistic director Jonathan Riss is using FashionLab, a new solution from Dassault Systèmes that integrates design, simulation and collaboration tools, to lay out embroidery designs digitally before placing the first sequin or bead on fabric. Although sewing one of his fantastic creations takes about 60 hours, Riss is now able to slash the tedious parts out of the design development process by scanning the various components and arranging them in any formation he likes, digitally, before committing to the final creation. 
 

As you’ll read in this issue, over at upscale department store Von Maur, the company has moved from inefficient manual e-commerce fulfillment processes to high-tech automation, with a new warehouse built around the flexible Kiva System. Now, orange robots fetch product-laden pods, freeing people to do the packing. Although the robots do not express emotion, they have accomplished the same goal that is set before Gerty: keeping the humans happy.  
 

On the consumer-facing side, a proliferation of new apps, devices, social networking sites, online games, virtual dressing rooms, photo-sharing sites, fashion blogs — and increasing options for connecting them all together — is opening up a brave new world for consumers and retailers alike. With such a mass of data accumulating by the moment, apparel retailers and brands are scrambling to figure out how best to gain access to, and then harvest, these useful nuggets of individual tastes and preferences into meaningful information that can be fed back into the design and planning stages of the business, and ultimately impact the bottom line. In describing the new augmented reality app Blippar, RedPrairie’s Dave Bruno, speaking at Apparel’s Business & Tech Leadership Conference, describes how consumers can point their smartphones at merchandise, which will then  “get info in Minority Report–ish fashion.”
 

As to what technologies we’re currently using and planning to use in the apparel industry, be sure to check out the Sixth Annual Top Technology Trends in the Apparel Market in this issue.  
 

As to the future, it’s fascinating and fun to watch the world unfold, and it will be interesting to see what technologies appear in 2012 and beyond, but there are some things I hope we won’t see. It’s not too difficult to imagine a day when you can, say, choose to let a giant retailer  “option”  your child, implanting a chip at birth that adds a smiley face, images of private-label product and fond memories of childhood shopping trips to his or her memory bank.  
 

I, for one, am glad that retailers still have to work hard to try to figure out what consumers want, and I hope at least some portion of our deepest desires will always remain a mystery.