Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?

After his brother's premature death at 46, our writer gets serious about wearable tech.

- By Ryan D'agostino

MICHAEL HAD BIG PLANS.

He was working on the old barn behind his old house, which he and his wife had bought less than a year earlier. The barn looked tired. Some of the posts showed bug-nibbled rot. Some of the windowpanes were gone. But Michael saw it for what it was: a beautiful red barn, solid where it counted, capable of wrapping its walls around all sort of memories we would have forever. He was nearly finished converting a portion of it into an exercise room (including a sauna). There were plans for a wine cellar in which you could host a dinner for 12, and a party space with a floor girded for dancing and twinkly lights in the ceiling.

I told Mike that my neighbor Andy had a tool he was trying to get rid of and asked did he want it. Andy works at a firehouse, and it's not unusual for him to send me a text asking if I want some odd thing one of the guys brought in. ("Do you want a vacuum sealer? Brand new." "Do you need any scrap metal picked up?" "Do you like pound cake?") This time it was a vintage Craftsman shaper, a four-legged machine that can create customized decorative wood moldings—and that must have weighed 150 pounds.

When I texted Mike asking if he wanted it, those little dots bubbled up within seconds, signaling that he was typing a reply. I already knew his answer.