CES 2018: The Top Five Gadgets To Briefly Cover Your Deep Dissatisfaction With Modern Life
CES is here for another year, and the world’s top tech companies are gathered together in sunny Las Vegas. Like all of you, we couldn’t wait to get stuck into the latest gadgets and briefly forget about how dissatisfied and alienated we are by the endless consumer capitalist hell that is the modern world! Alright! Let’s get into it!
1. “The Wall”, Samsung’s 146-inch TV
Everyone loves a new flatscreen – but is 48 inches really enough? Maybe what’s missing from your life, other than a sense of connection with your community, is Samsung’s new “The Wall”, an incredible MicroLED version of the same technology Samsung uses in movie theatres. Wow! With something like this hooked up in your home, you could have the whole neighbourhood over for movie nights – but you won’t, because you don’t even know your neighbour’s name. In fact, you don’t even know the name of anyone who lives in your street.
The last time you saw one of them was at the checkout at the local shops, and it was so awkward that you pretended you had an important business call and you had to walk away and take it. You meant to introduce yourself to everyone when you moved in two years ago, but you’ve just been so busy, what with work and stuff. Maybe you’ll do it next month. Yeah.
2. Toyota e-Palette Automatic Delivery Vehicle Concept
The car-making geniuses at Toyota are partnering up with our favourite brands like Uber, Pizza Hut and Amazon to create the world’s first fully autonomous delivery vehicles! Can you imagine ordering a pizza and having it delivered by a robot? Talk about science-fiction becoming science-FACT, am I right? The e-Palette will come in a variety of sizes as well, which means it’ll be easily able to fit into exactly the right shape to make you feel uneasy about the security of your own job in the face of rampant automation.
You always assumed your job was secure because of how hard you had to work to get there, but you just opened your news feed and, fuck, they’re replacing lawyers with robots now. Lawyers? Really? They probably though their job was a sure thing too. That’s okay, you didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway.
3. ForwardX CX-1 Automated Suitcase
Real talk for a second folks – having to drag your luggage around by a handle is boring, unsightly, and quite frankly so 2017. But thanks to the folks at ForwardX we’re taking a big leap into the future, with an incredible new mobile suitcase that follows you around the airport! The luggage uses a combination of facial recognition and other technologies to track you, and when we took it for a quick spin around the crowded show floor at CES it certainly seemed quite adept at keeping pace.
Unfortunately the CX-1 did have some trouble finding us when we made an abrupt turn and ducked into a cupboard and began to sob uncontrollably, so if you’re in a similar position you may want to hold off on the CX-1 until they iron out the kinks, or until you work out why you put yourself through this meaningless hell, day in and day out. Look for it towards the end of the year.
4. Delta Wi-Fi Faucet With Alexa
Nothing beats coming home and pouring yourself a nice cool glass of water – nothing except having Amazon’s Alexa assistant do it for you, that is! Thanks to the Delta wi-fi connected faucet, you can now ask for anything from a precise amount of water, to a precise temperature of water, or even both! Yes, soon the days of screaming at your tap for a busted washer will be a distant dream, replaced with the days of screaming at your tap for forgetting the wi-fi password, and then collapsing in front of the sink and wondering, not for the first time, why you bothered going to university when you could have just done an apprenticeship and been a plumber or something.
Things would be so much simpler if you could just take the problem in your hands and solve it, but instead you’re fumbling your way around like a clueless idiot, a bewildered product of a commoditised educational system which devalues life skills and pushed you out into an increasingly crowded market as soon as possible so that you could begin paying off your debts. And now your fucking tap needs a software update.
5. Debussy’s Nathaniel 4G Velvet Headphones
Imagine if you could just pick up your headphones and listen to music – no computer or phone required. Sounds great, right? That’s the mission that Debussy is on with their Nathaniel headphones, which you simply place over your head (feel those velvet ear cups!) and then control with the touchscreens on the side.
Priced at just $5,000 USD, the headphones are sure to look great on your shelf, really showing off what you desperately hope is your personality. You can’t look at them for too long of course because it means accepting that you help to support and perpetuate a system which creates products like these, but on the rare occasions you’re able to overcome the mutely screaming, bone-deep revulsion that these golden blasphemies evoke in your soul, friends assure you that you’re absolutely killing it.
Wow! Which gadget will you be turning to for succour first? Let us know in the comments below!
