What Are You Lookin' At?
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 13, 2001
Smart minds are working on the gadgets of the future - but when will they develop a kick-proof computer?
LAS VEGAS: Overheard at the world's fair of gizmos, gadgets, thingies, whatchamacallits and doobiwhackies held here this week:
"I'm not moving on until we know what it is."
"Come on, Dad, it's what it says
it is."
"It says it's a SmartBox and it's won a big prize, but what is it?"
"Says here it's a 'personal doorman'. Look: 'An Internet-enabled device that makes sending and receiving packages at home as easy as ordering them online.'"
"Looks like a breadmaker to me."
"A washing machine."
"We have one of these at home already. It's called a letterbox."
"Maybe you put your packages in it and they get beamed up, like in Star Trek."
"But what is it?"
"It's a smart box."
"Yeah, real smart. It's got a hinge down the door."
"Maybe that's why it won the prize."
"It won because it's too smart for anyone to know what it is."
"That's my watch beeping, Dad. We better go."
"What did you set it for?"
"To remind us."
"Of what?"
"Can't remember. When did I
set it?"
"This morning."
"It's beeping because we're meant to be doing something. Can we
go now?"
Were they being caught on film for World's Most Embarrassing Nerds XIII? I looked around. Throughout, a fellow was filming the SmartBox with his camcorder, which didn't look like a camcorder, more like a pocket calculator. But I don't think he was filming the people who couldn't work out the box. He was filming the box.
Maybe he was the man with the answers, at least when he went home later to review his tapes and piece the whole thing together.
The fundamental fact of this expo, which is called the Consumer Electronics Show, is that if all this stuff is what's coming next then we'd better radically reassess our ideas of what things look like.
I never figured out the SmartBox and only worked out some of the others because their labelling was more explanatory. I saw a projector that looked like a car, an antenna that looked like a shoe tree, a speaker that looked like a deep-fryer, a car stereo that looked like a griller, a keyboard that looked like a Frisbee, another pair of speakers that looked like an office partition - mmmm, the rabbit-warren look is so 2001 - another speaker that I swore was a mozzie zapper and a fancy shredder that looked like an Alessi-designed kitchen tidy. Oh, what will those clever people think of next?
It didn't seem that they'd given much consideration to the real questions of the technological age. Example: a remote control (it looked like an inner sole) described as "friendly, unique, uncluttered, intelligent and comfortable during extended 'in hand' periods". Is that when you veg out in front of the telly? Sorry, I can't come now, I'm having an extended 'in hand' period.
But had they considered the real question: why do the damned things have so many buttons when you use only three? And when can you ever find the remote you want? My living room is a parking lot of abandoned and/or stolen remotes - can anyone give me the ultimate single, unified remote control? Please?
Nor were the other big questions answered. They haven't developed a kick-proof computer yet. The VCR is being phased out, but they haven't developed one you can program. They've made a keyboard that can fold up to the size of your palm (oh, all right, a very big person's palm), but they haven't made one that is coffee-resistant to a depth of 30 cups. They've made cables that resist crimping, but they haven't made a cable that supersedes the spaghetti junction.
And I can't see that they've created a trouble-shooting device that works better than the On-Off switch, which I still regard as the most friendly, unique, uncluttered and intelligent technological device known to man.
They have developed a way to lock you down onto your couch for infinite "in hand" periods, though. I paused for a minute to watch the biggest and best high-definition TV from Sanyo. I was still there an hour later, a strand of drool from chin to floor. That HD-TV is incredible. You don't even care that you're watching home shopping. No wonder Kerry Packer wants us all to have one.
What a relief, then, it was to stumble upon the distinctly low-tech: the Hands-Free Headset Magnifier, a magnifying glass that - wait for it - hangs around your neck! There were guys selling ... wristwatches! And metal detectors! And funky radios that looked like jukeboxes! Wow! What will they think of next? A (fingers flexed in quotation marks) "Laser Beam"?
Dad, I think my watch is beeping now.
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald