It’s the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest tech event of the year, and a glance at this year’s highlights confirm we are hurtling supersonically into a hi-tech future full of absolute McMuffins of uselessness. Here are some highlights.
Welt
A terrifyingly named leather belt designed to stop us overeating. Once it detects expansion, the belt sends an alert to your phone – as if phones aren’t already full of notifications of things we have neglected to do, or have done badly (see: emails). We’re all black belts at ignoring screen nags. You know what would work better? A haptic feedback mechanism that physically restricted someone from eating as their stomach expanded. Sort of like … a belt.
Home Brew
LG’s home beermaking machine ferments pale ales, stouts and pilsners with “little more than the touch of a button”. Well, little more than a lot of time. The machine takes two weeks to make 10 pints. That’s not really what we mean by “at the touch of a button”, is it? That’s like implying I can teleport to Acapulco by clicking the “Buy now” button on easyJet.
Mookkie
A spellcheck-defying, smart pet-food dispenser. It uses the same facial-recognition technology used to unlock smartphones, but to identify and open only for specific household animals, such as cats – those notoriously easy to train, machine-compliant sociopaths. Who’s going to play guinea pig for this one? If a phone fails to unlock, we use a code instead. If this doesn’t work, owners might return to a house of dead pets.
Breadbot
A fully automated bread-vending machine that mixes, kneads, bakes and sells a loaf in 90 minutes. It can make 235 a day and is aimed at retailers. Having said that: it’s a vending machine. What’s to stop carboholics installing them in their houses, directly leading to the death of all bakeries apart from Greggs? Having said that, 92 minutes is quite a long time to wait for toast.
