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Speaker 1: Things fall apart, the center will not hold, and journalists

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Speaker 1: will make a pretty good living writing about at all.

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Speaker 1: It's a good time to work the dystopia beat. The

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Speaker 1: pillars of our society have been crumbling for most of

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Speaker 1: my adult life and probably yours too. One exception to this,

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Speaker 1: up until recently, has been the tech industry. When the

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Speaker 1: rest of the economy shipped the bed back in two

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Speaker 1: thousand eight, big tech roared into the gap to prop

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Speaker 1: up the groaning timbers of capitalism. Sure, the housing market

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Speaker 1: was in free fall, huge numbers of people were out

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Speaker 1: of work, and American infrastructure was crumbling like a twice

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Speaker 1: baked pot brownie. But then Steve Jobs magicked up the

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Speaker 1: iPhone and the iPad and the app store. Google brought

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Speaker 1: us Android and a dizzying array of smart and connected

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Speaker 1: devices followed. Companies like Uber disrupted massive industries and briefly

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Speaker 1: made hailing a cab the cheapest it's ever been, although

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Speaker 1: they did this by lighting massive piles of VC cash

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Speaker 1: on fire. It was in this period of what would

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Speaker 1: prove to be a rational exuberance that I started my

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Speaker 1: career as a tech journalist. That was the job title

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Speaker 1: my boss gave me, and it's what everybody else in

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Speaker 1: the industry called themselves. In reality, most of us were

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Speaker 1: just extensions of big text pr agencies. All the big

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Speaker 1: tech news websites of that era, slash gear In, Gadget Boy,

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Speaker 1: Genius Review, and the place I worked for I FORU News,

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Speaker 1: made most of their money off the back of a

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Speaker 1: peculiarity in Google search algorithm. The gist of it was this,

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Speaker 1: if a bunch of websites all published articles that were

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Speaker 1: basically rewritten press releases about say a new gadget, or

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Speaker 1: rewrites of someone else's report on rumors about an Apple product,

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Speaker 1: Google would assume that this was a hot topic, and

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Speaker 1: they would bump everybody up on the algorithm. You could

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Speaker 1: make a tidy profit just paying a handful of writers

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Speaker 1: to rewrite press releases or copy reports from some of

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Speaker 1: the few sites doing actual tech journalism. And this is

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Speaker 1: where I got my start in reporting. I wrote ten

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Speaker 1: articles a day, five days a week for several years

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Speaker 1: until Google fixed their algorithm and wiped my silly little

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Speaker 1: industry out in the blink of an eye. It's fine.

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Speaker 1: In this case, we kind of had it coming. It

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Speaker 1: was nice to get paid to sit home and write.

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Speaker 1: And the experience putting out a shipload of words every

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Speaker 1: single day that were polished enough to print was pretty

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Speaker 1: good for me, but it wasn't journalism, and so while

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Speaker 1: I was doing it, I started seeking opportunities to actually

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Speaker 1: get out into the world and do original reporting. And

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Speaker 1: that's what first brought me to the Consumer Electronics Show

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Speaker 1: in Las Vegas in two thousand ten c s as.

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Speaker 1: It's known as a tech industry insider event for analysts, manufacturers,

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Speaker 1: and media. They come and they show off new products

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Speaker 1: and gadgets and apps, and journalists walk around and look

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Speaker 1: at everything and then write articles about it. Companies spend

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Speaker 1: millions of dollars every year on massive, multi acre show

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Speaker 1: rooms for their products and dream up ludicrous demonstrations of

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Speaker 1: their new tech. One that sticks out to me from

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Speaker 1: again about thirteen years ago, is watching some company or

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Speaker 1: another charge an electric car inductively. That means there was

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Speaker 1: nothing actually plugged into the vehicle. They just parked it

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Speaker 1: like you would put your phone on an inductive charger,

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Speaker 1: and they charged it that way. The whole process was

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Speaker 1: so energy intensive that it dimmed the lights in the

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Speaker 1: Loss of Vegas Convention Center, which if you've never been

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Speaker 1: inside of. It is about the size of a small city.

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Speaker 1: The spectacle was always the best part of CS and

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Speaker 1: with all the money pouring into big tech, it was

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Speaker 1: a great place to be a reporter. Every big booth

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Speaker 1: had free wet bars and piles of free swag. I

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Speaker 1: left every year with a sack full of USB drives

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Speaker 1: and thousands of dollars in products to test. There was

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Speaker 1: so much goddamn money everywhere that even a dumb kid

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Speaker 1: like me with no real connections could do okay. Collapse

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Speaker 1: was always and has always been present at c S, however,

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Speaker 1: looming in the background overdomed product categories and vast tottering

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Speaker 1: businesses that didn't realize they were already dead. I'm thinking

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Speaker 1: primarily of r I Am, the people who used to

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Speaker 1: make blackberries here. Another good example would be Motorola in

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Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. Their booth was one of the largest

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Speaker 1: at c E s now Apple was and still is

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Speaker 1: the biggest name on the block when it comes to

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Speaker 1: making consumer gadgets, but they don't go to c E S,

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Speaker 1: preferring to hold their own annual event to announce new products.

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Speaker 1: This has always irritated the people who run the show,

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Speaker 1: and so in the early two thousand tens, when androids

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Speaker 1: started to blow up as a rival to Apple's iOS,

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Speaker 1: a huge deal was made about Motorola's Droid line of phones.

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Speaker 1: They actually had to license the name from Lucasfilm for

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Speaker 1: obvious reasons. In two thousand ten, Motorola won the Best

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Speaker 1: in Show award for their Droid phone, despite the fact

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Speaker 1: that they hadn't actually brought a working example of it

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Speaker 1: to the show, something that kind of pissed me off

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Speaker 1: at the time. Now today, Motorola is basically dead. It's

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Speaker 1: a shadow of its former self. It's been bought and

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Speaker 1: sold several times. His companies like Samsung and HTC beat

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Speaker 1: the piss out of it on the open market. Other

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Speaker 1: famous collapses from c e s has past include the

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Speaker 1: entire three D television market. If you can remember those

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Speaker 1: heady day days after the release of the first Avatar movie,

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Speaker 1: the tech industry blue billions in R and D and

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Speaker 1: ad money trying to convince everyone that people would actually

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Speaker 1: sit down in their actual glass living rooms and wear

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Speaker 1: fucking three D glasses to watch movies or TV. It

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Speaker 1: was preposterous and obviously doomed. I have fond memories of

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Speaker 1: harassing pr hacks on the show floor, asking them, isn't

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Speaker 1: this just a big con from the entertainment industry to

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Speaker 1: make it harder for people to pirate media? Are there

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Speaker 1: any actual signs that regular people will pay thousands of

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Speaker 1: dollars for one of these things? At one point, a

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Speaker 1: rep from Samsung, I think, tried to show me a

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Speaker 1: glasses free three D TV. It only worked if a

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Speaker 1: trained professional told you precisely where to stand in order

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Speaker 1: to view it. I laughed so hard I snorted whiskey

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Speaker 1: and lukewarm Starbucks onto a stack of glossy product brochures.

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Speaker 1: Despite how obviously doomed it all was, the Internet filled

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Speaker 1: with fawning articles about all of the exciting new three

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Speaker 1: D televisions that were surely going to be in homes

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Speaker 1: in the very near future. Now, because the Internet moves quickly,

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Speaker 1: most of the websites that did tech news back then

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Speaker 1: are dead, and the ones that remain are filled with

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Speaker 1: busted links. But you can still find monuments to the

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Speaker 1: failure of three D television if you know where to look.

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Speaker 1: Take this excerpt from a PC World article on the

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Speaker 1: best of c E s two thousand ten uh. It's

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Speaker 1: titled the three D Revolution is here, and underneath a

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Speaker 1: broken link to an image that is no longer available,

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Speaker 1: is the line I don't think it's a false start

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Speaker 1: this time. The three D product plans for the coming

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Speaker 1: year represent the initial salvos of the coming three D revolution.

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Speaker 1: Panasonics three D demos were among the most convincing, but

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Speaker 1: the best implementation I saw, unfortunately, is one that won't

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Speaker 1: be coming to market anytime soon. Sony showed us it's

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Speaker 1: twenty four point five in three D O l E

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Speaker 1: d H D t V is a technology demo only

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Speaker 1: now in retrospect, I think the hilarious failure of three

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Speaker 1: D TV technology is actually what prepared me more than

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Speaker 1: anything for crypto. If you actually just go over that

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Speaker 1: paragraph I read a little earlier, you could replace the

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Speaker 1: words referring specifically to three D t V s with

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Speaker 1: various shit coins or blockchain related tech and it would

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Speaker 1: more or less work. The thing that set me off

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Speaker 1: with crypto was how similar the claim was that, like,

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Speaker 1: this thing is obviously legit because look at how many

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Speaker 1: people are talking about it. It's got to be real

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Speaker 1: now because suddenly it's all over the news This is

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Speaker 1: why folks like Sam Bankman Freed bought the naming rights

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Speaker 1: to stadiums and stuck f t X and crypto dot

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Speaker 1: Com up as publicly as they possibly could. It was

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Speaker 1: all a con to convince casual observers that the crypto

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Speaker 1: market was a serious thing they should invest in. It's

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Speaker 1: one of those things that really made me think a

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Speaker 1: lot about the role journalists play and hyping up nonsense

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Speaker 1: like this, And you can see it in three D

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Speaker 1: t v s and Crypto and a bunch of other spaces.

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Speaker 1: A big part of what convinces people that this stuff

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Speaker 1: is real is suddenly they start seeing articles everywhere talking

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Speaker 1: about it. Suddenly the press all over the place is

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Speaker 1: talking about the price of bitcoin or talking about this

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Speaker 1: this new thing as if it's it's going to actually

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Speaker 1: change people's lives. And so folks who maybe are not

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Speaker 1: super high information media consumers just assume that, Okay, I

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Speaker 1: guess this is here to stay. Um, it's it's a

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Speaker 1: danger that still exists. All of this brings me to

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Speaker 1: c E Sree collapse looms larger over the proceedings this

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Speaker 1: year than in any other prior event I've attended. Prior

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Speaker 1: to the pandemic attendance that c S had topped out

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Speaker 1: at around two hundred thousand people last year, though only

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Speaker 1: forty thousands showed, which is probably still vastly too many

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Speaker 1: folks to cram into hotel conference rooms that can see

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Speaker 1: a restaurants during a pandemic. And yes, c e S

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Speaker 1: two was a super spreader event. Korea particularly had a

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Speaker 1: problem as a result of it. The show itself for decades,

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Speaker 1: a central event in the global tech industry, seems to

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Speaker 1: be teetering. It is not alone there. The top ten

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Speaker 1: big tech stocks lost a combined four point six trillion

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Speaker 1: dollars in market cap in two, that significantly more than

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Speaker 1: the GDP of the United Kingdom around three point two trillion,

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Speaker 1: or the state of California three point six trillion. At

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Speaker 1: c S. The rot is most evident in the utter

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Speaker 1: lack of any kind of hype beast product this year.

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Speaker 1: So far, I've seen a flying hydrogen car, or at

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Speaker 1: least I've seen three d renders of one. Also, it's

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Speaker 1: meant for Formula one style race, is not actual civilian use.

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Speaker 1: The guy at the booths somewhat angrily told me the

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Speaker 1: anticipated retail price was around three million dollars. The MACA

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Speaker 1: flying car was one of many products that I looked

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Speaker 1: into at c S Unveiled, which is one of the

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Speaker 1: headline events of the show. It's basically a bunch of

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Speaker 1: manufacturers and booths showing off their gadgets to an audience

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Speaker 1: of journalists to drink heavily from an open bar, walk

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Speaker 1: around and prod things. In years past, smartphones and tablets

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Speaker 1: and their consumer gadgets tended to be the main focus,

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Speaker 1: but all that kind of stuff is boring as hell

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Speaker 1: now the smartphone market has stabilized. It's just not as

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Speaker 1: exciting as it used to be, and c e S

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Speaker 1: knows it. The big hype and Unveiled is around a

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Speaker 1: mix of electronic and autonomous vehicle technology and virtual reality.

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Speaker 1: Now at present, I'm not in a good position to

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Speaker 1: thoroughly analyze the specific promises made by individual autonomous driving

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Speaker 1: companies at CES. I'll just note that tech Crunch, normally

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Speaker 1: all in for hype about this kind of stuff, published

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Speaker 1: an article last October titled It's time to admit self

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Speaker 1: driving cars aren't going to happen. Here's a relevant quote.

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Speaker 1: Ford announced that it would be winding down our Goo

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Speaker 1: AI the company, backed by itself and fellow automaker votes Wagon,

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Speaker 1: focusing on developing full level four autonomous driving technologies. Ford

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Speaker 1: explained their justification in doing so when they release their

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Speaker 1: Q three earnings a few hours later, noting that not

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Speaker 1: only were they shutting down our GOO, but they were

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Speaker 1: also essentially deep prioritizing L four technologies altogether to instead

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Speaker 1: focus on advanced driver assistance systems with internal resources. Ford

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Speaker 1: CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying on the company's

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Speaker 1: earnings call Wednesday evening that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at

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Speaker 1: scale are a long way off, and we won't necessarily

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Speaker 1: have to create that tech chnology for ourselves now. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: autonomous technology will of course have niche applications automating transport

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Speaker 1: of heavy loads at job sites and minds where routes

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Speaker 1: are predictable and controlled, but mass adoption of full level

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Speaker 1: four autonomous driving technology is at present a fantasy. The

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Speaker 1: same is true for one of the other major product

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Speaker 1: categories at c S, unveiled virtual reality metaverse nonsense. The

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Speaker 1: fact that Facebook let fifteen billion dollars on fire last

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Speaker 1: year chasing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams has convinced some people

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Speaker 1: that the idea is inevitable. This excerpt from a market

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Speaker 1: Watch article published during c e S is representative. You

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Speaker 1: can see the same thought process that led people astray

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Speaker 1: with three D TVs and crypto. In the long run,

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Speaker 1: the metaverse will be a major substitute for in person

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Speaker 1: conventions like c e S, said June Nichigucci, CEO of Tararu,

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Speaker 1: a Japanese company developing its own metaverse. So one of

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Speaker 1: the barriers to any kind of popular metaverse is the

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Speaker 1: fact that VR is actually not as immersive as it

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Speaker 1: needs to be. The technology does a pretty impressive job

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Speaker 1: of convincing your eyes that you are, in fact somewhere else,

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Speaker 1: and this is pretty neat, but the rest of your

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Speaker 1: body is inevitably standing or sitting awkwardly in a room somewhere.

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Speaker 1: This has led to a whole host of products that

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Speaker 1: are in development right now that attempt to engage the

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Speaker 1: rest of your body and basically trick it into believing

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Speaker 1: that you're somewhere else. I tried two products at c

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Speaker 1: e S that were meant to do this. The first

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Speaker 1: was the tax suit X from b Haptics. It uses

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Speaker 1: haptic feedback technology which is the stuff that makes your

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Speaker 1: phone buzz when you press a button on your touch screen.

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Speaker 1: Companies like b Haptics hope to use advanced versions of

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Speaker 1: the tech to mimic physical sensation. This would make the

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Speaker 1: metaverse feel much less awkward and associated, and also provide

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Speaker 1: a whole new market for online sex workers. There are

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Speaker 1: several of these suits at c S, and all of

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Speaker 1: them seem to have won innovation Awards, or at least

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Speaker 1: their honorees and the CS Innovation Awards, which is a

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Speaker 1: thing that basically anyone seems to get if they make

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Speaker 1: something expensive and and bring it to the show. To

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Speaker 1: be frank, I think these suits are bullshit. The one

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Speaker 1: slightly cool thing about the tax suit is that the

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Speaker 1: gloves it had like gloves and a feat component. Um

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Speaker 1: I was able to test the gloves and the the

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Speaker 1: actual chest suit thing. The gloves do a pretty okay

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Speaker 1: job of emulating a physical keyboard, or at least a

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Speaker 1: small keyboard on like a smartphone style device. Now that

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Speaker 1: is not a cool enough thing for someone to pay

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Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars and deal with the hassle of wearing heavy,

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Speaker 1: battery powered gloves every day. The b haptics. Folks eagerly

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Speaker 1: showed me how their suit could simulate hugging and touching

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Speaker 1: another human being in VR, and this seemed to be

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Speaker 1: the major selling point they saw for what they were

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Speaker 1: bringing to the table. I actually tried all this and

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Speaker 1: it was among the saddest experiences of my life. Hugging

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Speaker 1: someone in a haptic suit through VR feels like having

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Speaker 1: a dozen or so in sixty four. Rumbull packs activate

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Speaker 1: up your chest in arms. If you touch a virtual

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Speaker 1: person's shoulder, your hand will buzz and vibrate. Now, buzzing

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Speaker 1: and vibrating are not sensations I attribute to physical intimacy

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Speaker 1: with a physical person. I actually found this attempt at

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Speaker 1: mimicking the sensation of human contact much more disturbing than

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Speaker 1: the lack of contact in most VR experiences. The tech

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Speaker 1: industry has also penned a lot of hopes on augmented reality.

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Speaker 1: I think this is closer to being realistic, but there

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Speaker 1: is still a metric fun ton of vaporware and snake

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Speaker 1: oil products often marketed as increasing accessibility. One example would

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Speaker 1: be the luvic. This is a device you wear around

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Speaker 1: your neck. It's roughly the size of a pair of headphones.

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Speaker 1: It's supposed to buzz on one side or the other

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Speaker 1: of your body to let you know when to turn,

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Speaker 1: all the while delivering audio map directions for you. Luvic's

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Speaker 1: press materials highlight what a win this is for accessibility,

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Speaker 1: saying Luvic is a device designed to solve the challenges

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Speaker 1: of those who have difficulty with spatial cognition. It is

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Speaker 1: an IoT Internet of Things device that is one around

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Speaker 1: your neck and uses tactile notifications and bone conduction voice

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Speaker 1: to guide the user along the way naturally. Now, this

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Speaker 1: tech does identify a real need, but I'm sorry to

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Speaker 1: say it does not work at all. I tried this thing.

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Speaker 1: Luvic people put it on me and ran through a

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Speaker 1: walking root of New York City. I couldn't tell which

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Speaker 1: side of my body was being buzzed, so that was useless.

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Speaker 1: It just felt like a smartphone was ringing on the

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Speaker 1: back of my neck, and the speakers weren't loud enough

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Speaker 1: to hear directions. Now, when I mentioned this, the Luvic

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Speaker 1: people told me, well, there's too much noise in the

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Speaker 1: conference room for you to hear it, of course, new

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Speaker 1: York City being famously quiet. And then there's the stuff

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Speaker 1: that I suspect was just outright snake will rather than

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Speaker 1: being broken like the luvic. This is probably best embodied

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Speaker 1: by the electric circlet I saw there that's supposed to

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Speaker 1: stimulate your brain to reduce your stress while you sleep.

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Speaker 1: Uh they advertised, I think the number was eight percent

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Speaker 1: reduction and stress while you sleep. This is not a product.

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Speaker 1: I feel the need to review some claims they're not

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Speaker 1: worth taking seriously, and this is one of them. So far,

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Speaker 1: I've seen little at c S that struck me as

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Speaker 1: likely to be a massive financial success. But there were

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Speaker 1: some potentially groundbreaking products on display. Unfortunately, nearly all of

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Speaker 1: these were in the realm of health and medical technology.

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Speaker 1: Let me explain why this is troubling with an example

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Speaker 1: from the show. The most potentially influential device I saw

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Speaker 1: there was called Viral, worn by Optive. It is a

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Speaker 1: multiple use breath analyzer self test that will tell you

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Speaker 1: if you are positive for COVID nineteen R s V

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Speaker 1: or influenza UM. It just lights up if you're positive

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Speaker 1: for one of them. They promised that in the future

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Speaker 1: it'll tell you what you have. But then that's still useful, right,

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Speaker 1: Still a hell of a lot better than anything we've

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Speaker 1: got right now. Rather than sticking a thing up your nose,

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Speaker 1: you just blow into this thing like a breathalyzer. It's

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Speaker 1: about the size of a key fob, and you can

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Speaker 1: charge it with a normal USB cable. It can be

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Speaker 1: used dozens of times before being reloaded. Optive's rough price

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Speaker 1: point is around a hundred dollars if this thing works

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Speaker 1: the way they say it does. I cannot exaggerate what

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Speaker 1: a big deal it would be. Imagine being able to

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Speaker 1: blow into a little device and know in a couple

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Speaker 1: of seconds if you're safe before you go into a

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Speaker 1: store or a bar or a party, go see you know,

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Speaker 1: an elderly relative for a birthday. Lives could be saved

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Speaker 1: by this thing if it works. And to their credit,

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Speaker 1: the good folks Adoptive immediately told me that this was

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Speaker 1: not on sale yet, as it was still waiting for

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Speaker 1: FDA approval. I take this as a good side, and

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Speaker 1: I sincerely hope it works as well as advertised. But

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Speaker 1: products like this do present a problem for the tech press.

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Speaker 1: When I'm at a show like c e S, it's

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Speaker 1: generally easy to determine if something has promise by step

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Speaker 1: into a booth for a company advertising rugged speakers. Well,

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Speaker 1: I can drop those speakers from a height, I can

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Speaker 1: drop stuff onto them, I can throw them. I can

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Speaker 1: test if they're rugged because I can try to break them,

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Speaker 1: and if I can't, then they're rugged. Likewise, I can

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Speaker 1: strap on a VR suit and I can tell you

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Speaker 1: if it makes the experience more immersive. Neither I nor

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Speaker 1: any other members of the press can tell you how

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Speaker 1: well a medical diagnostic device works in the same manner.

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Speaker 1: This isn't anyone's fault, but as connected tech and AI

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Speaker 1: are included in more healthcare devices, the potential for snake

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Speaker 1: oil and for dangerous failures to generate mass hype increases exponentially.

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Speaker 1: I want to be clear that the medical devices I

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Speaker 1: have seen so far at c S do not strike

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Speaker 1: me a suspicious and company representatives were extremely good at

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Speaker 1: explaining what stage in the FDA approval process they were at,

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Speaker 1: and I saw some really cool shit. My favorite was

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Speaker 1: probably a new streamlined a E D from Life a

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Speaker 1: Z at a thousand dollars or thirty five dollars a

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Speaker 1: month with a four to five years shelf life. This

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Speaker 1: thing makes having a defibrillator on hand affordable for regular people.

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Speaker 1: It's extremely light and small and can be easily carried

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Speaker 1: in a backpack. I do have a little bit of

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Speaker 1: medical training, and I tried this thing out on a

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Speaker 1: dummy and test mode. I can confirm it appears to

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Speaker 1: work like any other more expensive a d The device

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Speaker 1: is still awaiting FDA approval, but it has been approved

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Speaker 1: and as being sold in France and Germany, so I

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Speaker 1: feel pretty good saying this thing probably works the way

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Speaker 1: Life a Z says it does. And then there's my

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Speaker 1: favorite product from c E s unveiled, the nan She

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Speaker 1: domestic violence app from ath Bash, which is a French company.

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Speaker 1: This was first suggested to me via one of the

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Speaker 1: most awkward PR emails I've ever received. Eaved forward Media

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Speaker 1: Alert groundbreaking domestic violence reporting app launching at CS and

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00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:09,680
Speaker 1: when I got it in my email, it just said

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Speaker 1: forward Media Alert Groundbreaking domestic Violence, which fun thing to

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Speaker 1: get in your inbox. In fairness to their very nice

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Speaker 1: PR lady, there's probably not a non awkward way to

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Speaker 1: title an email about this kind of thing. The app

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00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:25,520
Speaker 1: itself is really innovative, though it provides you with options

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Speaker 1: to record voice or video and to take photos of

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00:19:28,440 --> 00:19:32,240
Speaker 1: documents or to photographically document your own injuries. All the

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00:19:32,359 --> 00:19:34,960
Speaker 1: data that you save is stored off site, so you

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Speaker 1: take a picture or your record audio and it's immediately

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Speaker 1: off the phone and off the app. You actually can't

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Speaker 1: access it without contacting the company directly to get it.

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Speaker 1: All of it is stored on the cloud, and it's

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Speaker 1: also on the blockchain, which is used to verify data integrity,

391
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Speaker 1: making this probably the first blockchain related product I've ever

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Speaker 1: heard of with a realistic use case. Nan She seems

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Speaker 1: to be pretty well thought out from the top to bottom.

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Speaker 1: Once you start recording, you can swipe away from the

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Speaker 1: app and it will keep recording without being visible anywhere

396
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Speaker 1: on your phone. So if you're in a fight with

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Speaker 1: a domestic abuser and they take your phone away, they

398
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Speaker 1: will not see that you're recording, but it will keep recording.

399
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Speaker 1: You can also change the logo and name that the

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00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:16,800
Speaker 1: app displays itself under on your phone, so that it

401
00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:19,080
Speaker 1: won't say that you have Nanci anywhere. You can make

402
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:22,040
Speaker 1: it look like basically anything you want. It really does

403
00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:23,800
Speaker 1: seem like they've thought this through and it's about the

404
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:26,520
Speaker 1: best version of this kind of thing that's possible. There's

405
00:20:26,560 --> 00:20:29,400
Speaker 1: more a particular note at the show was an unpowered

406
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:32,560
Speaker 1: mechanical exoskeleton I got to try on. It doesn't increase

407
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Speaker 1: your physical strength, but it does allow you to sit

408
00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:38,320
Speaker 1: while standing. The manufacturer or Kellis, sees this as a

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Speaker 1: way to let workers stand on factory production lines and

410
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Speaker 1: in retail stores all day long without straining themselves. I

411
00:20:44,680 --> 00:20:47,840
Speaker 1: feel profoundly mixed about this product, more so than anything

412
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Speaker 1: else that's ees. On one hand, it it works really well.

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Speaker 1: I got to try it on, and it's kind of

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Speaker 1: a marvel On the mechanical level. You can still walk

415
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Speaker 1: perfectly well with it on, but you can just kind

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Speaker 1: of sit at any point going limb and it's actually

417
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Speaker 1: really comfortable. On the other hand, it costs three thousand dollars,

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Speaker 1: which means very few retail workers were ever going to

419
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Speaker 1: see one. So far. It's primary use in the real

420
00:21:09,520 --> 00:21:12,080
Speaker 1: world has been helping to keep auto workers comfortable while

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Speaker 1: they've shotgun more cars out into a world with far

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00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:16,960
Speaker 1: too many of them. It's all very emblematic of the

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Speaker 1: way CS makes me feel these days. Inside the roiling

424
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Speaker 1: sea of snake oil and broken ship. Are some really

425
00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:25,560
Speaker 1: cool ideas, but they're all wedded to an industry that

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Speaker 1: has mostly forgotten how to do anything new. Over the

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Speaker 1: coming days, I'm going to look at a new smartphone

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00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:34,320
Speaker 1: from Samsung. It rolls up, I guess, check out more

429
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Speaker 1: VR Haptick devices, none of which I expect to work

430
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Speaker 1: very well, and I will hopefully get to lift some

431
00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:42,720
Speaker 1: heavy weights wearing a powered Exo skeleton. That one I'm

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Speaker 1: actually looking forward to. I am open to the possibility

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Speaker 1: of finding stuff that's cool here, but at the end

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Speaker 1: of the day, nothing I've seen anything I'm likely to see,

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Speaker 1: has changed my overall impression of where the tech industry

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Speaker 1: is today. It's a big, bloated monster slowly bleeding out

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Speaker 1: before our eyes. It could Happen here as a production

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Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

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Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check

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Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources

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Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone

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Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.