Speaker 1: Things fall apart, the center will not hold, and journalists
Speaker 1: will make a pretty good living writing about at all.
Speaker 1: It's a good time to work the dystopia beat. The
Speaker 1: pillars of our society have been crumbling for most of
Speaker 1: my adult life and probably yours too. One exception to this,
Speaker 1: up until recently, has been the tech industry. When the
Speaker 1: rest of the economy shipped the bed back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, big tech roared into the gap to prop
Speaker 1: up the groaning timbers of capitalism. Sure, the housing market
Speaker 1: was in free fall, huge numbers of people were out
Speaker 1: of work, and American infrastructure was crumbling like a twice
Speaker 1: baked pot brownie. But then Steve Jobs magicked up the
Speaker 1: iPhone and the iPad and the app store. Google brought
Speaker 1: us Android and a dizzying array of smart and connected
Speaker 1: devices followed. Companies like Uber disrupted massive industries and briefly
Speaker 1: made hailing a cab the cheapest it's ever been, although
Speaker 1: they did this by lighting massive piles of VC cash
Speaker 1: on fire. It was in this period of what would
Speaker 1: prove to be a rational exuberance that I started my
Speaker 1: career as a tech journalist. That was the job title
Speaker 1: my boss gave me, and it's what everybody else in
Speaker 1: the industry called themselves. In reality, most of us were
Speaker 1: just extensions of big text pr agencies. All the big
Speaker 1: tech news websites of that era, slash gear In, Gadget Boy,
Speaker 1: Genius Review, and the place I worked for I FORU News,
Speaker 1: made most of their money off the back of a
Speaker 1: peculiarity in Google search algorithm. The gist of it was this,
Speaker 1: if a bunch of websites all published articles that were
Speaker 1: basically rewritten press releases about say a new gadget, or
Speaker 1: rewrites of someone else's report on rumors about an Apple product,
Speaker 1: Google would assume that this was a hot topic, and
Speaker 1: they would bump everybody up on the algorithm. You could
Speaker 1: make a tidy profit just paying a handful of writers
Speaker 1: to rewrite press releases or copy reports from some of
Speaker 1: the few sites doing actual tech journalism. And this is
Speaker 1: where I got my start in reporting. I wrote ten
Speaker 1: articles a day, five days a week for several years
Speaker 1: until Google fixed their algorithm and wiped my silly little
Speaker 1: industry out in the blink of an eye. It's fine.
Speaker 1: In this case, we kind of had it coming. It
Speaker 1: was nice to get paid to sit home and write.
Speaker 1: And the experience putting out a shipload of words every
Speaker 1: single day that were polished enough to print was pretty
Speaker 1: good for me, but it wasn't journalism, and so while
Speaker 1: I was doing it, I started seeking opportunities to actually
Speaker 1: get out into the world and do original reporting. And
Speaker 1: that's what first brought me to the Consumer Electronics Show
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas in two thousand ten c s as.
Speaker 1: It's known as a tech industry insider event for analysts, manufacturers,
Speaker 1: and media. They come and they show off new products
Speaker 1: and gadgets and apps, and journalists walk around and look
Speaker 1: at everything and then write articles about it. Companies spend
Speaker 1: millions of dollars every year on massive, multi acre show
Speaker 1: rooms for their products and dream up ludicrous demonstrations of
Speaker 1: their new tech. One that sticks out to me from
Speaker 1: again about thirteen years ago, is watching some company or
Speaker 1: another charge an electric car inductively. That means there was
Speaker 1: nothing actually plugged into the vehicle. They just parked it
Speaker 1: like you would put your phone on an inductive charger,
Speaker 1: and they charged it that way. The whole process was
Speaker 1: so energy intensive that it dimmed the lights in the
Speaker 1: Loss of Vegas Convention Center, which if you've never been
Speaker 1: inside of. It is about the size of a small city.
Speaker 1: The spectacle was always the best part of CS and
Speaker 1: with all the money pouring into big tech, it was
Speaker 1: a great place to be a reporter. Every big booth
Speaker 1: had free wet bars and piles of free swag. I
Speaker 1: left every year with a sack full of USB drives
Speaker 1: and thousands of dollars in products to test. There was
Speaker 1: so much goddamn money everywhere that even a dumb kid
Speaker 1: like me with no real connections could do okay. Collapse
Speaker 1: was always and has always been present at c S, however,
Speaker 1: looming in the background overdomed product categories and vast tottering
Speaker 1: businesses that didn't realize they were already dead. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: primarily of r I Am, the people who used to
Speaker 1: make blackberries here. Another good example would be Motorola in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. Their booth was one of the largest
Speaker 1: at c E s now Apple was and still is
Speaker 1: the biggest name on the block when it comes to
Speaker 1: making consumer gadgets, but they don't go to c E S,
Speaker 1: preferring to hold their own annual event to announce new products.
Speaker 1: This has always irritated the people who run the show,
Speaker 1: and so in the early two thousand tens, when androids
Speaker 1: started to blow up as a rival to Apple's iOS,
Speaker 1: a huge deal was made about Motorola's Droid line of phones.
Speaker 1: They actually had to license the name from Lucasfilm for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. In two thousand ten, Motorola won the Best
Speaker 1: in Show award for their Droid phone, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they hadn't actually brought a working example of it
Speaker 1: to the show, something that kind of pissed me off
Speaker 1: at the time. Now today, Motorola is basically dead. It's
Speaker 1: a shadow of its former self. It's been bought and
Speaker 1: sold several times. His companies like Samsung and HTC beat
Speaker 1: the piss out of it on the open market. Other
Speaker 1: famous collapses from c e s has past include the
Speaker 1: entire three D television market. If you can remember those
Speaker 1: heady day days after the release of the first Avatar movie,
Speaker 1: the tech industry blue billions in R and D and
Speaker 1: ad money trying to convince everyone that people would actually
Speaker 1: sit down in their actual glass living rooms and wear
Speaker 1: fucking three D glasses to watch movies or TV. It
Speaker 1: was preposterous and obviously doomed. I have fond memories of
Speaker 1: harassing pr hacks on the show floor, asking them, isn't
Speaker 1: this just a big con from the entertainment industry to
Speaker 1: make it harder for people to pirate media? Are there
Speaker 1: any actual signs that regular people will pay thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars for one of these things? At one point, a
Speaker 1: rep from Samsung, I think, tried to show me a
Speaker 1: glasses free three D TV. It only worked if a
Speaker 1: trained professional told you precisely where to stand in order
Speaker 1: to view it. I laughed so hard I snorted whiskey
Speaker 1: and lukewarm Starbucks onto a stack of glossy product brochures.
Speaker 1: Despite how obviously doomed it all was, the Internet filled
Speaker 1: with fawning articles about all of the exciting new three
Speaker 1: D televisions that were surely going to be in homes
Speaker 1: in the very near future. Now, because the Internet moves quickly,
Speaker 1: most of the websites that did tech news back then
Speaker 1: are dead, and the ones that remain are filled with
Speaker 1: busted links. But you can still find monuments to the
Speaker 1: failure of three D television if you know where to look.
Speaker 1: Take this excerpt from a PC World article on the
Speaker 1: best of c E s two thousand ten uh. It's
Speaker 1: titled the three D Revolution is here, and underneath a
Speaker 1: broken link to an image that is no longer available,
Speaker 1: is the line I don't think it's a false start
Speaker 1: this time. The three D product plans for the coming
Speaker 1: year represent the initial salvos of the coming three D revolution.
Speaker 1: Panasonics three D demos were among the most convincing, but
Speaker 1: the best implementation I saw, unfortunately, is one that won't
Speaker 1: be coming to market anytime soon. Sony showed us it's
Speaker 1: twenty four point five in three D O l E
Speaker 1: d H D t V is a technology demo only
Speaker 1: now in retrospect, I think the hilarious failure of three
Speaker 1: D TV technology is actually what prepared me more than
Speaker 1: anything for crypto. If you actually just go over that
Speaker 1: paragraph I read a little earlier, you could replace the
Speaker 1: words referring specifically to three D t V s with
Speaker 1: various shit coins or blockchain related tech and it would
Speaker 1: more or less work. The thing that set me off
Speaker 1: with crypto was how similar the claim was that, like,
Speaker 1: this thing is obviously legit because look at how many
Speaker 1: people are talking about it. It's got to be real
Speaker 1: now because suddenly it's all over the news This is
Speaker 1: why folks like Sam Bankman Freed bought the naming rights
Speaker 1: to stadiums and stuck f t X and crypto dot
Speaker 1: Com up as publicly as they possibly could. It was
Speaker 1: all a con to convince casual observers that the crypto
Speaker 1: market was a serious thing they should invest in. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that really made me think a
Speaker 1: lot about the role journalists play and hyping up nonsense
Speaker 1: like this, And you can see it in three D
Speaker 1: t v s and Crypto and a bunch of other spaces.
Speaker 1: A big part of what convinces people that this stuff
Speaker 1: is real is suddenly they start seeing articles everywhere talking
Speaker 1: about it. Suddenly the press all over the place is
Speaker 1: talking about the price of bitcoin or talking about this
Speaker 1: this new thing as if it's it's going to actually
Speaker 1: change people's lives. And so folks who maybe are not
Speaker 1: super high information media consumers just assume that, Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess this is here to stay. Um, it's it's a
Speaker 1: danger that still exists. All of this brings me to
Speaker 1: c E Sree collapse looms larger over the proceedings this
Speaker 1: year than in any other prior event I've attended. Prior
Speaker 1: to the pandemic attendance that c S had topped out
Speaker 1: at around two hundred thousand people last year, though only
Speaker 1: forty thousands showed, which is probably still vastly too many
Speaker 1: folks to cram into hotel conference rooms that can see
Speaker 1: a restaurants during a pandemic. And yes, c e S
Speaker 1: two was a super spreader event. Korea particularly had a
Speaker 1: problem as a result of it. The show itself for decades,
Speaker 1: a central event in the global tech industry, seems to
Speaker 1: be teetering. It is not alone there. The top ten
Speaker 1: big tech stocks lost a combined four point six trillion
Speaker 1: dollars in market cap in two, that significantly more than
Speaker 1: the GDP of the United Kingdom around three point two trillion,
Speaker 1: or the state of California three point six trillion. At
Speaker 1: c S. The rot is most evident in the utter
Speaker 1: lack of any kind of hype beast product this year.
Speaker 1: So far, I've seen a flying hydrogen car, or at
Speaker 1: least I've seen three d renders of one. Also, it's
Speaker 1: meant for Formula one style race, is not actual civilian use.
Speaker 1: The guy at the booths somewhat angrily told me the
Speaker 1: anticipated retail price was around three million dollars. The MACA
Speaker 1: flying car was one of many products that I looked
Speaker 1: into at c S Unveiled, which is one of the
Speaker 1: headline events of the show. It's basically a bunch of
Speaker 1: manufacturers and booths showing off their gadgets to an audience
Speaker 1: of journalists to drink heavily from an open bar, walk
Speaker 1: around and prod things. In years past, smartphones and tablets
Speaker 1: and their consumer gadgets tended to be the main focus,
Speaker 1: but all that kind of stuff is boring as hell
Speaker 1: now the smartphone market has stabilized. It's just not as
Speaker 1: exciting as it used to be, and c e S
Speaker 1: knows it. The big hype and Unveiled is around a
Speaker 1: mix of electronic and autonomous vehicle technology and virtual reality.
Speaker 1: Now at present, I'm not in a good position to
Speaker 1: thoroughly analyze the specific promises made by individual autonomous driving
Speaker 1: companies at CES. I'll just note that tech Crunch, normally
Speaker 1: all in for hype about this kind of stuff, published
Speaker 1: an article last October titled It's time to admit self
Speaker 1: driving cars aren't going to happen. Here's a relevant quote.
Speaker 1: Ford announced that it would be winding down our Goo
Speaker 1: AI the company, backed by itself and fellow automaker votes Wagon,
Speaker 1: focusing on developing full level four autonomous driving technologies. Ford
Speaker 1: explained their justification in doing so when they release their
Speaker 1: Q three earnings a few hours later, noting that not
Speaker 1: only were they shutting down our GOO, but they were
Speaker 1: also essentially deep prioritizing L four technologies altogether to instead
Speaker 1: focus on advanced driver assistance systems with internal resources. Ford
Speaker 1: CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying on the company's
Speaker 1: earnings call Wednesday evening that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at
Speaker 1: scale are a long way off, and we won't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to create that tech chnology for ourselves now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: autonomous technology will of course have niche applications automating transport
Speaker 1: of heavy loads at job sites and minds where routes
Speaker 1: are predictable and controlled, but mass adoption of full level
Speaker 1: four autonomous driving technology is at present a fantasy. The
Speaker 1: same is true for one of the other major product
Speaker 1: categories at c S, unveiled virtual reality metaverse nonsense. The
Speaker 1: fact that Facebook let fifteen billion dollars on fire last
Speaker 1: year chasing Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams has convinced some people
Speaker 1: that the idea is inevitable. This excerpt from a market
Speaker 1: Watch article published during c e S is representative. You
Speaker 1: can see the same thought process that led people astray
Speaker 1: with three D TVs and crypto. In the long run,
Speaker 1: the metaverse will be a major substitute for in person
Speaker 1: conventions like c e S, said June Nichigucci, CEO of Tararu,
Speaker 1: a Japanese company developing its own metaverse. So one of
Speaker 1: the barriers to any kind of popular metaverse is the
Speaker 1: fact that VR is actually not as immersive as it
Speaker 1: needs to be. The technology does a pretty impressive job
Speaker 1: of convincing your eyes that you are, in fact somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and this is pretty neat, but the rest of your
Speaker 1: body is inevitably standing or sitting awkwardly in a room somewhere.
Speaker 1: This has led to a whole host of products that
Speaker 1: are in development right now that attempt to engage the
Speaker 1: rest of your body and basically trick it into believing
Speaker 1: that you're somewhere else. I tried two products at c
Speaker 1: e S that were meant to do this. The first
Speaker 1: was the tax suit X from b Haptics. It uses
Speaker 1: haptic feedback technology which is the stuff that makes your
Speaker 1: phone buzz when you press a button on your touch screen.
Speaker 1: Companies like b Haptics hope to use advanced versions of
Speaker 1: the tech to mimic physical sensation. This would make the
Speaker 1: metaverse feel much less awkward and associated, and also provide
Speaker 1: a whole new market for online sex workers. There are
Speaker 1: several of these suits at c S, and all of
Speaker 1: them seem to have won innovation Awards, or at least
Speaker 1: their honorees and the CS Innovation Awards, which is a
Speaker 1: thing that basically anyone seems to get if they make
Speaker 1: something expensive and and bring it to the show. To
Speaker 1: be frank, I think these suits are bullshit. The one
Speaker 1: slightly cool thing about the tax suit is that the
Speaker 1: gloves it had like gloves and a feat component. Um
Speaker 1: I was able to test the gloves and the the
Speaker 1: actual chest suit thing. The gloves do a pretty okay
Speaker 1: job of emulating a physical keyboard, or at least a
Speaker 1: small keyboard on like a smartphone style device. Now that
Speaker 1: is not a cool enough thing for someone to pay
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars and deal with the hassle of wearing heavy,
Speaker 1: battery powered gloves every day. The b haptics. Folks eagerly
Speaker 1: showed me how their suit could simulate hugging and touching
Speaker 1: another human being in VR, and this seemed to be
Speaker 1: the major selling point they saw for what they were
Speaker 1: bringing to the table. I actually tried all this and
Speaker 1: it was among the saddest experiences of my life. Hugging
Speaker 1: someone in a haptic suit through VR feels like having
Speaker 1: a dozen or so in sixty four. Rumbull packs activate
Speaker 1: up your chest in arms. If you touch a virtual
Speaker 1: person's shoulder, your hand will buzz and vibrate. Now, buzzing
Speaker 1: and vibrating are not sensations I attribute to physical intimacy
Speaker 1: with a physical person. I actually found this attempt at
Speaker 1: mimicking the sensation of human contact much more disturbing than
Speaker 1: the lack of contact in most VR experiences. The tech
Speaker 1: industry has also penned a lot of hopes on augmented reality.
Speaker 1: I think this is closer to being realistic, but there
Speaker 1: is still a metric fun ton of vaporware and snake
Speaker 1: oil products often marketed as increasing accessibility. One example would
Speaker 1: be the luvic. This is a device you wear around
Speaker 1: your neck. It's roughly the size of a pair of headphones.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to buzz on one side or the other
Speaker 1: of your body to let you know when to turn,
Speaker 1: all the while delivering audio map directions for you. Luvic's
Speaker 1: press materials highlight what a win this is for accessibility,
Speaker 1: saying Luvic is a device designed to solve the challenges
Speaker 1: of those who have difficulty with spatial cognition. It is
Speaker 1: an IoT Internet of Things device that is one around
Speaker 1: your neck and uses tactile notifications and bone conduction voice
Speaker 1: to guide the user along the way naturally. Now, this
Speaker 1: tech does identify a real need, but I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say it does not work at all. I tried this thing.
Speaker 1: Luvic people put it on me and ran through a
Speaker 1: walking root of New York City. I couldn't tell which
Speaker 1: side of my body was being buzzed, so that was useless.
Speaker 1: It just felt like a smartphone was ringing on the
Speaker 1: back of my neck, and the speakers weren't loud enough
Speaker 1: to hear directions. Now, when I mentioned this, the Luvic
Speaker 1: people told me, well, there's too much noise in the
Speaker 1: conference room for you to hear it, of course, new
Speaker 1: York City being famously quiet. And then there's the stuff
Speaker 1: that I suspect was just outright snake will rather than
Speaker 1: being broken like the luvic. This is probably best embodied
Speaker 1: by the electric circlet I saw there that's supposed to
Speaker 1: stimulate your brain to reduce your stress while you sleep.
Speaker 1: Uh they advertised, I think the number was eight percent
Speaker 1: reduction and stress while you sleep. This is not a product.
Speaker 1: I feel the need to review some claims they're not
Speaker 1: worth taking seriously, and this is one of them. So far,
Speaker 1: I've seen little at c S that struck me as
Speaker 1: likely to be a massive financial success. But there were
Speaker 1: some potentially groundbreaking products on display. Unfortunately, nearly all of
Speaker 1: these were in the realm of health and medical technology.
Speaker 1: Let me explain why this is troubling with an example
Speaker 1: from the show. The most potentially influential device I saw
Speaker 1: there was called Viral, worn by Optive. It is a
Speaker 1: multiple use breath analyzer self test that will tell you
Speaker 1: if you are positive for COVID nineteen R s V
Speaker 1: or influenza UM. It just lights up if you're positive
Speaker 1: for one of them. They promised that in the future
Speaker 1: it'll tell you what you have. But then that's still useful, right,
Speaker 1: Still a hell of a lot better than anything we've
Speaker 1: got right now. Rather than sticking a thing up your nose,
Speaker 1: you just blow into this thing like a breathalyzer. It's
Speaker 1: about the size of a key fob, and you can
Speaker 1: charge it with a normal USB cable. It can be
Speaker 1: used dozens of times before being reloaded. Optive's rough price
Speaker 1: point is around a hundred dollars if this thing works
Speaker 1: the way they say it does. I cannot exaggerate what
Speaker 1: a big deal it would be. Imagine being able to
Speaker 1: blow into a little device and know in a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds if you're safe before you go into a
Speaker 1: store or a bar or a party, go see you know,
Speaker 1: an elderly relative for a birthday. Lives could be saved
Speaker 1: by this thing if it works. And to their credit,
Speaker 1: the good folks Adoptive immediately told me that this was
Speaker 1: not on sale yet, as it was still waiting for
Speaker 1: FDA approval. I take this as a good side, and
Speaker 1: I sincerely hope it works as well as advertised. But
Speaker 1: products like this do present a problem for the tech press.
Speaker 1: When I'm at a show like c e S, it's
Speaker 1: generally easy to determine if something has promise by step
Speaker 1: into a booth for a company advertising rugged speakers. Well,
Speaker 1: I can drop those speakers from a height, I can
Speaker 1: drop stuff onto them, I can throw them. I can
Speaker 1: test if they're rugged because I can try to break them,
Speaker 1: and if I can't, then they're rugged. Likewise, I can
Speaker 1: strap on a VR suit and I can tell you
Speaker 1: if it makes the experience more immersive. Neither I nor
Speaker 1: any other members of the press can tell you how
Speaker 1: well a medical diagnostic device works in the same manner.
Speaker 1: This isn't anyone's fault, but as connected tech and AI
Speaker 1: are included in more healthcare devices, the potential for snake
Speaker 1: oil and for dangerous failures to generate mass hype increases exponentially.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that the medical devices I
Speaker 1: have seen so far at c S do not strike
Speaker 1: me a suspicious and company representatives were extremely good at
Speaker 1: explaining what stage in the FDA approval process they were at,
Speaker 1: and I saw some really cool shit. My favorite was
Speaker 1: probably a new streamlined a E D from Life a
Speaker 1: Z at a thousand dollars or thirty five dollars a
Speaker 1: month with a four to five years shelf life. This
Speaker 1: thing makes having a defibrillator on hand affordable for regular people.
Speaker 1: It's extremely light and small and can be easily carried
Speaker 1: in a backpack. I do have a little bit of
Speaker 1: medical training, and I tried this thing out on a
Speaker 1: dummy and test mode. I can confirm it appears to
Speaker 1: work like any other more expensive a d The device
Speaker 1: is still awaiting FDA approval, but it has been approved
Speaker 1: and as being sold in France and Germany, so I
Speaker 1: feel pretty good saying this thing probably works the way
Speaker 1: Life a Z says it does. And then there's my
Speaker 1: favorite product from c E s unveiled, the nan She
Speaker 1: domestic violence app from ath Bash, which is a French company.
Speaker 1: This was first suggested to me via one of the
Speaker 1: most awkward PR emails I've ever received. Eaved forward Media
Speaker 1: Alert groundbreaking domestic violence reporting app launching at CS and
Speaker 1: when I got it in my email, it just said
Speaker 1: forward Media Alert Groundbreaking domestic Violence, which fun thing to
Speaker 1: get in your inbox. In fairness to their very nice
Speaker 1: PR lady, there's probably not a non awkward way to
Speaker 1: title an email about this kind of thing. The app
Speaker 1: itself is really innovative, though it provides you with options
Speaker 1: to record voice or video and to take photos of
Speaker 1: documents or to photographically document your own injuries. All the
Speaker 1: data that you save is stored off site, so you
Speaker 1: take a picture or your record audio and it's immediately
Speaker 1: off the phone and off the app. You actually can't
Speaker 1: access it without contacting the company directly to get it.
Speaker 1: All of it is stored on the cloud, and it's
Speaker 1: also on the blockchain, which is used to verify data integrity,
Speaker 1: making this probably the first blockchain related product I've ever
Speaker 1: heard of with a realistic use case. Nan She seems
Speaker 1: to be pretty well thought out from the top to bottom.
Speaker 1: Once you start recording, you can swipe away from the
Speaker 1: app and it will keep recording without being visible anywhere
Speaker 1: on your phone. So if you're in a fight with
Speaker 1: a domestic abuser and they take your phone away, they
Speaker 1: will not see that you're recording, but it will keep recording.
Speaker 1: You can also change the logo and name that the
Speaker 1: app displays itself under on your phone, so that it
Speaker 1: won't say that you have Nanci anywhere. You can make
Speaker 1: it look like basically anything you want. It really does
Speaker 1: seem like they've thought this through and it's about the
Speaker 1: best version of this kind of thing that's possible. There's
Speaker 1: more a particular note at the show was an unpowered
Speaker 1: mechanical exoskeleton I got to try on. It doesn't increase
Speaker 1: your physical strength, but it does allow you to sit
Speaker 1: while standing. The manufacturer or Kellis, sees this as a
Speaker 1: way to let workers stand on factory production lines and
Speaker 1: in retail stores all day long without straining themselves. I
Speaker 1: feel profoundly mixed about this product, more so than anything
Speaker 1: else that's ees. On one hand, it it works really well.
Speaker 1: I got to try it on, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a marvel On the mechanical level. You can still walk
Speaker 1: perfectly well with it on, but you can just kind
Speaker 1: of sit at any point going limb and it's actually
Speaker 1: really comfortable. On the other hand, it costs three thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which means very few retail workers were ever going to
Speaker 1: see one. So far. It's primary use in the real
Speaker 1: world has been helping to keep auto workers comfortable while
Speaker 1: they've shotgun more cars out into a world with far
Speaker 1: too many of them. It's all very emblematic of the
Speaker 1: way CS makes me feel these days. Inside the roiling
Speaker 1: sea of snake oil and broken ship. Are some really
Speaker 1: cool ideas, but they're all wedded to an industry that
Speaker 1: has mostly forgotten how to do anything new. Over the
Speaker 1: coming days, I'm going to look at a new smartphone
Speaker 1: from Samsung. It rolls up, I guess, check out more
Speaker 1: VR Haptick devices, none of which I expect to work
Speaker 1: very well, and I will hopefully get to lift some
Speaker 1: heavy weights wearing a powered Exo skeleton. That one I'm
Speaker 1: actually looking forward to. I am open to the possibility
Speaker 1: of finding stuff that's cool here, but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, nothing I've seen anything I'm likely to see,
Speaker 1: has changed my overall impression of where the tech industry
Speaker 1: is today. It's a big, bloated monster slowly bleeding out
Speaker 1: before our eyes. It could Happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.