Weall know that every single person in the technology industry is hell-bent on making the world a better place. And thank goodness, because we need someone to save us from the unbearable death spiral of climate change, global political instability and, probably, Twitter. So, how did our visionary friends in the world’s innovation labs do in 2018?
Where once we would ask “Why is every out-of-touch VC dipstick trapped in an eternal sprint to the logical endpoint of late-stage capitalism?” now we’re forced to ask “Sure, this stuff improves humanity. But which one improves humanity the most?”
VinylVideo
Until recently there were two types of people in the world. The first believed that the incessant drumbeat of technological progress improved our lives. The second believed that tech was harming us as a species. But now, thanks to VinylVideo, there’s room for a third sort of person: the person who likes technology, but only if it’s stupid and harder to operate than whatever everyone else uses. VinylVideo allows you to watch television on vinyl records, by feeding the video output of a record into a television set. Ever wanted to watch a grainy, low-definition Motorhead music video on a television, with only about 400 more steps than it would take to just look it up on YouTube like everyone else does? VinylVideo gives you that power. Ever wanted a gadget to do literally anything else? Tough shit, because that’s the only thing VinylVideo can do. Hooray for humans! We’re doing great!
Pasta Evangelists
The biggest lie that mankind ever told itself is that pasta is easy to make. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. You have to find a saucepan, summon the energy to fill it with water, safely and accurately position it above a heat source, open a cupboard, find some pasta, put the right amount of pasta into the saucepan, then wait for a backbreaking 8–11 minutes. The whole thing is hideous. So hats off to Pasta Evangelists for creating a service that takes all the rigmarole out of this waking nightmare. Pasta Evangelists is a service that delivers you a new sort of pasta every week, for just four times more money than it costs to buy at a supermarket. Maybe you’ll get long pasta. Maybe you’ll get flat pasta. Maybe you’ll get bumpy pasta. It doesn’t really matter, because all pasta is basically the same! Hooray for Pasta Evangelists and hooray for its high-profile ambassadors, including the magazine editor recently relieved of his job for telling a vegan how much he’d like to murder vegans.
Somnox
It’s a given that you sleep badly, because you are a human on earth and your mind is constantly filled with an endlessly repeating slideshow of all the people you’ve ever hurt. Your poor sleep is the reason for your bad skin, your short attention span, and your frayed temper. Or at least it was, because now there is Somnox; a robot you cling to for dear life at night until you pass out from exhaustion. For around $400, you can purchase a great big mechanical pillow that plays the sound of a heartbeat and physically “breathes” in and out. Once upon a time an invention like Somnox was only the preserve of genuinely terrifying horror films, but now it’s a wonderful reality. Cling to Somnox! Cling to Somnox and remind yourself of the absent shadow of human intimacy! You deserve this!
Segway Drift W1 E-Skates
Sure, Segways used to be the butt of every joke imaginable, so gormless and sedentary that they became the key prop in the Paul Blart: Mall Cop film series. And, sure, nobody uses them anymore thanks to the reassuringly true urban myth about the man who invented them losing control of his Segway on a clifftop and plunging to his death. But forget all that, because the future’s here. You know what’s better than a Segway? Two Segways — one strapped to each foot, independent of each other, and with nothing for you to grab when this all inevitably goes wrong. Instantly, this is so much better than the original Segway. I haven’t done the research, so I can’t say this with any degree of certainty, but doesn’t everyone’s first choice of death partially involve North Korea hacking the Internet of Things and causing your gussied-up $500 roller skates to shoot off in opposite directions at high speed, causing irreparable damage to your spine and groin? I am here to say yes, yes it does.
Opro9 SmartDiaper
While it’s true that babies do serve some purpose — after all, it’s smart to have an organic backup for the sinister cloud-operated healthcare robot you’ll inevitably purchase to add an impersonally clinical sheen to your dotage — it’s also true that they are absolutely terrible. Have you ever tried looking after a baby? It’s the worst. If nothing else, their terrified howls of hunger and loneliness have a real habit of throwing you off your Candy Crush game. But here, thankfully, comes a piece of technology that finally allows you to pay less attention to your child than ever. The Opro9 SmartDiaper links to your phone, monitoring the temperature and humidity of your baby’s diaper and sending you an alert whenever the baby excretes anything. The notifications — either a happy face or a sad face, because who can be bothered to read actual words about the well-being of your own actual offspring? — save you the rigmarole of having to unnecessarily interact with the one person on earth who loves you more than anything. Better yet, there’s a proximity detector, just in case your baby realizes that it has an upsettingly negligent megalomaniac for a parent and tries to up and leave for the warm embrace of a state-operated abandoned child program.
Elon Musk’s Flamethrowers
Remember when Elon Musk was cool? Remember when he didn’t smoke pot on podcasts or repeatedly fail to grasp that you shouldn’t call hero divers pedophiles on Twitter? Remember when he was just an out-of-control billionaire who sold thousands of branded flamethrowers on the internet for kicks? Man, Elon Musk was so cool back then, with his World War One-era weapons and his misplaced sense of middle-aged rebellion. We are all better because he exists.