Future

Once upon a time The Jetsons was our future. Written in 1962 and set in the year 2062, it depicts an all-American family having fun in a city filled with flying cars, drones, video calls, smartwatches, home-help robots and all sorts of nonsensical automation. Some impressive predictions there. Since then, however, our fictional prognosticators have turned considerably darker, entertaining us with the dystopian thrill we get from stories about governmental surveillance, replicants, brain implants, VR headsets and alternative realities. I blame Philip K Dick.

Technology has now made both utopian and dystopian futures possible, but somehow our silicon valley nerds can’t seem to tell the difference. Far too often in their rush to embrace innovation they ignore, or even trample upon, the very fundamentals of humanity as if they’re nothing but annoying hurdles in the way of progress. Here are a few of their multi-billion dollar bloopers:

Glassholes Galore

The Google Glass story should be taught at university. Even back in 2014 most non-nerds knew it wouldn’t take off. Yes we can blame the price, the battery life and the fact that it enabled video voyeurism but the main reason it failed was it made us look like weirdos. Which incidentally, if we were secretly filming people on the bus, we actually were. Once the term Glasshole became widespread the product was stone dead.

Meanwhile presumably, Apple watched all this and thought they’d have a go. In reality, they’d been working on the Vision Pro since the advent of the iPhone but no, witnessing Google lose $1.5 billion on its Glass project didn’t dampen their nerdist ambition one bit. Launched exactly a year ago Apple have since managed to convince half a million nerds worldwide to buy their Pro Vision headset. Considering they had to be rich nerds, I guess that’s some achievement. But you’ve seen the videos. Who the actual **** wants to walk around like that, seriously? But common sense is not in the silly-con vocabulary. Nerds don’t understand the importance of eye contact, in fact they avoid it most of the time, much preferring a non-judgemental screen instead. But we humans still rely on it in order to build trust and a sense of community. At some point, the nerds at Apple cottoned on to this little hiccup and came up with the ingenious solution to project an image of the wearer’s eyes onto the dark glass exterior. Instant double glasshole! and another $130 billion down the drain. Think about it. For fifteen years or so, hundreds of highly intelligent people genuinely believed we would all walk around wearing a heavy pair of diving goggles with our eyes projected on the front. Weirdos.

Heath Robinson Goes Digital

Not long ago I road tested an HUD motorcycle helmet for the tech department at Selfridges. In a sinister stealth black and with a dark tinted visor, I looked like I was heading out to a party dressed as a cross between Darth Vader and Iron Man. But it was a sophisticated piece of kit: a tiny camera the size of a matchstick head at the back projected a panoramic image onto the inside of the visor. How very sensible, I thought. No more panic about blindspots and cars appearing from nowhere, technology will keep me safe. Oh boy, what a nightmare. The visor vibrated, the faded image was impossible to focus on and all sense of the distance and speed of approaching vehicles evaporated entirely. After half an hour persisting with the damn thing I felt lucky to still be alive, frankly. My sense of relief in returning to a trusty, old fashioned mirror was overwhelming.

This is Heath Robinson goes digital. The interface may look sleek and simple but the technology involved in transferring real time video from a tiny camera onto a visor must be extraordinarily complicated and it’s certainly impressive. It’s just that a shiny piece of glass is considerably better.

The technology is more stable in cars (much less bumpy) but still has its drawbacks. We naturally move our heads to get a better understanding of what we’re seeing in the wing mirrors, say. Cameras are fixed and, therefore, so is the view.

Inhospitality

For a few years now I’ve been ranting about the iPad ordering system at Newark Airport, New York. Waiting at the bar the staff ignored my group for a few minutes before eventually explaining in exasperated tones to ‘use the screens!’ Stifling chuckles we each obliged compliantly at which point the server wandered off to consult her iPad before shuffling off to pour each drink, one at a time, then returning to her screen to read the next order. A total of six thousand screens like this were installed at Newark by 2016 making it the biggest investment in inhospitality on planet earth. Unsurprisingly, in 2024 they were all replaced by the latest innovation in inhospitality: the QR code.

Just Walk Out. We Did.

I’ve been monitoring Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology since it opened in New York’s Brookfield Place back in 2017. Born cynical, I simply couldn’t fathom why anyone would choose to shop in a soulless, walk-in vending machine. However, like a proper New York sleuth, I spent time as I often do, hanging outside surreptitiously watching the comings and goings of this new fangled concept. And that’s when I realised this clever technology appeals to the very same personality types that designed it: ie nerdy introverts that dread having to be nice to lowly cashiers.

A valid market segment though this may be, there’s clearly not enough of them. Amazon is quietly withdrawing its cutting edge technology citing operational complexities. The fact that a whistleblower revealed that the ‘technology’ was actually a surveillance operation manned by hundreds of people in India and the Philippines might not have helped. Never a good look. Only last week Sainsbury’s pulled the plug on the same technology from its checkout free store in Holborn, and I expect Aldi’s Shop&Go in Greenwich to follow very shortly.

The Metaverse

Oh how I’ve enjoyed watching the Metaverse die. As a speaker at conferences I must’ve listened to a dozen or more ‘future-focussed’ consultants (aka grifters) jumping on this bandwagon over the last couple of years, so allow me to revel in my foresight briefly. As I wrote back in 2022, the Metaverse cannot succeed because:

“If we’re anonymous in the Metaverse then anyone who’s played Grand Theft Auto knows exactly what follows (yes, you start driving over old ladies). And if we’re not anonymous then it’s likely to become an even more horrific ‘safe space’ where no one dares offend and, consequently, nothing of interest happens. Ever.”

Whether it’s 3d TV, smart glasses, smart fridges, smart kettles, smart mirrors, VR movies, vertical farms, lab grown meat, virtual keyboards or robotaxis, it seems our nerds are hell bent on bringing us stuff we simply don’t want and never asked for.

When you consider the multi billion dollar investment needed to fund these technologies you have to wonder why our highly talented nerds don’t have a straight talking grandmother or cheeky uncle to raise their eyebrows in disbelief when they explain their jobs over the Thanksgiving dinner table. 

‘You’re gonna look a right twot in that son’ is probably all that is needed.

Howard Saunders is a writer, speaker and The Retail Futurist

howard@22and5.com

theretailfuturist.com

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