I visited a friend’s house recently, and when I rang the doorbell I heard an electronic voice from inside. “Ben Sledge is at the door.” This wasn’t enough to put him off opening it and letting me in, but I was disconcerted. HisGoogledoorbell, similar to Amazon’s Ring devices, recognised the snapshot of my face from the last time I was at his house, and now I’m in his system forever.
Once inside and just about over the fact that even knocking on a door is tracked and noted online now, I fell deeper into the abyss. While I was unsurprised that my friend’s wall-sized telly was voice activated – most are these days – his lights were too. Google light bulbs, no less. Except, you can’t switch them off at the wall like other lights, because that disconnects them from the internet and the voice activation no longer works. Was this really a technological step into the future, or did it actually improve the turning-a-light-on experience? Why did flicking a switch need Google integration anyway?
“Technology scares me. Or rather the companies behind it do.”
Without the risk of sounding too Black Mirror about all this, I couldn’t help but wonder what Google was doing with all this information about me and, more regularly, my friend. Does it know that he turned the lights off at 2am each night, and therefore that he’s a night owl? Does it send him adverts for Red Bull to get him through those work-from-home mornings that it also knows he has because it’s when his PC connects to the internet at the same time each morning? Will it now send me those very same adverts, or similar ones, because it knows my face was at his door and therefore assumes (correctly) that we’re friends and (incorrectly) that we have similar sleep schedules?
Technology scares me. Or rather the companies behind it do. I don’t trust these Silicon Valley corporations further than I can throw them, and I doubt my wrist could handle an OIympic record with thousands of employees teetering in my palm. However, reading up on the experimental gaming gear shown off at CES 2024 has got me wanting to sign my privacy away and decorate the inside of my house like The Sims 2077.
LG’s Signature OLED T is less a television and more ahologram machine. The transparent screen can remove the backgrounds from screensavers, live performances, or even (with varying levels of success) TV shows to make it look as if Rick Astley isn’t actually playing at Camden Roundhouse, he’s playing live from your front room. It’s an impressive gimmick that I’d rarely use – why would you want to ruin the careful framing of a prestige TV show, for instance? – but I love all the same. How cool would it be to have a hologram in your front room? But the gaming tech goes even further.
Alienware’s award-winning AW3225QF monitor(catchy name, right?) gives you both barrels. Not only does the 32-inch curved display boast 4K visuals, but it has a 240Hz refresh rate too. I’m no esports player, and I doubt doubling my refresh rate would make me any better atApex Legends, but I’ve never seen such a high-fidelity monitor have specs like these before, and I simply must try it out.
There also seems to be a move towards making the interior of your PC wireless (or look wireless, at least), which I appreciate immensely. I don’t know why I opted for a glass panel on my DIY PC, seeing as my cable management skills make it look like a family of sparrows have built their nest in my tower, but the future for messy PC builders looks bright.
The stuff I really love, however, is the weird and wonderful. CES is a show of tech exhibitions, ideas that may never see full production, and that’s where things get really exciting. From theXREAL Air 2 Ultra, AR glasses that almost look like actual glasses, to theASUS Zenbook DUO, which would allow me to take my dual-monitor setup on the move, to theEvie ringwhich helps people with chronic illnesses to stay up to date with their health. There’s asmart toilet– something I’ve longed for since visiting Japan – complete withe-inkpatterns. Why do I need all this? I’m not sure, but I’m suddenly gutted that Father Christmas stopped answering my letters years ago.
I may still be scared that Google CEO Sundar Pichai is listening to everything I say – which could be a real problem with health tech and the privatisation of the NHS – but if he wants to measure everything I dump into a smart toilet, I invite him to be my guest. I assume my doorbell will already recognise him when he arrives.
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