I don’t think of myself as a technophobe who’s against advancement, but quite often I do find myself pondering what benefit there is to civilization in the existence of things like smart toasters, ovens that sport more circuits than the shitty old computer I’m writing this on or text message and internet connected tea kettles.
Ahh, internet connected tea kettles. They’ve been around for a while now, but does anyone actually use them? I can’t say I’ve met a person who will admit to owning one, but somebody must. Why else would companies keep building the damn things? Unless…yes, that must be it. They’re not meant to be used as actual tea kettles in a real life, sane environment. What they really are is a puzzle to see how much your computer fix it guy is willing to go through before he starts crying and eventually puts himself out of his pathetic fucking misery altogether.
All Mark Rittman wanted was a cup of tea. Little did he know he would have to spend 11 hours waiting for his new hi-tech kettle to boil the water.
Rittman, a data specialist who lives in Hove, England, set about trying to make a cup of tea around 9am. But thanks to his Wi-Fi enabled kettle it wasn’t long before he ran into trouble.
https://twitter.com/markrittman/status/785751015517814784
And on and on it goes, a chronicle of just the most ridiculous goddamn horseshit. Updates, port scans, even programming his own device integration from scratch so he could use voice commands through various smart devices to accomplish what the rest of us do by getting up and flipping a switch. Seriously, if being lazy is this hard, why bother? Or as this person, who I believe in spite of the typo speaks for all of us, asks,
https://twitter.com/onekade/status/785838900703006720