CES 2014: Sen.se Announces Wi-Fi-Enabled 'Mother' Monitoring System

[fullauto]

And then when she randomly disconnects, or wrongly tells you the dog just brushed its teeth - you can curse her till your hearts content, just like she's the real thing. Mother ****!

 

[gatearray]

Is it just me, or have the last two or three years of consumer electronic startup announcements hit some kind of an exponential slope of combined uselessness and utopi-Orwellian creepy?

It's not just you!

Remember Steve Jobs' famous quote about a thousand "no"s for every yes? In the age of Kickstarter and cheap electronics manufacturing, apparently anyone with a half-baked techno-novelty and some decent video editing skills can just shrug and say "why not?"

 

[Christian 5G]

Lol I kinda like this might get it

 

[lamerica80]

I can think of several uses right off the bat for something like this. If you can't, that's fair, but that doesn't mean others can't as well.

Such as?

 

[roccitman]

It's an iPhone 4/4S with a case.

Oh, whew. Saw the sparkly silver and almost had to eye-roll.

 

[iKen1]

Hmmm... Do you really want to have to argue with Mother every time you want the cooling system turned back on. "You Have 5-Minutes to Reach Minimum Safe Distance…"

 

[jayducharme]

Is it just me, or have the last two or three years of consumer electronic startup announcements hit some kind of an exponential slope of combined uselessness and utopi-Orwellian creepy?

I see little difference between what's happening now and what was happening at the dawn of the 1900s, when industrialization was supposed to make life easier. There were gadgets for every aspect of life, and many people had the same reaction: do we really need this?

In reality, the tendency is to become slaves to the new technology. For instance, lawn mowers were supposed to help people keep their yards looking nice. Lawns, which in the past had been an afterthought for many families, became something to maintain. The convenience turned into a regular chore. Then they had to maintain the mowers and discovered that they had actually created more work for themselves in the end.

It's the same with my iPhone. It would be easy to reflexively check every beep and buzz it makes, becoming a slave to the very thing that was supposed to make my life more convenient. It's gotten to a point now where I simply ignore it (except for specific tones I've set) until I actually want to use it.

 

[iPhD]

This comment is way off topic

What is the shape of things or circumstances that have not gone all pear-shaped?

This is a serious question. I'm reading the Laundry Files series of books by Charles Stross and he uses the phrase pear-shaped all the time to denote when plan A has gone to pieces and it's time to implement plan B. What's the descriptor pre-pear, when things are good?

Great books, btw. A little MI-5-ness, a little Bond, a little paranormal, a little humor, a great satirization of bureaucracy.

 

[Chasew70]

No WiFi? Really?