Welcome to the future: it costs $99 and it vibrates when you eat too fast. It's a fork. Or, rather, it's a HAPIfork, and it was one of the most buzzed about items at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which ends today.
If you're not a tech aficionado, CES might mean nothing to you. So, let me explain: it's an annual expo in Las Vegas during which 150,000 geeks flash their hardware at each other by day, and stare at their phones in casinos by night. It's supposedly the "innovation event of the year"; a showcase of the various tech that will soon filter into our living rooms.
Like, for example, the vibrating fork, which is an example of the growth in self-tracking devices and the proliferation of internet-connected "smart" objects. It doesn't just give you bad vibrations when you're bolting your food; it measures your chews per minute, tracks your average meal-time, and syncs all this information with your computer, so you can analyse every byte of your lunch. This, the manufacturers claim, means it will urge you to eat slowly, lose weight, and feel great! Because nothing tastes as good as a spreadsheet full of mastication-metrics feels.
If you're not sold yet then it could be that that you're, well, fairly normal. Sixty-eight per cent of people are happy with the technology they already own: not that many of us are lying awake at night lamenting the lack of vibrating forks in our lives. Nor are we yearning to fill the gaps in our existence with a 17-pound, $1,700 "table PC", or an iPotty – some of the other products on show. While companies are rushing to make everything in our lives "connected", there often seems to be disconnect around what people are actually looking for from technology, and a misunderstanding of what innovation means.
Amongst the pimped-up potties were a number of genuinely spectacular and undeniably useful things at CES, from the world's largest 3D video wall, to Trakdot, which helps you track down lost luggage. But this was my first year at the event and, as I walked around the endless booths, the impression I got wasn't of an exposition electric with innovation. It was of a convention that wasn't just conventional, but downright old-fashioned. This isn't just to do with the fact that it's a hardware show in a software era; it's to do with the people there. Despite the increasing number of women in technology, the expo is very noticeably male. In fact the only time you're likely to see so many stocky and slightly sweaty men under one roof is at a Bears night in Vauxhall.
When it comes to the women that are at CES, a lot of them aren't wearing many clothes: these are the controversial "booth babes." Gary Shapiro, president of CES, has shrugged off criticism regarding the use of booth babes, stating that while "sometimes it is a little old school, it does work." In the interests of science, I spoke to a few of the models to see how they felt about their cleavage being an advertising channel. And, rather depressingly, they all seemed to feel like it was perfectly natural. "People are here to look and we're kind of like on display as well," said Joyce who was dressed, as she described it, as a conservative go-go dancer. "We just enhance the products," she added matter-of-factly. "They look at us at first and they look at the products. Obviously sex sells."
Thinking that perhaps the conservative go-go dancer outfit was a bit too conservative, I moved on to chat to a couple of women who were dressed as nurses. Or, rather they were dressed as the sort of nurses you don't see in the NHS. Krysta and Heather were promoting an app that had something to do with sound quality, which made the choice of outfit seem somewhat incongruous. "But we're curing the bad sound epidemic!" Krysta exclaimed, and offered me a prescription and a free lollipop. I actually quite wanted the free lollipop but at that moment a couple of men butted in, eager to learn about the specs of whatever was on offer. And pretty soon there was a crowd of men. In fact, from the empirical evidence gathered, it appears that when it comes to promotional challenges, nurse outfits are around 20% more effective than any other polystyrene solution.
While CES may consider itself a homage to innovation, true innovation isn't about thinner screens or "smart" devices. It's about using technology to advance society on a human level. And when it comes to that more meaningful sort of modernisation, I left Las Vegas having seen precious few signs of progress.