Next Year’s Future

Went to the IFA in Berlin—the big European consumer electronics fair, where every manufacturer wheels out their flattest screens and thinnest phones and collectively performs the fiction that the future has arrived and is marginally more high-definition than before. Went with my friend Tomi, who holds the title of internationally renowned manager with considerable personal dignity.

Mostly stood in line to touch things I couldn’t afford, watched demo reels on screens that cost more than three months of rent, and ate convention-center food that tasted like it was designed by committee. But there’s something about being surrounded by all that hopeful new hardware that still gets me—the smell of hot electronics, the branded tote bags, the collective optimism that the next device will be the one that finally gets everything right. It never is. You still go.