When the Show Rings Twice

Siemens invited me to IFA this weekend, which is kind of perfect because IFA is basically the machine that sells you appliances made visible. Thousands of booths, corporate theater, companies showing you washing machines and refrigerators like they’re going to change your life. As a designer, there’s something genuinely fascinating about seeing what manufacturers believe matters—and watching how often they’re completely wrong.

Tomi’s coming, which is the only way this makes sense. You can’t walk through that kind of spectacle alone. You need someone standing with you when they’re explaining why their new dishwasher is revolutionary, someone to share the bad free coffee with, someone to acknowledge that you both just witnessed the same absurd thing.

What gets me is the gap between what these companies are betting on and what actually moves anyone’s life forward. Most of it is just money spent very earnestly solving problems nobody had. Sometimes you find something genuinely clever. Usually you just see the machinery of how we’re sold the things we live with, all exposed at once. I’ll probably leave wired and empty. But that machinery is worth seeing.