Eiswald

We went to IFA on a Sunday with Tomi, though we both ran out of energy almost immediately. The whole fair is designed to exhaust you—endless booths, endless displays, endless reasons to feel like technology is about to transform your life in some way that never quite happens. We made it maybe two minutes before taking a break, and spent the rest of the day drift-shopping, looking at things we’d forget about by Tuesday.

There was this section they called an ice forest, with trees engineered to be perfectly silent. Stand under them and nothing—no rustling, no creak. It’s supposed to be calming, but it’s actually unsettling. Sony had their Rollys in there, these cute little robot things that I wanted to take home. They fit in your hand.

The highlight was actually a simple thing—Telekom’s touch wall. Just an interactive surface, nothing crazy, but it was designed well enough that you wanted to keep using it. Everything else at the fair was chasing some idea of spectacle that had nothing to do with how people actually interact with things. The massive displays, the showcase cars, the strategic positioning of beautiful women in branded outfits who looked deeply bored by the whole affair. The male gaze was so thick you could feel it, and it never seemed to occur to anyone that it was embarrassing.

They gave free cola. The giveaway odds were somewhere around zero percent. I wanted to steal the world’s largest LCD screen.

The whole thing was weirdly inspiring, in that specific way trade shows are—you’re surrounded by visions of the future that will be irrelevant in six months. But for a few hours you’re in the space where someone decided what they think the world should want next, and even when it’s obviously wrong, there’s something compelling about that kind of belief.