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Tech

New Gadget Forces You to Abandon Your Gadgets

You plug your Personal Energy Orb into a computer, and it launches a ticker that monitors how long you've been in front of the screen. As the PEO loses power, it slows down the responsiveness of your CPU, until it becomes unbearable. So, to recharge...

You plug your Personal Energy Orb into a computer, and it launches a ticker that monitors how long you’ve been in front of the screen. As the PEO loses power, it slows down the responsiveness of your CPU, until it becomes unbearable. So, to recharge the PEO, you’ve got to … exercise. Toss the orb on your bike, ride around until it turns green, and your computer will snap back into regular speeds.

It’s technology designed to force you to step away from technology, a gadget that forces you to leave behind your gadgets.

It’s a charming, clever idea, and it will probably never work. The culture of convenience, which has ballooned to near-entitlement, pervades our tech-dependent lives and will likely never suffer such good-natured hindrances. Of course, that’s the mindset that the orb is assailing. And you get the sense that this isn’t some earnestly produced product from snazzy startup hounds hoping to attract venture capital from Silicon Valley or Google investment—it’s a thought experiment. It goads us to rethink our relationship between our computers and bodies. It’s an effort to get us to notice that one is draining, at least distorting, the health of the other.