Smart technology may have finally gone too far. At its best, our web-enabled devices help us automate our homes, monitor our health, and keep track of our ideas. On the other side of the usefulness spectrum there’s BOx, or Bottle Opener X. Yes. Thanks to a successful Kickstarter we now have a smart bottle opener.
As a bottle opener, BOx looks like a solid product; the sort of thing you’d find at a Brookstone or suggested on a Birchbox website. It’s the addition of smart tech that will make you ask “why?” BOx has chip inside that can message your friends to let them know you’re already drinking and keep track of your beers every time you pop another bottle cap.
BOx’s ad shows this as a fun “guess who’s starting the weekend” social interaction, but it reads more like a sad short story about your friend who always wants you to get sauced at lunch and doesn’t understand you’ve got work for the rest of the afternoon. Even the ad itself seems to know this. The response the user in the ad gets to his “cheers” message from his friends is “still stuck at the office.” His BOx-using friend’s response? “2 beers, at Home cheers.”
If BOx’s existence is a low-key way to monitor a friend with a drinking problem it makes sense, and I do like how it will warn users when they shouldn’t drive. But do we really need this level of connectivity in our lives? 347 Kickstarter backers say yes, helping BOx raise over $17,000 as of this writing. Maybe the future is passing us by, but at least our old analog bottle opener won’t narc as we go on a bender.
