I was sitting at O.R. Tambo International Airport minding everybody else’s own business from behind a newspaper I had absolutely no intention of reading when all of a sudden a man in a cloak came flying past me on his luggage. Had Harry Potter somehow muggled his way from platform nine and three quarters to terminal two at O.R. Tambo on an enchanted suitcase?
On closer inspection I saw that it was, in fact, a businessman riding the latest innovation in travel gear: a suitcase that doubles as a scooter. As I watched him stop, push off, wobble a little and then grin as he glided past an old lady with a walker, I thought, ‘That is quite possibly the stupidest looking thing I’ve ever seen (read: 7 of the most ridiculous travel gadgets).’ Stupider still was when, later, I found out the manufacturers had missed the golden opportunity to call it a Scootcase and instead went with the more insipid title, Micro Luggage.
Humans are travelling smarter, there’s no denying that, but sometimes we go too far. I recently saw a pillow designed to help people sleep in airports, which is actually a great idea. The stupid thing about it is that it’s shaped like an elongated sofa cushion with a hole at the bottom for you to stick your entire head into. ‘Wonderful,’ I thought, ‘if you don’t mind looking like a beakless Big Bird from Sesame Street.’
Seriously, what’s wrong with wheeling your suitcase along behind you like a normal person? Or getting to know the person next to you by leaving a healthy dose of sleep drool on their shoulder? At least you’ll be woken up in time for your flight. Although you could always leave that up to Google’s latest innovation, Google Glass. It’s a pair of glasses that will record your every move, give you directions, tell you what time your flight is, and then phone your mom to say goodbye. It will also make you look like you’ve just come off the set of the latest X-Men film and stuck a Bluetooth ear patch to your eyeball.
Innovation is great. I’m all for gadgets like washing-machine-friendly USB sticks and solar-powered bikinis, but it feels like some of these creature comforts are turning us into an entirely new species. Then it hit me. The same way Crocs survived extinction by ridicule to become a permanent feature in your shoe cupboard, ‘because they are just too comfortable’, these items will too become quite natural and I’ll be the only one out there who actually looks stupid, sitting there pretending to read a newspaper while everybody catches a few zzzzs as their suitcase, directed by their glasses, takes them to the nearest check-in.
Illustration by James Berrange
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