Every object, no matter how ordinary, can become smart and thus bring your life to whole new levels of joy and awareness. I just found two more proofs of this truth.

Look at this smart water bottle, for example:

One of its proud owners (really) wrote that “[this smart water bottle] really helped me drink more water: if you’ve gone a while without drinking, the bottle glows to remind you to take a sip and sends slightly guilt-inducing push notifications to your phone (“Hey, it’s your kidneys here, drink up!")”.

A bottle like that is a perfect companion to this (painfully real, again) washing machine sensor:

that “sits on top of my washing machine and uses an accelerometer to detect vibration from the machine. When it senses the wash cycle has finished, it sends me a notification on my phone. I built this because the machine itself no longer beeps when it is finished and I was tired of forgetting to take out the laundry.”

Smart products like this make Juicero pale in comparison. Of course, you have to complete them with some implanted smart sensor (like your brain, just autonomous and with a price tag) that gives you a whenever you forget to carry along a phone that delivers all the notifications.

Stuff like this does have a lot of real value as educational, maybe self-teaching projects. No question about that. But if actually meant as “products” for daily life, instead, it just makes some problems bigger (e.g e-waste) just to solve unexisting ones. If you need continuous blinking and sounds to remind you that you’re thirsty and should change your underwear you don’t need smart bottles or accelerometers. You need assistance. The sooner the better.