Greetings, children! How you like me now eh?
I've Gynééfied myself with
my disruptive new invention, the Gynéé!
It uses advanced "kortdramanometry", to fit
you into a tiny container, so you can
ship yourself instead of paying for
today's overpriced, factory farm plane tickets.
Now, it will be nuclear-powered,
so... shipping costs may in some cases
exceed the price of a plane ticket.
But here's what you need to know, pledging
two hundred and fifty dollars and above
gets you listed in the credits of a
documentary I'm making about me
inventing the Gynéé. And yeah! There's no
prototype yet the device is still in the
fake CGI viral video stage of
development, but guess what!
So we're some of the greatest future
inventions of the 21st, century! Like the
Cecret bracelet. Chances are you've come
across this video from 2014 of a
seemingly brilliant product concept.
a bracelet that turns your wrist into a mobile screen.
Like my Gynéé demo, the video
is completely fake, of course.
It's just a prop bracelet with pictures of
phone interfaces composited and tracked
on to the arms, poorly. The screen slides
around, and appears too sharp and opaque
compared to the rest of the image, but
unlike the Gynéé, the Cicret Bracelet has
quietly gathered over half a million
dollars in crowdfunding from actual
members of the same species as you!
Newscaster 1: "People will want that."
Newscaster 2: "I think of football... quarterback!"
NC 1: "There you go! That's actually a good idea."
Captain D: Now, you know me.
I'm not one to judge people getting rewarded
for putting crazy things on the internet.
[glass crashing sound]
If, like me, these visionary self-starters
want your help funding a great new invention,
Who am I to complain? But is it a great
invention? Is it even possible for it to
work as originally advertised? Let's take
a closer look.
The makers are adamant that they haven't
invented any new technology, but rather
combined existing tech into unique
combination to improve a product.
That product: the video display! What began as
a primitive box with a light source
projecting low quality pictures onto a
matte surface, has been developed for
over a century into a high resolution,
self-illuminating, interactive panel so
thin and light, it's easily integrated
into powerful mobile devices we can take
with us wherever we go. And now the
developers of the Cicret Bracelet
want to take the next logical step,
detaching the image from the mobile
device, lowering its quality, and using a
box with a light source to project it
onto a matte surface.
Please indulge me
as I go through a brief list of
potential problems with that approach.. *Clears Throat*
Number one: projectors aren't magic.
Their performance depends on external
conditions, like a dark environment and a
bright, neutral projection surface.
A projected pictures shadows could only
look as dark as the surface looks on its
own, and the pictures highlights could
only look as bright as the surface looks
under the full illumination of the
projectors beam. Even a 24 kilowatt
Purnell couldn't cast a decent image onto a
sheet of black velvet at high noon in
the Sahara desert. How's a tiny light
source gonna fare on a sunny Miami day
projected onto the arm of my black son?
About that well. And he's fine, by the way.
He's spending this millennium with his
mother as per our "agreement". Also the
color of the surface effects the hues in
the projected image. That's why cinema
screens are white, so if you've already
pre-ordered your Cicret Bracelet, find a
color gel that matches your skin tone,
and glue it to your phone's display to
start getting used to how it's going to look.
Number Two -
short-throw anamorphic projection is
the worst kind of projection.
Remember that thing I explained that time?
Imagine the exact opposite: instead of viewing a
stretched out picture at an angle, we
have a straight view of a highly
squeezed picture beamed from an angle
which re-stretches it back to normal
dimensions. Most of the pixels are
dedicated to resolving the top of the
image. By the time you get to the bottom,
its defined by just a handful of
stretchy squares. And speaking of squares
with any ordinary light source like an
LED at such a small scale there's a
noticeable light fall-off between the
close and far end of the projection due
to something physicists and I like to
call, the inverse-square law. So spray
some dark paint at the bottom of your
phone screen to update our simulation.
Wait, this just in, I'm being told now the
secret team travelled into the future,
saw my video, and adjusted their strategy.
According to this footage of their
presentation at the wearable
technologies conference this year, they
will not be using an LED projector.
They're going with a laser projector
solution.
Lasers shine highly directional
light for very long distances, so say
goodbye to the inverse square law issue.
But say hello with your eyes and skin, to
potentially hazardous laser radiation
exposure! Purchase a laser emitter.
There's always a big yellow warning
sticker advising you not to shine it on
living tissue.
So go ahead peel that off and paste it
onto our simulation, and then throw the
whole thing in the garbage because
several major electronics manufacturers
have already tried to introduce
full-color laser projection technology
to the consumer market and failed.
Number Three - Cicret's method for touch
sensing doesn't make much sense. The plan
is to use proximity sensors the same
devices, that make self-activating
faucets possible. They work by projecting
a beam, usually infrared, and sensing when
it gets reflected by physical objects.
Sounds reasonable, for simple button
presses. This virtual keyboard, which uses
laser projection and an infrared
proximity sensor to detect keystrokes,
has been on the market for years, and it
works... great? But what about multi-touch
gestures? With all the sensors on one
side won't some fingers block others
from being seen, rendering rotation
zooming, and pinching possibly impossible?
Which brings me to the design
of the bracelet itself. It's sleek, it's
modern, it's the kind of thing Steve Jobs
would have loved to have been buried
wearing, but how can all this amazing
functionality fit in such a small
package? Let's take another,
even closer look.
Ignoring the madness that is this
diagram in the original video showing a
processor, accelerometer, card reader,
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi transceivers, an
indicator light, a vibration motor, a
projector, and eight proximity sensors
all powered by a battery the size of a
pumpkin seed located at the farthest
possible point from the recharging port.
Let's just look at the bracelets
aesthetics. The design that may have
inspired you to throw your financial
support behind the company, looked like
this tiny evenly spaced pinholes
breaking up an otherwise seamless
Karim Rashid style color turdlet, but
now that you've invested this is the
latest iteration of what it might look
like. A vertical projector and sensor
assembly seated atop the bracelet
seemingly thicker than the Apple watch,
than any watch really! And there's something
familiar about this sensor arrangement...
[foghorn blows]
Incidentally... [spoken to delivery person] Disillusioned
the first prototype of my Gynéé device has just arrived!
[glamorous music begins]
[cartoon whizzing sound, comical bonk sound]
[wheezing] It works!
Keep in mind, even this image of the
Cicret Bracelet is still a mock-up. We
haven't seen a working prototype. What we
have seen is a video posted in February 2015,
called Cicret Bracelet first working
prototype. It's a series of shots showing
disappointingly faint, blurry, and
distorted projections cast onto some
exquisitely hairless forearms.
A title card claiming the device works on every
skin tone precedes a shot of an arm
filmed in such deep shadow, it's
impossible to tell what the skin tone
actually is. Another card saying it works
in "bright daylight" precedes two shots
filmed and rather... overcast conditions.
Which I almost didn't notice, because
I was too distracted by the insane flicker
present throughout the demo. But don't
worry! The flicker is merely an artifact
of the camera shutter, it's not visible
in real life. I'd like to take a moment
to discuss competence. Not high level
technical expertise, or intellectual
brilliance, just basic human competence
we all strive for in our daily lives.
Now, if you were making a proof-of-concept
video for your invention, and a simple
camera issue was causing that very
concept to look HORRIBLE, and all you had
to do to fix it is to adjust one setting,
wouldn't you move heaven and earth to
try to figure out how to do it?
Better yet, wouldn't you try to design your
device not to have this issue at all?
When the Cicret bracelet hits the market,
many customers will film theirs in
action, and put it online exhibiting the
same flickering which may result in
[in slowed down distorted voice] negative brand perception
Which flickery laser projector did they end up fitting
inside their prototype anyway? Wait a
minute! That might not be a laser
projector at all! There's a pretty
obvious light fall-off, and we're never
even shown the full device in any of these shots!
Could it be that they simply strapped an
off-the-shelf pico projector to a hand
like I did earlier with my son?
GIVE ME BACK MY SON! You know, it's funny. If I
said that this image used to advertise
the Cicret Bracelet is a bold-faced lie,
because it's impossible for a light
projection to be darker than the surface
on which is being projected, I could get
in legal trouble. But on the other hand,
the inventors of the Cicret Bracelet
have been fine collecting money based on
promises of images like this, without
putting a single disclaimer on any of
them! Just who are these shrewd genius
entrepreneurs? [comical honk sound]
Let's see, there's non-threatening Drew Carey,
Picasso Johnny Depp, and at the helm a
father-and-son team of Pascal and Guillaume
Pommier. I think they're father and son?
There's really not that much information
out there about them. Pascal has
experience in IT and management, and Guillaume
is a salesman, a very tenacious one. Ever
wonder why the bracelet is called Cicret?
Well, because the name is borrowed from
Guillaume previous venture.
This was his IndieGoGo campaign to raise
$50,000 for Cicret, the secure messaging
app. It managed to raise $15 from one
anonymous backer, you can still download
the app from the Google Play Store.
Try it and let me know how well it works. It
was then that Guillaum pivoted to the
bracelet idea, and started another
IndieGoGo campaign, this time for
$500,000. It topped out at thirteen
hundred fifty seven, or as IndieGoGo puts
it zero percent of the goal, before he
closed it and disguised the campaign's
name. Why was it so tough? Well you see,
reputable crowdfunding platforms like
Patreon, Kickstarter, and IndieGoGo
protect donors by requiring creators to
meet their own benchmarks and deliver
rewards in a timely fashion,
something Guillaum struggled with from the
start. Luckily, there was a better, less
accountable solution.
He abandoned IndieGoGo, and switched to
collecting donations directly from
credit cards, first via PayPal, and now
via Stripe. In less than two years, he not
only reached the $500,000 goal, but
surpassed it by 20%! Turns out not all of
that came from online donors, but still
it's a lesson to us all.
By not having to deal with a fundraising sites
consumer protecting rules, Guillaum is able to
make all kinds of promises and
projections on Cicret's own website. A
site he fully controls, a site whose news
section chronicles two years of the
company's activity in just nine posts.
One of which is a poll, and another a
thank you for participating in the poll.
A site where your generous upfront
contributions for a currently
non-existent product are collected under
a strict "no refunds" policy.
Sometimes I'm accused of being overly...
cynical and... asshole-istic, but I don't want
to be seen that way! I'd be thrilled if
Bigfoot hunters, psychic healers, and
wearable technology innovators were
proven right! And I would gladly
sacrifice the funding of my
revolutionary Gynéé storage container
system, we pivoted, if it would help the
Cicret Bracelet deliver on its promises.
In fact I have! Guillaum, if you're listening, I
saw the limited time offer on your
website, and I decided to participate.
Prior to the deadline, I contributed the
maximum two hundred and fifty dollar
donation of my own money to your cause,
which I believe entitles me to a free
secret bracelet by no later than the end
of 2016,
according to your own timeline. I'm
excited, and you should be too because, if
the bracelet I receive functions exactly
like your 2014 video depicts. I promise,
in front of these two hundred thousand
witnesses that I'll ditch this old thing,
start wearing this Cicret as my
whimsical communicator device, and put a
purchase link to it in the first video.
I'm a fan of you Guillaum! I'm an
investor! And I just can't wait.
But now I'm afraid it's time for me to
go kids, a police detective in Illinois
is about to ask a psychic for help with
a missing-persons case for the third
time. Remember: love with your heart. Use
your head for everything else.
Captain Disillusion! [whooshing portal sounds]