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This Very Stupid Social Bottle Opener Is All I Want From the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things promises to make our home lives as simple (“simple”) as our digital lives. Soon, every home appliance (maybe even your couch) while have a Wi-Fi- or Bluetooth-connected chip inside, so you can control it from your smartphone. Imagine sending a tweet from your fridge. Guess what! You already can.

As you can imagine, I think this seems extraordinarily, uhh, shortsighted. I don’t want all of my appliances — let alone my furniture or tools — to suddenly drop to the level of reliability of my wireless router.

But in some cases, I’m more than happy to hand over my devices to the internet. I love the idea of this stupid-as-hell bottle opener, the BOx. It encapsulates the wonder of the Internet of Things in its near-uselessness. (The BOx does not actually exist yet. Its inventors are launching a Kickstarter tomorrow.)

The idea of the BOx is that it has a chip inside that pairs with your smartphone and messages your friends whenever you open a bottle. That’s … pretty much it.

Once you open a bottle, BOx uses its proprietary algorithm to alert friends over Slack and Facebook Messenger. “The ‘Smart Cheers’ algorithm,” according to the site’s copy, “uses time, location, frequency, and other factors blended in with our own special sauce to keep your friends updated wherever they are!”

No joke, I would love to get a push notification from a bottle opener, and then I’d probably reply with something like “Nice” or “😎👌.” An early-warning system for brewskis — 2016 rules.

There are also leader boards, in case you are interested in tracking how many beers you drink and then looking at the grand total — collected by a bottle opener with a Wi-Fi chip inside — and reevaluating your life.

This Is All I Want From the Internet of Things