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These two gadgets make me want to lie down and scream

It takes a certain sort of imagination to mine the creepy or the bonkers. Yet here we are.
Written by Chris Matyszczyk, Contributing Writer
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Don't you want to be touched at different locations?

YouTube screenshot/ZDNet

I always thought -- because I listened carefully to every Apple keynote -- that gadgets were supposed to make our lives better.

They'd make our souls giddier. They'd even make doing business easier.

This week, however, I've encountered two gadgets that have created disturbing sensations in too many parts of my being.

The first comes from LG. It's the LG Watch W7. This is a no-doubt sincere attempt at preserving some small element of a human world.

Yet it offers a perfectly artistic exposition of the true clash of cultures between man and machine.

Like so many wrist-borne gadgets, the Watch W7 displays notifications. It also has mechanical hands.

So, in a painful attempt to let the two co-exist, it gives you a button to move the mechanical hands out of the way in order to actually read the notifications.

We're all doomed, aren't we?

We're screaming into the past, while knowing that the future will swallow us whole.

Every time we push that button, we'll be reminded that we're beholden to Machine World, even as we hanker for something quieter, slower and saner.

But even this gadget isn't quite the most glorious depiction of electronic bonkers I've seen this week.

May I introduce you to the smartphone with a little extra?

It comes with, well, an appendage called a MobiLimb. This allows the phone to, oh, crawl toward you if it feels it's being neglected.

The appendage can touch your wrist, in order to achieve the full joy of a haptic connection. It can stroke you, purely for soothing effect. It can act out emojis. Seriously.

You can even dress it up to look like a human finger in order to impress your friends and potential romantic conquests.

Currently, this is just a prototype created by Marc Teyssier of the University of Paris-Saclay in France.

However, it is, as far as I can tell, not a joke.

Teyssier told the New Scientist: "A robotic extension like MobiLimb would be capable of transmitting a remote touch from someone."

As our world hurtles along in a troubled orbit, please imagine having to press a button to access a presidential text reading: "Folks, we're all done here. The meteor is unstoppable."

Please imagine, as the meteor approaches to end our misery, your smartphone crawls over to you for one last hug.

This is the future we've been waiting for, isn't it?

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