You can’t say I didn’t warn you

In covering my Everyware talks, reporters will very often latch onto the one part of the presentation they know their audience will grok immediately, which is the passage where I talk about the inevitability of system crashes, defaults and BSODs afflicting computationally-enhanced everyday objects.

This has given rise to some unfortunate headlines (the worst such was, I no joke you brah, “Geek Author Sees Crashing Toilets”) and the occasional oversimplification, but it’s not such a bad takeaway either. The only problem has been that I’ve always been forced to refer to this unpleasant contingency as a potential pitfall, not having any documented episodes of same to point people at.

Well, it may not be a toilet, but here it is: a crashed elevator, in all its glory. This, my friends: this is what we have to look forward to in the brave new world of everyware. This, and so very much more. (Link via Curbed.)