Smartphones are a huge part of most of our lives. We check them dozens of times a day, we sleep with them, we even let our very young children use them. Many of us also use our smartphones when we’re out to dinner with friends and family instead of, you know, engaging in human interaction. With that in mind, IKEA Taiwan has unveiled an invention to get us all to unplug during mealtime.
It’s a special hot pot table that’s powered by smartphones—so it requires everyone at the table to surrender their devices and place them below the pot. If someone removes his phone, the heat drops and the food will not get cooked properly.
As you’ll see in the video, it doesn’t work super well, because diners can still see their phones and are clearly stressed out about not being able to touch them. Eventually, though, they seem to loosen up and just talk to each other.
Either way, we really can’t imagine trying to assemble this table ourselves.
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