Spend too much time looking down at your phone? The Urban Periscope, a new tongue-in-cheek accessory, wants to liberate you -- and not by alleviating your subservience to tech, but by giving you the ability to function in public without ever looking up again.
The satirical smartphone add-on comprises of an angled mirror that "redirects your vision 90 degrees". Developed by Chase Kimball, Ingmar Larsen and Whitney Keller, the Urban Periscope is pitched as a "completely analogue phone case" that ensures you "never have to look up from your phone".
Unlike the NoPhone, another project developed by Larsen, a slab of smartphone-shaped plastic that does nothing, there's no suggestion the Urban Periscope will ever be released. Despite being utterly useless, the NoPhone raised more than $18,000 on Kickstarter in July 2015.
It has since spawned a budget spinoff NoPhone ZERO and the NoPhone SELFIE, a slab of plastic with a mirror on it. Prices range from $5 to $15.
But Larsen isn't alone in poking fun at our smartphone addiction.
Last year artists Justin Crowe and Aric Snee designed a prototype fibreglass selfie arm to protest against the "growing selfie stick phenomenon, and the constant, gnawing need for narcissistic internet validation".
The accessory is designed to make it appear that a lover or friend is holding your hand while taking a photo, removing the crushing sense of narcissism tainted with loneliness.
In 2013, design firm MisoSoupDesign created a ramen bowl complete with iPhone dock, solving the age-old problem of slurping tonkotsu while idly pawing at Twitter.
Earlier that year CTA Digital debuted the iPotty, a plastic training potty for children complete with an iPad dock. The entirely serious contraption is still available to buy for £30.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
