TOTALLY WIRED
I am not one for conspiracies—foil hats flatter few—but squirreled inside the word obsolescence you’ll find a stowaway. There it is, atomized and sprinkled to avoid detection: obscene. What adjective better characterizes the passing of our beloved boxes of bits? A filthy fate indeed, and nothing deserved it less than Microsoft’s Kinect. It wasn’t the menacing red lights of the bygone peripheral that intrigued me, nor the unremarkable games it birthed, but its mandate of manumission. When paired with an Xbox, it urged us all to leave the controller on the couch and physicalize our intentions instead, whirligigging the console into subservience. Alas, the gap between action and reaction proved insurmountable, and the Kinect slunk away to the world of enterprise, never to sully a living room again. Yet its promise…