When Fallout 4 released a full-scale Pip-Boy model back in 2015, I'm deeply embarrassed to remind you that we made Johnny Chiodini spend a week using it. How did he do? Oh my. Let's say this: Over the course of that week, the Pip-Boy was molded and also broken, but Johnny still got the worse half of the deal.
What I'm even more embarrassed to say is that somehow, while my colleague was going through all of that for our enjoyment and education, I hadn't fully grasped that Pip-Boy is just another piece of biting satire in a series of games. . That's full of things. Anyway, this week I finally made the obvious connection, and not because of the fact that Fallout just became a TV series.
What finally alerted me was a review in The Verge of Humane's new AI pin. It's an AI-powered device that sits on top where, according to the Verge, it gets very hot and burns through the battery without doing much. I love the Verge article because, like me, the writer is somewhat obsessed with wearables, even though wearables have so far proven to be useless and stupid. The idea is so brilliant and quirky: a computer that you can put on your clothes or on your face! – I really want it to work.
And I suspect that one day it will be. I carry a phone in my pocket that's actually a computer, and I'm a hearing aid user, which means I'm already used to holding things. My hearing aid changes my life and I barely realize I'm wearing it anymore. Likewise, I have an acquaintance who is diabetic and has a small device that allows him to adjust his insulin levels while he travels. Again, this changes everything for them. But let's stick with it, both devices are pretty much the opposite of the Humane pin as it currently stands. They are cheap, almost invisible and do what they are supposed to do.
I found it impossible to read the review of Humane without thinking about Johnny and without thinking about all those people wandering around the Wasteland with this huge device on their arm. I've played a bit of the Fallout games and the Pip-Boy is quite useful in the game. Among other things, it concerns the menu system. But now I realize that it is more than useful: it is richly thematic.
And it has always been thematic. I just read a USGamer article about the Pip-Boy that is now available on VG247., in which the wonderful Khee Hoon Chan talks to the people who created the Pip-Boy. He had forgotten that the original Pip-Boy wasn't carried on his arm, but was some kind of ugly, beautiful tablet.
Testify! “I really like the look of old, clunky technology,” Pip-Boy designer Leonard Boyarsky explains in the article, adding, “To be honest, I don't remember if we came up with the '50s theme; it was [close to] 25 years ago, but if we did, we might have simplified [the Pip-Boy] a little more.”
The USGamer article also addresses some of the more thematic intentions at play. “The volume of the Pip-Boy also had a secondary purpose,” he says. “It is a symbol of a world irreparably torn apart by war and conflict.
“This was also my way of creating the feeling that the world wasn't quite working, like you could see the seams.” [of this universe]”Boyarsky said. “Whereas if you had fancy technology, it's going to feel very functional or seamless. “I wanted our stuff to feel like maybe it wasn't as trustworthy, like it was hacked to some degree.”
This is fascinating, because while Bethesda simplified the device a bit, they also put it on the player's arm. This is the point at which it went from being technology to being a true portable device, the point at which it had to represent all the hopes of people around the world who once dreamed of a very small, very hot laptop that also It will ruin the seams of your clothes.
And this is something that is seen very clearly in the Fallout television series. The Pip-Boys add an instant sense of comedy, or is it social horror? – to every scene in which they appear. People will be living their lives, fixing pipes, practicing with weapons, just, you know, relaxing on the deck, and they'll have this huge thing strapped to them. And it is far from a benign presence. The first episode of the series quickly establishes a connection between the world before Wasteland, in which almost no one notices that a nuclear bomb explodes outside because they are inside watching television, and the era of the Vaults, in which a main character makes a request. to an advisory council, and three officials respond by pushing their Pip-Boys instead of speaking, before his own Pip-Boy informs him of his decision.
Interestingly, these things are exactly the kind of things Humane's AI pin was meant to help with. According to that Verge article, it's a technology meant to stop you from looking at your phone so much. Instead, you have this little coil in your blouse that takes forever to answer simple questions, ignores phone calls, lies about Beyoncé, and just keeps getting warmer and warmer.
Of course, this is possibly also satire: expensive technology, with a monthly data contract, implemented to free us from our existing expensive technology with its own monthly data contracts. I'm not going to say this will never work, and the Verge article talks a lot about the things Humane is currently working on to improve things. (It is worth noting, The Verge also published this rather self-aware “review” of Fallout Pip-Boy..) Again, I think this will work someday. After all, my hearing aid, in an earlier era, would have been a little trumpet that I carried with me and stuck in my ear during conversations, and look how that turned out. (Yes, part of me wants a trumpet.) But it's a reminder of how clever Fallout designers have been with the Pip-Boy over the years. Technology promises to fade into the background, but it has a habit of coming back into the spotlight. Ask Johnny.
