Artist's Note:
I don't know why, but seeing those things make me angry. It's just, why?
Writer's Note:
So last year we did a comic that touched on the near-irrational public demand for a Back-to-the-Future-style hoverboard at CES 2015, and now, in 2016, we can reflect on the industry response to that desire: a plethora of hoverboard models that include both crappy, semi-explosive wheeled models, as well as hyper expensive actual hoverboards that are somehow even more impractical to use.
If anything, it's a fun lesson about humanity's capacity for ingenuity and silliness. New technologies have equipped us with the rapid design, prototyping, and manufacturing capabilities to improve our lives, but much of this capacity is spent (and perhaps wasted) on catering to consumer whimsy.
