The Future

Has Google Invented the Spoon of the Future?

Simple-sounding tasks like sipping hot soup or enjoying New York’s beloved state snack become all-out challenges for some who suffer from tremors as a result of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Google — or a company called Lift Labs that it acquired, anyway — has made a no-spill spoon that fixes the problem of hand tremors by doing the most obvious thing. “If I have a tremor and I move to the right, it will physically move to the left,” Anupam Pathak, the spoon’s inventor, explains, simplifying what is no doubt a utensil derived from complex engineering.

There must be some bang-up technology going on inside that handle, because the spoon carries a $295 price tag, but the device, which will have fork and knife attachments pretty soon, looks like a godsend and, unlike clunkier inventions already on the market, is actually relatively inconspicuous while being used.

Go ahead and feel some feelings as you watch it at work for this lady with severe tremors:

[AP]

Has Google Invented the Spoon of the Future?