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Tech

A Hypothetical, $37,500 Day in the Life of a Luxury Technophile

$37,500 in gadgets, that is.

8 a.m.: Alarm rings. "Alexa, 15 minutes," Alex the human tells Alexa the gadget, her virtual assistant ($180).

9:00 a.m.: The smell of coffee wafts in from the kitchen. Alex scheduled an extra dry cappuccino with her Nespresso Prodigio & Milk Silver ($249) on the app the night before, but the machine did not froth the milk to the desired consistency. She inserts her steam-free aerolatte® frother ($28) in the cappuccino for 20 seconds, and asks Alexa for the weather report over the noise.

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9:20 a.m.: Alex fixes a new bristle head into her titanium toothbrush ($4,200). She has the champagne-colored one but wishes she got the rosé-colored one instead, and then wishes they weren't named after types of alcohol.

Alex inserts a wireless speaker into her Moxie showerhead ($199). "Alexa, play my shower playlist." In one speaker, out the other.

9:45 a.m.: Alex applies makeup while watching Chef's Table on the bottom right side of her mirror, which is also a vanishing television ($2,500). She focuses on both and neither.

10:00 a.m.: Alex gets in her Tesla and drives 10 minutes to the upscale boutique she owns. She turns on her air ionizer ($24), which pumps extra oxygen and makes her feel pleasantly giddy. What were those Christmas tree-shaped air fresheners?

"Fuck!" She suddenly brakes. She forgot to charge her insoles. Her arch-supporting, temperature-controlled Digitsole shoe inserts ($110) track her fitness, and the notifications that the battery was running low got lost among her other notifications. This was so annoying; one of the reasons she bought that calfskin Hermès Apple Watch ($1,500) the night before. Maybe her boyfriend could lend her his fitness-tracking Ralph Lauren Polotech shirt ($295) before their gym session later this evening.

She was about to ask Siri to call Jake when her blue topaz Omate Ungaro ring started to buzz ($500–$2,000). The ring buzzes when a designated loved one is calling. She asks Jake if she can use his fitness-tracking t-shirt. He says no.

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"What will I wear, then? Would I have to send you a screenshot of my progress, which is actually your progress? This is all getting too serious for me." They hang up.

"Siri, remind me to switch Ungaro caller to Mom."

"Which Mom?" Siri responded. The drop-down menu had a few of her friend's mother's names that she had saved on her phone from childhood. She clicked on the option that said: "a different Mom."

Perhaps she could make her real-life assistant, Alexis, go to her house and fetch the insole charger. She can't rely on guesswork and throw off her fitness goals. Plus, her insoles talked to her smart bed ($1,499), which customized its mattress settings in accordance with how much exercise she got. She wonders if they gossip.

"Smelly feet, hot mess, always forgets to charge me," the insoles kvetch.

"I totally think her boyfriend was here with somebody else," the bed responds.

10:30 a.m.: Alexis the human PA reminds Alex they are throwing a barbecue lunch for some clients in the store's back garden. "I got you a new Moleskine Smart Writing Set ($199), because I saw you were running out of pages in the last."

Alexis constantly worries Alex would soon replace her with a machine, so she tries to stay one step ahead. The irony of utilizing so many smart gadgets for Alex while worrying that Alex might replace her with one is not lost on Alexis. But only a human can get a reservation for that specific table at Giorgio Baldi by the window that Alex likes, right? (Right?)

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11:30 a.m.: After Alex's meeting, she needs sorts through a ton of paperwork, so picks up her AKG N90Q headphones ($1,500). The headphones correspond to the exact anatomy of her ears. Shit's getting personal with all these gadgets, she thought as she printed a form without a printer, using the mini-robot Zuta ($200).

1:00 p.m.: Alexis texts the Wi-Fi operated grill ($8,499) to start readying itself for the barbecue. There's no quinoa and beluga lentil burger setting, but she'd figure that one out later. The salmon texted her to let her know it needs some more time in the sous vide ($600).

1:45 p.m.: Wi-Fi connectivity issues wreck havoc.

"Connection timeout?" Alex yells-and-rhetorically-asks Alexis, as though saying, "How could you?"

"Let me try and see if I can get a reservation somewhere," Alexis responds sheepishly.

"But I already spent hours making those quinoa and beluga lentil burgers. I even used an early prototype of the SmartyPan ($209), to track the nutrition and perfect temperatures."

Alexis, giving fewer fucks as the days pass, wishes there was an app to telepathically convey the sentiment of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

4 p.m.: The clients have been wined and dined at a nearby restaurant. Alexis begins to clean up the front of the shop as there is not too much foot traffic, but realizes that, due to the shop's minimalism, there really is not that much to straighten up. She refills the water on the store's three self-watering plants ($201), and polishes the wood under levitating light bulbs from Sweden ($349 each) for about the sixth time today. She makes a mental note to tell Alex that the same company also makes houseplants that look like they are levitating in midair ($199). If plants could self-water and levitate, she'd be out of a job.

5:30 p.m.: Alex entrusts Alexis with closing the shop, and goes home to recharge herself (and her insoles) before the gym. She plops herself down on her Lift-Bit couch, which consists of twelve hexagonal stools ($892 per stool). When she lays supine to take a nap, all the hexagonal pieces respond to her body and go flat. She can't rest, so she hovers a hand over one of the pieces, and it rises to a level that she could use it as a desk. Where did she leave her iPad Pro ($1,129)? She asks Alexa to ask her Bluetooth-enabled locating device to find it ($30), but realizes she forgot to put the chip in the iPad, so shouts, "Nevermind!"

6:00 p.m.: After ransacking her apartment to find the missing iPad, she sits back down on the couch. She wishes Louis Vuitton would hurry up and make a case for the iPad Pro, as she only had the one for the smaller iPad ($1,400). She also cancels her plans with Jake, because she feels like he is going to cancel on her and she wants to be the one to do it first. She asks Alexa to book her for a SoulCycle class 7 p.m., but immediately asks her to cancel it. Maybe she should go to yoga, to truly disconnect. Perhaps she should take one of those overpriced ceramics classes or something.

Luxury Week is a series about our evolving views of what constitutes luxury. Follow along here.

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