The next big thing is not here yet. It would have to de-clutter or simplify daily life

What is the next big thing? In terms of technology and devices that enhance our lives, reducing everyday complexity, de-cluttering our personal social and cultural wealth, organizing everything slightly better into portable chunks of stuff that we read, listen to, watch, enjoy or learn from.

The laptop. The iPod. The smartphone. They did all of that.

Right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything quite as usefully revolutionary around the corner. As Leonid Bershidsky writes in Bloomberg View, the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show proves that the next big thing isn’t here yet. He rejects devices that fall in the Internet of Things category, wearables and driverless cars. None of them help “to further reduce the clutter in our lives… to throw something away or to stop doing some hated chore”, he writes.

He’s right. That is the truest test.