In April 2012, a team of engineers posted a Kickstarter fundraising pitch for Pebble, an intelligent wristwatch that would connect to your smartphone and alert you to calls, emails, text messages, and other bits of digital ephemera. The Pebble was far from the most beautiful watch you’d ever seen, but for what was essentially a tiny computer on your wrist, it looked surprisingly unnerdy—almost normal. It had some cool tech in it, too. With an E Ink screen, the Pebble’s display could be read in bright sunlight. It was also an app platform—third-party developers could create all kinds of cool add-ons for the watch, so that eventually you could use it to track your running, cycling, golf game, and maybe even the time of day. Just kidding—the watch did that, too!
