Do you think we'll ever have access to the kinds of appliances mentioned in
the article below?
--Sam Troia

The Village Voice: Machine Age: Cooking With Jane Jetson  
       

             Published November 3 - 9, 1999 


      SHOCK VALUE
      BY DAVID KUSHNER

      It Grates! It Juliennes! It Plays MP3s! 

      Cooking With Jane Jetson



      Not so long ago, the dishwasher was heralded as a revolutionary new 
      machine that would free up women to do more important things, like fold 
      laundry. Now troops of so-called 'smart' appliances are infiltrating
the 
      kitchen with emancipation on their drives. The smarter machines
become, of 
      course, the dumber we get to be! All that's left to do is masticate and 
      digest. 
      Consider the Screenfridge—an intelligent icebox that can buy groceries 
      online, send e-mails to Emeril, and broadcast Regis and Kathy Lee.
Though 
      yet to be scheduled for release, it was previewed this year by
Electrolux, 
      a Swedish company that has been producing refrigerators since the
1920s. 
      The Screenfridge comes with a touch-controlled PC embedded right in the 
      front door, as well as an audiovisual system that, among other
things, can 
      provide security surveillance of your entire home. Freeze! 
      The big bonus, Electrolux promises, will be a specially designed
digital 
      "reader," which scans bar codes on food items inside the fridge. This 
      enables the machine to automatically do stuff like monitor expiration 
      dates ("The mango Yoplait will self-destruct in five minutes!") or
alert 
      you when designated supplies are running low ("Olive loaf! Olive loaf! 
      Olive loaf!"). If you add up all that time you spend surreptitiously 
      sniffing the milk, the Screenfridge will save you minutes. 
      A similar wisdom is behind the Intelligent Microwave, a research
project 
      being engineered by Cook College/Rutgers University with the support of 
      Samsung Electronics. Like the Screenfridge, the I-crowave relies on a
bar 
      code technology. On-the-fly cooks simply scan the label on, say, a
box of 
      frozen chicken à la king, and voilà, the CPU automatically sets to nuke 
      the meal to perfection. "The intelligent microwave will completely 
      transform the way people prepare food in the 21st century," hypes
Dennis 
      Joyner, Samsung's marketing manager for microwave ovens and room air 
      conditioners. (Sure, it sounds like a bright idea now, but what happens 
      when some punk bar-codes a cat?) 
      Less risky, perhaps, is the Advantage 2000, a kind of multimedia boom
box 
      for the countertop, expected to debut early next year. It's the latest 
      infomercial-ready product from Bob Lamson, the ubiquitous barker behind 
      the Juiceman and the Breadman. The "A2K," as it's cheekily nicknamed, 
      combines a TV monitor and CD player with a stripped-down, non-Windows
PC 
      appliance, capable of handling Web surfing and e-mail. And it's got 
      fashion sense, available as either a black TV monitor or a sleek
12-inch 
      flip-down LCD panel that hooks up right under your cabinets. The
device is 
      also designed to be a "network manager" for all the data that will 
      eventually flow between kitchen appliances. Wonder how the Screenfridge 
      will feel about that. 
      The A2K, however, is not the first product to try to digitally organize 
      the snarl of dining data. Brother created one of the first electronic 
      recipe organizers with the Kitchen Assistant. Less a PC than a PDA,
this 
      $300 machine stores and prints all your recipes for easy access through 
      specially designed memory cards. It also sports what it calls a
"reverse 
      recipe function," which lets you type in a couple of ingredients, then 
      press enter to get some suggestions for what to cook. "Let's say you
look 
      in the fridge and see some mushrooms starting to go bad," explains
Joanna 
      Cumberland, president of the product's marketing agency. "The Kitchen 
      Assistant tells you what to do." (Throw them out?) 
      Sometimes the kitchen science is less gadget-oriented, though
endearingly 
      bizarre. A cooking surface now available called Cybernox ("cyber"
prefix 
      alert) is alleged to be the most indestructible surface ever. The 
      impervious alloy coating, fused into a stainless steel pan, can resist 
      temperatures up to 1800 degrees. Invented by a French company called 
      Sitram, it was originally used on the nose cone of a rocket. Imagine
the 
      nerve it took to fry an egg on that. 
      Such innovations have been a long time coming. Only a couple hundred
years 
      ago, the first generation of high-tech refrigerators was rolling into 
      Britain. But the luxury proved dangerous. Since the machines were
filled 
      with an ether-based cooling system, they were prone to minor 
      inconveniences, like exploding in people's faces. Thankfully, though,
soon 
      all we'll have to worry about in the kitchen is spam. 
      Tell us what you think. [log in to unmask] 






      Features | CityState | Hot Spot | Letters | Machine Age | Nation | NY 
      Mirror | Sports | Art | Books | Dance | Film | Music | Theater | 
      Classifieds | Personals | Eats | About Us | Contact Us | Home 

      LA Weekly | Seattle Weekly | City Pages | Cleveland Free Times | Long 
      Island Voice | OC Weekly

      Copyright © 1999 VV Publishing Corporation, 36 Cooper Square, New
York, NY 
      10003 The Village Voice and Voice are registered trademarks. All rights 
      reserved. 
              
             
             
            To advertise in Machine Age contact Jim Sosnicky. 
             


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html