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But there is one place where smart technology might make a difference, and that is in the kitchen. I have been dismissive of smart fridges and internet connected ranges before, but after reading Jennifer Tuohy’s article The Smart Kitchen: The Next Big Hope for the Internet of Things in TriplePundit, I realize that you cannot look at these appliances in isolation. She writes:
What is the largest producer of waste and second largest user of energy in the home? The kitchen. …I believe the smart kitchen is the next big thing for the smart home, the residential arm of IOT. If manufacturers can figure out a way to make smart products in the kitchen that reduce waste and energy use and increase convenience, then we will have a win for the planet, the consumer and business.
Is a smart kitchen a good idea, or the set up for an episode of, "Murder, She Wrote?"
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Monday October 10 2016, @07:34AM
You don't even need something that can make stuff out of pure energy, which I think is too far in the future: E=mc2 is a bitch. You'd need 9×1013 joules of energy just to synthesise one gram of matter, which is more than the energy released by the detonation of the Hiroshima bomb (6.3×1013 joules). Nanotech molecular assemblers such as those depicted in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age would be just as good: given some feedstock material and energy it would be able to make just about anything needed, including food, and we might realistically see such things appear within our lifetimes.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2016, @08:19AM
I'm more of a realist, as is David Drake. His troops carry a do-hicky that makes "food". Cut off a chunk of any biological material, toss it in the chute, and out comes some gruel. You dial it for flavor, but basically everything tastes like sawdust. One of the protagonists found that dialing in tapioca pudding produced something that actually tasted like tapioca pudding, but almost everything sucked when it came out. The only "good" thing about the synthesizers is, in most situations where you rely on them, you're so damned exhausted that you're not tasting food anyway. From his book, 'The Redliners'.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 10 2016, @12:31PM
but basically everything tastes like sawdust.
You misspelled "corn syrup" but other than that, fairly realistic. If the Americans invent it, it'll taste like corn syrup, just like all other American processed food.
A couple years ago I was at a tween restaurant, I forget the google term but its fancier than fast food while less fancy than sit down, typical $10 burger kind of place, and they had a soda synthesizer that used touch screens and a couple bottles of corn syrup and mystery compounds to make literally hundreds of carbonated beverages. Because everything is controllable I had to try controlling everything so I ended up with something impressive yet disgusting, like cherry vanilla coke with caffeine and extra fizz or some damn thing. I could see soda addict people having something like that at home. Not much of an extension to add a hopper of flakes, shreds, and granola and a couple more artificial flavors and you got every kind of commercial breakfast cereal made in the last century, or granola bar maker or ...
Most of the time I eat vaguely paleo at home and I think we're extremely technologically close to a machine hooked up to a sink and compost bucket where you toss peppers and lettuce and carrots and tomatoes and apples and whatever fruits and vegetables you can imagine into the top and robot vision magically food preps everything by (robot) hand. Maybe sort into buckets. So toss a bag of groceries in the top, and out comes a prepped bucket of salad, a bucket of stir fry veg, etc. Robot prep cook, I guess. Turn a dial for minimum output quality from 5 star restaurant to "mcdonalds would throw it out, but its technically safe to eat". Once in awhile I like to make homemade 5 star quality homemade applesauce.
I'd ask santa for a robot butcher to handle the other half of my diet, but I'd worry about the housepets and kids. Heck a robobutcher that can handle a cow would probably be a worthy opponent for me, 1 on 1.
Thermal depolymerization and oil synthesis is a COTS thing today, so throw chunks of plant into a box and out the other end eventually comes synthetic Crisco or fake butter is realistic today. As of half a century ago total synthesis of sucrose or other sugars was NOT realistic even done by hand at lab scale. Probably things have improved but I donno how much. Another interesting idea is we're pretty close to "dump anything containing cellulose here" and weeks later "mushrooms come out here". The problem is the "weeks later" part.
Eats anything and turns it to goo is a good weapon. That's another problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 10 2016, @02:02PM
I forget the google term but its fancier than fast food while less fancy than sit down
Fast casual [wikipedia.org].