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When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

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Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#11

Post by vel0city »

I think its interesting to see these ideas just be unable to predict the true scale of miniaturization of personal computing. They still saw the kitchen computer as some kind of appliance or something built-in to the home. Meanwhile most of us do have kitchen computers; a ton of people look to their phones or tablets for many of the tasks these early kitchen computers were planned to do. Keeping track of meals, providing recipes, keeping track of inventories, ordering groceries and meals, etc. is all commonly done with kitchen computers these days.

Its just we don't call them kitchen computers. We call them smartphones and tablets, and they're even more embedded in our lives than many of these 1970s futurists could even imagine.

And yet at the same time we're still nearly as far off from truly completely automating the kitchen. I still don't have a machine that I walk up to and it can make me a wide variety of meals with little to no interaction on my part.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#12

Post by zwieback »

I think this is a general pattern: since the beginning of the industrial revolution people have been dreaming about robots doing things for us, replacing entire tasks. The reality is that putting computers into existing devices makes a lot more sense as mechanical household devices are already highly optimized. Sewing machines, kitchen appliances, cars, power tools are the result of decades of engineering so we replace the control systems and user interfaces with microcontrollers but leave the good stuff as-is.

Self-driving cars is one area where I could see a bigger shift: a dangerous activity that could perhaps be done better by machines, if the environment is adapted to prevent show-stopping accidents.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#13

Post by zwieback »

vel0city wrote: post #11

I think its interesting to see these ideas just be unable to predict the true scale of miniaturization of personal computing. They still saw the kitchen computer as some kind of appliance or something built-in to the home. Meanwhile most of us do have kitchen computers; a ton of people look to their phones or tablets for many of the tasks these early kitchen computers were planned to do. Keeping track of meals, provi…

Exactly. I've worked in manufacturing automation long enough to know that the equipment needed to generate the huge variety of food even a mediocre cook can prepare would fill multiple kitchens. Automation equipment that's safe and reliable tends to be very big in relation to the items it operates on.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#14

Post by ryukafalz »

zwieback wrote: post #12

I think this is a general pattern: since the beginning of the industrial revolution people have been dreaming about robots doing things for us, replacing entire tasks. The reality is that putting computers into existing devices makes a lot more sense as mechanical household devices are already highly optimized. Sewing machines, kitchen appliances, cars, power tools are the result of decades of engineering so we repla…

> if the environment is adapted to prevent show-stopping accidents

And what exactly would that environment look like to those outside of a car?

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#15

Post by jandrese »

zwieback wrote: post #13
vel0city wrote: post #11

I think its interesting to see these ideas just be unable to predict the true scale of miniaturization of personal computing. They still saw the kitchen computer as some kind of appliance or something built-in to the home. Meanwhile most of us do have kitchen computers; a ton of people look to their phones or tablets for many of the tasks these early kitchen computers were planned to do. Keeping track of meals, provi…

Exactly. I've worked in manufacturing automation long enough to know that the equipment needed to generate the huge variety of food even a mediocre cook can prepare would fill multiple kitchens. Automation equipment that's safe and reliable tends to be very big in relation to the items it operates on.

One could imagine something like an industrial robot arm that can swap implements being able to manage a relatively large variety of recipes given some staple ingredients in a limited amount of space, but it would be tremendously complex to build and cost more than an industrial robot arm. Keeping it clean and well maintained would be a nontrivial effort, even if the arm includes programming to clean up after itself.

Probably like a billion dollars to develop the first prototype, and each copy would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, maybe eeking down into the tens of thousands of dollars range if they work really well and become inexplicably popular. Even then it would be up to the customer to keep it stocked with ingredients in a specially designed containers in the included pantry and refrigerator.

It's really the same reason McDonalds never really went through with that fully automated restaurant threat. A person can do the same job for minimum wage, so the robot will never be cost efficient unless someone else does all of the R&D for you, and even then it's highly dependent on being low maintenance.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#16

Post by zwieback »

ryukafalz wrote: post #14
zwieback wrote: post #12

I think this is a general pattern: since the beginning of the industrial revolution people have been dreaming about robots doing things for us, replacing entire tasks. The reality is that putting computers into existing devices makes a lot more sense as mechanical household devices are already highly optimized. Sewing machines, kitchen appliances, cars, power tools are the result of decades of engineering so we repla…

> if the environment is adapted to prevent show-stopping accidents And what exactly would that environment look like to those outside of a car?

lots of guardrails!

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#17

Post by zozbot234 »

vel0city wrote: post #11

I think its interesting to see these ideas just be unable to predict the true scale of miniaturization of personal computing. They still saw the kitchen computer as some kind of appliance or something built-in to the home. Meanwhile most of us do have kitchen computers; a ton of people look to their phones or tablets for many of the tasks these early kitchen computers were planned to do. Keeping track of meals, provi…

The flip side of that argument is that the home computers of the 1970s and 1980s (the only computery things that would've been priced comparably to a household appliance) had only tiny amounts of storage available to them (and even that storage was highly impractical for sustained use) - they really were little more than glorified desk calculators. So the widely imagined uses in the kitchen or for other sorts of household management tasks could not realistically pan out before the price of modern computers started to slowly drop down in the mid-1990s. Of course the Internet took over not long after, and we all got used to things like looking up recipes on the Web. So there's that, too.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#18

Post by zwieback »

jandrese wrote: post #15
zwieback wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I've worked in manufacturing automation long enough to know that the equipment needed to generate the huge variety of food even a mediocre cook can prepare would fill multiple kitchens. Automation equipment that's safe and reliable tends to be very big in relation to the items it operates on.

One could imagine something like an industrial robot arm that can swap implements being able to manage a relatively large variety of recipes given some staple ingredients in a limited amount of space, but it would be tremendously complex to build and cost more than an industrial robot arm. Keeping it clean and well maintained would be a nontrivial effort, even if the arm includes programming to clean up after itself.…

Articulated robot arm sounds like the most flexible solution. Trickiest part here would be safety - any robot with the power to chop, grind, cut would also have to have a good safety system or be enclosed.

Right now I'm thinking about tasks I don't enjoy: chopping onions, peeling carrots or potatoes, anything where I have to touch meat. All those would require very advanced sensing. Come to think it, that last one brings up the important topic of food safety and sanitation, the whole thing would have to be able to withstand a washdown.

Re: When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

#20

Post by samsolomon »

joshstrange wrote: post #9

I mean I have a dedicated iPad Mini 2 in my kitchen that I use Paprika [0] on, that feels pretty much in line with what was predicted (I don't do my calendaring or taxes on it but still). I know I'm far from alone in having this setup, multiple friends and family members use the same thing. Even growing up we had an older laptop in the kitchen for looking up recipes and the like (though that was very much so an outli…

Fantastic app suggestion! I've been manually copying and pasting recipes I liked into Notion so they are all largely formatted the same—the download recipe functionality in Paprika is magic.
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