My Toaster, The Undiscovered Future.
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
A long time ago I was hanging out with some fellow Linux users having a Fight Clubesque moment saying, “The first rule Linux Club, you do not talk about Linux Club, The Second Rule of Linux Club you do not talk about Linux Club…” You get the idea. Interestingly enough the conversation drifted over to the idea of Linux filtering its way into everyday gadgets like the ever promised but yet to be delivered on a useful mass scale smart fridge, smart toaster, smart microwave and so on and so forth and when I mean smart I am not talking about some generic term referring to a shiny interface and other window dressings, I mean smart! I am talking about anticipating my needs before I do. That kind of smart!
For years we have been teased with the ideas of the George Jetson lifestyle only to find ourselves contending in the kitchen like Fred Flintstone. Naturally this conversation with fellow Tux users drifted into the idea of application development for such potentially fine products. Oddly enough, this is something you are seeing happen in the smart phone world now in full force, and with signals from Google to Microsoft and many more, of furthering their movements into other gadgetry. Maybe my car that I can fold into a suitcase and carry with me is not as far off as once supposed. Still though, it brought up an interesting subject just like the Darth Vader toaster as seen here.
With this future of toasted bread run by software, it seemed the developers and bread makers might find themselves uneasy bedmates as the Smart Toaster comes out. If you stop to think of it, it makes a lot of sense. How many of us have struggled with the toaster oven to get just the right amount of crispiness on a baguette only to walk back in the kitchen to discover a charred hunk of concentrated Evil right out of Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits.” Of course engineers and developers are always ready to solve problems much to the world’s chagrin sometimes, like scales that Tweet your weight daily.
In the toaster realm I can just picture it now. “Dude my new Toast Mate Open Source software is the shizznit, even comes with ‘Sunday morning, I can’t believe I went out and killed it last night special crunch setting for my bagel.’ Then of course, inevitably you can follow all this on the Smart Toast forum…” Hey just released my new ‘Toast This!’…please review….Which reviewer replies…worst app ever! Thanks for helping burn my Grandmother’s Challa she bought this morning.” “Yeah dude, You got a lot of toast burned with your @#$#ed up code!”
Then we can take it a step further now and Pdiddy, aka Sean John and crew get together and have a marketing meeting. “Hey we need to create the Sean John Lifestyle in the house. Let’s get a developer to write an app for Smart Toaster as part of our complete home software and lifestyle package.” The marketing campaign essentially writes itself; images of a gorgeous woman, bottle of red, and Sean John’s trusty Toast App to woo her with your culinary prowess. I mean it, you think the iphone app store with its gazillion apps available is something, wait till the home OS takes place and your toaster starts thinking for itself. This may sound way out but, but I am telling you folks, the toast wars are just around the corner.
“Kirk doesn’t test the engines — he just fires them up.”
