Networked Refrigerated Microwave

shades6666 writes "BBC news is reporting that Tonight's Menu Intelligent Ovens has developed a refrigerated microwave that can be controlled over the net or by mobile phone. The prototype uses a Peltier cooling device. It expects the appliances to be ready by the end of the year, costing around $2,000."

Comments

Crock pot?

[guido1]

I may have more culinary talents than most, but if I know that I'm going to be too busy to make dinner, I'll toss a slab of beef and some potatos in the crock pot in the morning, and eat whenever I want to at night.

And it sure as heck tastes better than anything that comes out of the microwave.

Moving on...

Does anyone here think internet appliances are going to take off? The only good ideas I can see are:

A webcam in the fridge, so I could check if I needed to hit the store, and
Thermostat, so if I'm going to be gone all night I'm not heating/cooling the house needlessly.

How about something a little simpler

[ip_vjl]

Since microwaves don't take all that long to cook anyway, I don't see a huge need for it to start without me.

But if you're going to the trouble of networking your microwave, how about having it do something useful.

Put a barcode reader on it so that when I pull out the box of frozen Mac and Cheese, I can scan it and have it lookup the correct cook cycle for an oven of that wattage.

Or for these things that require XX minutes on low then XX on high ... it could just figure that out by itself and set itself accordingly.

A small LCD display could even display instructions at certain points in the cycle (beeping to get my attention) "Remove cover and stir, then press the START button to continue cooking."

What are we coming to?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Fifty years ago, consumers were promised automation gadgets that would give us more free time. What do we have now? Remote controlled ovens to cook our food because we're too busy to cook it ourselves.

What have we come to?

I leave the house before the sun comes up every day. I wade through an hour's worth of traffic. I spend ten hours a day at my job, but only about twenty minutes at lunch, then wade through an hour's worth of traffic on the way home. It's dark when I get there. Weekends exist only to catch up on things I couldn't get done during the week.

I'm certain I'm not the only one out there that lives like this. Gadgets like this freezer/oven seem neat, but to me it suddenly throws into sharp contrast just what we're doing with our lives. Have we gotten so busy that we no longer have time to cook a meal? That's pretty fucking pitiful, if you ask me.