« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »
August 29, 2005
my refrigerator is inefficient
Just look at your refrigerator. Your mustard and your ketchup are in such odd containers and randomly tossed haphazardly into an obscenely large cooling device. All of your perishables are only identifiable by primitive markings.
No, this just will not do. Is this not the twenty-first century? Can we not see what inefficient ways in which we organize our lives? Why do we continue to live in such darkness? We live with meer iceboxes when what we need is a true machine worthy of holding our table scraps and pudding pops.
Of course, technology must move one step at a time. The first thing we need is RFID. Everywhere. Everything. My milk container from the local farmer or from Wal-Mart should have a unique identifier. So unique, that I could trace the path of my milk carton back to store where I bought the milk, back to the truck that delivered the milk, back to the farm that obtained the milk, back to the cow embedded with a RFID chip.
Next, we need a database of everything ever made for all time. When archeologists thousands of centuries from now uncover the remains of a cow, I want them to know the name of the cow and who owned it. This wiki database will be publicly readable, modifiable, and monitored. Your refridgerator will be able to access it over the internet. When the cow is discovered to have died from Mad Cow disease, your refrigerator will be notified.
Containers today are so oddly shaped. We need some IEEE standard containers. These containers will maximize space while minimizing costs and materials. They could improve thermal properties as well. Mass production and adoption of these containers will continue to drive costs down and increased shipping efficiency will lower the cost of food.
Once the items are properly RFID tagged and stored in the refrigerator the fun can begin. Pressure (weight) and RFID sensors will allow the refrigerator to monitor what item is where and how much of it there is. Temperature sensors and multizone cooling would allow different products to be kept at their recommended temperature. A convergence product will output XML information to a server of the owner's choosing. Of course, the default central server would be provided by the manufacturer where each person could login using their Universal Biometric Passcode (UBP).
The LCD display on the outside provides statistics on amount of food, prices, estimated grocery items, and even friendly recipe suggestions based on items available.
This baby is bluetooth, wifi, and ethernet ready and contains an embedded webserver for remote administration.
The containers could be accessible by the machine as well. A plug and play container that allows the machine to drain contents in order to combine them and cook. These tube arrays could network to optional components like a microwave or a heating element device with selectable container.
Ah yes, the future looks tasty.
Posted by bec at 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack