zlacker

>>redshi+(OP)
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.

>>vel0ci+Qhd
We call them embedded systems and customers call them dishwashers or air fryers or blenders. Those are the kitchen computers, no?

>>dr_dsh+SNe
I do agree, many of our other appliances have become more computerized. My dishwasher has several different sensors which can change how it runs its cycles and dispense an automatic amount of soap based on detected dirtiness of dishes. My clothes washer is similar, and my drier works until the clothes reach a desired level of dryness instead of just a timer. My microwave's sensor cooking modes are surprisingly good, often when all I need to do is reheat food I just toss it in the microwave and hit "Reheat" and the microwave gets it right to steaming and stops without burning. All of these are driven by computers watching multiple sensors and constantly tweaking parameters of their operation to reach the desired final state.

Its still interesting though that it seems like in the 70's they were still expecting there would be some centralized computer in charge of it all while in reality computing got so small and so cheap its found its way to each appliance on its own.