from Hacker News

When Americans dreamed of kitchen computers (2021)

by redshirt on 4/21/22, 12:14 PM with 60 comments

• by vel0city on 4/25/22, 7:32 PM

  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.

• by joshstrange on 4/25/22, 7:16 PM

  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 outlier among my friends and their parents at that time).

  [0] https://www.paprikaapp.com/

• by zwieback on 4/25/22, 7:35 PM

  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.

• by kps on 4/25/22, 10:20 PM

  The article's “Honeywell, an early computer-maker that would later help power the Arpanet” is a journalistically muddled version of a more specific fact: the ‘Kitchen Computer’ was a Honeywell 316 in a pedestal case, and the 316 was also used for the ARPANET Interface Message Processor (i.e. router).

• by chihuahua on 4/25/22, 8:58 PM

  The article has a link to a video about Moley Robotic's $338,000 robotic kitchen. It's quite eye-opening, because the robot appears to be a pair of arms/hands which can grab mise-en-place containers of ingredients, dump them into a saucepan, and stir them painfully slowly. I wonder:

  - who peels and chops the vegetables etc that go into those containers?

  - who cleans up the pots and utensils when the robot is done stirring and heating the food?

  Ideally there would be another $300,000 robot for each of those two tasks, but I suspect the answer is that your (human) housekeeper is needed.

  The video is worth watching just to laugh at how unbelievably slowly this $338,000 marvel is at stirring the contents of a saucepan.

  The elevator pitch for Moley could be "Juicero, but for pasta"

• by rmason on 4/26/22, 8:09 AM

  I lived through the era of the kitchen computers. I cannot prove it but I think this happened through a consumer focus group. In the sixties and seventies marketers loved consumer focus groups. They would always ask a couple off the wall questions. Like asking people if you had a computer in your house what would you imagine using it for and which room would it be in?

  As a child in the sixties the only computers we saw on TV were either robots or the Jetsons kitchen computer. So this group decides that the kitchen computer is it. The Jetson's 'kitchen computer' would assemble and cook a complete meal from molecules. Similar to what Cana is doing for beverages.

  https://www.cana.com/

  So it became a fact that consumers wanted kitchen computers. Over a twenty year period multiple company's (mostly big stodgy companies wanting to get in on the hot new computer thing) brought out kitchen computers. I remember software companies for the TRS-80, Apple and IBM PC having recipe database programs.

  They all were complete failures. People didn't want kitchen computers. What they wanted was to tell a machine what they wanted for dinner and it would build and cook it. As long as you kept the machine full of water and different molecules it would make Chicken Cordon Bleu one night and Duck a l'Orange the next night Still a neat idea and something I'd like for myself.

• by codedokode on 4/25/22, 11:45 PM

  Sorry for posting a comment unrelated to the article, but that site is broken. The cookie settings dialog, provided by a third-party company, doesn't work as promised.

  When I opened the page, I saw a cookie banner, untoggled all toggles that were togglable and clicked "Reject all cookies". The cookie dialog said that there will be only functional cookies and they won't contain any personal information. How nice, I thought, Internet is changing for the better. I also can enjoy the privileges of EU citizens.

  But then - just out of curiosity - I decided to see what cookies are left in my browser. Imagine my surprise when I saw 6 (six) cookies. Those included:

  - an UUID with name 'stripe_mid' expiring in a year

  - OptanonConsent, which, I assume, represents chosen settings and contains UUID in 'consentId' field. This UUID is set when the page is loaded. I guess they store your preferences on the server and not in cookies as I thought. Obviously, you can be tracked with this cookie as the identifier seems to be unique.

  - user_geoip_fallback and user_geoip, both of which contain an IP address

  To check that the dialog indeed doesn't work, I deleted all cookies except for cookies related to the consent dialog, and reloaded the page. Stripe and geoip cookies have been set again.

  It turns out that you shouldn't trust cookie dialogs from that third-party company which you often see on different sites. They are either broken or intentionally deceive a user.

• by justinlloyd on 4/26/22, 9:47 AM

  General purpose computers:

  First touch screen 27" AIO for recipes, balancing the household budget, watching videos, playing games, , video conferencing with family & work

  Second touch screen 27" AIO for recipes, balancing the household budget, watching videos, video conferencing with family & work

  Over-powered VR computer running the other touch screen

  Smart dashboard AKA iPad that shows video feeds from security cameras, google calendars, weather forecast, location of phones, wallets, cats and other household information, plus "the funnies" from various news websites

  Task specific computers:

  A collection of iPads for handling multiple recipes and unit conversion

  Device specific computers in the kitchen/dining room area:

  Coffee robot AKA Jura J9

  Water filter AKA ION Smart Filter

  Plant monitoring AKA Raspbery Pi with a bunch of sensors

  Not computerised:

  The meal plan, which is simply scribbled on to a couple of rectangular glass white boards mounted to the end of a cabinet and clearly visible

  What I have found lacking in my experience is not the concept of the kitchen computer, but the software to drive it. So much proposed software is lacking in the UX & UI area that most apps border on the useless.

• by chazeon on 4/25/22, 9:19 PM

  Before opening this article I sure expect something like a computer in the kitchen, which for some people is the iMac 24 and for me it have been iPad Pro 12.9 + Magic Keyboard for 3 yrs. Surprised to see it was something like a cooking robot.

• by Epiphany21 on 4/26/22, 12:57 AM

  >Generations have debated the delegation of kitchen duties, often touching on class, race, and especially gender. Most frequently, women have taken on home cooking, which often means hard work for little or no pay.

  The idea that men only started cooking at home less than a century ago is dumb. The idea that most people the world over didn't have loving family units even in prehistory is especially asinine. Also, anyone who expects to be paid for cooking their own food at home is living in their own little bourgeoisie bubble. That's ridiculous. I hope this satire.

• by Terry_Roll on 4/26/22, 12:02 AM

  I think some people are trying to automate the wrong domains, there are easier challenges to solve around the house first, besides, people love eating out or getting a take away. If corporations thought there was some money in automating the kitchen, all the fast food chains would get together and build an automated kitchen which can be retro fitted into your existing kitchen and serve you up all your favourite take aways, but it aint happening, at least not for a decade.

  There are better low hanging fruit to be had in the automation/robot domains, if you think about it.

• by wiradikusuma on 4/26/22, 7:24 AM

  The robots pictured at the end of the article (and moley.com, also mentioned) mimic humans in cooking (i.e. "physically at work using hands"), but I can't help but wonder the operational issues.

  Kitchen is messy. You can drop eggs on the floor, oil jumping out of stove making everything (including the robots) greasy, the stove knob must be turned in a specific way to make it work---which means there needs to be a human on standby, and that person will need to work extra cleaning the robot as well.

• by TYPE_FASTER on 4/25/22, 7:17 PM

  I remember the first time I read "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury.

• by kwertyoowiyop on 4/25/22, 8:46 PM

  That “1956 kitchen of tomorrow” is still gorgeous and futuristic.

• by johnmarcus on 4/25/22, 7:01 PM

  and by "Americans", you mean "large corporations with wares to sell."

• by mtoddsmith on 4/25/22, 7:14 PM

  We have the google nest hub in our kitchen and use it for recipes, weather, Wikipedia or “kid questions” and news / YouTube, music and intercom. I just wish apple had the same since I’m on iPhone and now to pause and think is it “hey Siri” or “hey google”. Can I make google respond to “ hey Siri”?

• by blamazon on 4/25/22, 10:18 PM

  In my kitchen my Google home unit is a very advanced timer, unit conversion device, and picture frame.

• by llsf on 4/26/22, 8:33 AM

  I feel like those new all-in-one like Thermomix (https://www.thermomix.com) are the closest to a computer in the kitchen we have now. Europeans (and some star chefs in US) swear by it.

• by ahonhn on 4/26/22, 10:33 AM

  I can open an app on my phone, swipe around a bit and within half an hour food of my choice will magically appear. Unfortunately this also involves money in my bank account disappearing so I can't afford to do it very often :-(

• by sklargh on 4/25/22, 11:41 PM

  I would pay a lot, perhaps even give up my second car, for a Ghost Robotics or Boston Dynamics quadruped that could successfully and safely navigate my home, child put away dishes & fold laundry.

• by john_the_writer on 4/21/22, 12:20 PM

  I watched the movie Demon Seed when I was young. Any one who wants a smart home should spend the time, and watch this. I suspect they'd change their mind.

• by yazantapuz on 4/25/22, 7:11 PM

  It is very, very hard to predict the future.

• by markus_zhang on 4/25/22, 8:35 PM

  I love those retro future photos!