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"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Vocalex Kitchen | ||
| Voice command automatic kitchen. |
Ah! The ideal kitchen, as seen from the vantage point of 1951.
| ...at the peak of the television boom, every bride dreamed of owning a vocalex kitchen someday that would exactly obey her most casual command to heat a roast for such and such time and baste it at such and such intervals.
With the deluxe models, of course, came a set of flavor-fix rheostats which, among other talents, could mix salads according to the recipe of a famous chef slightly better than the chef could himself. |
| From The Jester,
by William Tenn. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Compare the vocalex kitchen with the autonomic food-processing system from Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel Cantata 140 and the kitchen korner from William Gibson's 1996 novel Idoru
Roboticists are working hard to make this idea a reality; see KAR Kitchen Assistant Robot Joins Kitchen Bot Squad for a rundown on recent efforts.
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| Electronic Tongues Will Rule The Kitchen |
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| Self-Driving Domino's Pizza Car |
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
