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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Kitchen Korner | ||
| Just exactly what futurists say you're going to get, like or not, in a refrigerator. |
The future is not all it's cracked up to be; many of the people in it, not to mention the appliances, have cracked up already.
| He got up. The Kitchen Korner, sensing him, woke. The fridge door slid aside. A single ancient leaf of lettuce sagged blackly through the plastic rods of one white shelf. A half-empty bottle of Evian on another. He held his cupped hands above the lettuce... "Hey there," the fridge said. "You've left me open." Laney said nothing. "Well, do you want the door open, partner? You know it interferes with the automatic defrost..." "Be quiet." His hands felt better. Cooler. He withdrew his hands...the fridge taking this opportunity to close itself without further comment. |
| From Idoru,
by William Gibson. Published by Putnam in 1996 Additional resources -
|
Sure, a refrigerator that talks back to you. How smart does a smart fridge need to be?
This piece of technovelgy neatly anticipates and pans the classic Bluetooth-enabled refrigerator (circa 1999) that was going to revolutionize our lives.
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