This note discusses the internet refrigerator and other 'dot appliances' such as wired toasters, airconditioners and the internet washing machine.

It covers -

• introduction
• the politics of the dot appliance
• the internet fridge
• ideology and usability
• studies

It supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding life online, the new economy, networks, accessibility and RFIDs.

     introduction

The 'internet fridge' – a device that both stores your food and serves as an online multimedia centre – offers an anchor for considering questions about usability, markets, the shaping of technology and media hype.

It is at once a manifestation of technological determinism ("we can build it = they will want it = they will buy it = they will use it") and an embodiment of a range of values that include

• an emphasis on newness and progress (the fridge as "white-hot edge of technology"),
• conspicuous consumption (a trophy item to be showcased alongside the Aga)
• insecurities (antiseptically clean, stocked with healthy food, that hasn't reached a use-by date) and
• reassurance (saving money for the owner, a gathering place for family, allowing children to watch educational tv or email their homework while munching on delicious free-range vegies).

In reality, despite forecasts from enthusiasts such as Nicholas Negroponte, the internet fridge has been more photographed and written about than purchased …and more purchased than fully used. Other household devices such the internet toaster (burning the day’s weather-map or temperature onto your breakfast toast) haven’t got out of academic laboratories or hobbyist workshops.

     studies

Andrew Odlyzko's 1999 article on The visible problems of the invisible computer: A skeptical look at information appliances is one of the more incisive studies of convergence. Donald Norman's The Invisible Computer (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) is essential reading. Michael Dertouzos' The Unfinished Revolution: Making Computers Human-Centric (New York: HarperBusiness 2001), Why Things Bite Back: Technology & the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Knopf 1996) by Edward Tenner and The Social Life of Information (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 2000) by John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid are also of significance.

Two points of entry for literature on domestic informatics are Ian Miles' Home Informatics: Information Technology and the Transformation of Everyday Life (London: Pinter 1988) and the 2001 US National Science Foundation study The Application and Implications of Information Technologies in the Home: Where are the Data and What Do They Say?

For ideology see Dolores Hayden's Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life (New York: Norton 1984), Ruth Cowan's More Work for Mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave (New York: Basic Books 1983), Priscilla Brewer's From fireplace to cookstove: technology and the domestic ideal in America (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni Press 2000) and Susan Strasser's Never done: a history of American housework (New York: Pantheon 1982) and David Nye's superb Electrifying America: social meanings of a new technology, 1880-1940 (Cambridge: MIT Press 1990), Mary Douglas' The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1979) and The Social Shaping of Technology: how the refrigerator got its hum (Milton Keynes: Open University Press 1985) edited by Donal MacKenzie & Judy Wajcman.

Industry imperatives are explored in Alfred Chandler's Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001), Christina Hardyment's From mangle to microwave: the mechanization of household work (Cambridge: Polity Press 1988) and Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style (New York: HarperCollins 2003).

 

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