A Boring Dystopia

"Why does a toaster need internet connection?"
"So it can receive firmware updates."
"Why does it need any updates?"
"Security patches because of the internet connectivity."

Giving internet access to something that resistively heats wires until they glow seems like an obvious safety issue.

Luddite for Life!

I normally never shame buyers of "smart" products that end up being bricked, stupid or invading their privacy, because it's totally conceivable that they want advanced functions in a product that couldn't be achieved in the past and are now made possible by tech and ubiquitous internet, but corrupted by surveillance capitalism and greedy monopolistic corporations.

But a toaster with a giant screen that needs an OTA firmware update? Really? Like... why? When was the last time you thought "I wish my toaster had a big screen and internet access..."

Personally, I'm waiting for Talkie Toaster.

Very old internet story … seems appropriate here:

How To Build A Better Toaster

Day 1:
My boss, an engineer from the pre-CAD days, has successfully brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corp’s engineering labs to market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us in the design department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored when he appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.

Day 6:
We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing vice president today to hammer out the project’s requirements and specifications. Here at Acme, our market share is eroding to low-cost imports. We agreed to meet a cost of goods of $9.50 (100,000 units). I’ve identified the critical issue in the new design: a replacement for the timing spring we’ve used since the original 1922 model. Research with the focus groups shows that consumers set high expectations for their breakfast foods. Cafe latte from Starbucks goes best with a precise level of toast browning. The Acme 2000 will give our customers the breakfast experience they desire. I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this project and final delivery in seven weeks. I’ll need one assistant designer to help with the drawing packages. This is my first chance to supervise!

Day 23:
We’ve found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it’s a well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost $1.50 lower than our goal. Our rough prototype, which was completed just 12 days after we started, has been servicing the employee cafeteria for a week without a single hiccup. Toast quality exceeds projections.

Day 24:
A major aerospace company that had run out of defense contractors to acquire has just snapped up that block of Acme stock sold to the Mackenzie family in the ’50s. At a company-wide meeting, corporate assured us that this sale was only an investment and that nothing will change.

Day 30:
I showed the Acme 2000’s exquisitely crafted toast-timing mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor. The single spring and four interlocking lever arms are things of beauty to me.

Day 36:
The design is complete. We’re starting a prototype run of 500 toasters tomorrow. I’m starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My new assistant did a wonderful job.

Day 38:
Suddenly, a major snag happened. Bob called me into his office. He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those on high feel that the Acme 2000 is obsolete—something about using springs in the silicon age. I reminded Bob that the consultants had looked at using a microprocessor but figured that an electronic design would exceed our cost target by almost 50% with no real benefit in terms of toast quality. “With a computer, our customers can load the bread the night before, program a finish time, and get a perfect slice of toast when they awaken,” Bob intoned, as if reading from a script.

Day 48:
Bill Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea of using a dedicated 4-bit CPU. “We need some horsepower if we’re gonna program this puppy in C,” he said, while I stared fascinated at the old crumbs stuck in his wild beard. “Time-to-market, you know. Delivery is due in three months. We’ll just pop this cool new 8-bitter I found into it, whip up some code, and ship to the end user.”

Day 120:
The good news is that I’m getting to stretch my mechanical-design abilities. Bill convinced management that the old spring-loaded, press-down lever control is obsolete. I’ve designed a “motorized insertion port,” stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three cross-coupled, safety-interlock micro switches ensure that the heaters won’t come on unless users properly insert the toast. We’re seeing some reliability problems due to the temperature extremes, but I’m sure we can work those out.

Day 132:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We’ve replaced the 8-bitter with a Harvard-architecture, 16-bit, 3-MIPS CPU.

Day 172:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.

Day 194:
The auditors convinced management we really need a graphical user interface with a full-screen LCD. “You’re gonna need some horsepower to drive that,” Bill warned us. “I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM.” He went back to design Revision J of the PC board.

Day 268:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We’ve cured most of the electronics’ temperature problems with a pair of fans, though management is complaining about the noise. Bob sits in his office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like clockwork, his wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing. I’m worried about him and mentioned my concern to Chuck. “Wife?” he asked. “Wife? Yeah, I think I’ve got one of those, and two or three kids, too. Now, let’s just stick another meg of RAM in here, OK?”

Day 290:
We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows CE. The auditors applauded Bill’s plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 MB of RAM. There’s still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely impressive: four circuit boards, bundles of cables, and a gigabyte of hard-disk space. “This sucker has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years ago,” Bill boasted proudly.

Day 384:
Toast quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling fans keeps the electronics to a reasonable temperature but removes too much heat from the toast. I’m struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the thrust of all these fans spins the toaster around.

Day 410:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. We switched from C++ to Java. “That’ll get them pesky memory-allocation bugs, for sure,” Bill told his team of 15 programmers. This approach seems like a good idea to me, because Java is platform-independent, and there are rumors circulating that we’re porting to a SPARC station.

Day 530:
New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months. I mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans and the heating elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the toast. We found a thermal grease that isn’t too poisonous. Our marketing people feel that the slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than compensated for by the “toasting experience that can only come from a CISC-based, 32-bit multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform software.”

Day 610:
The product ships. It weighs 72 lb and costs $325.

https://a.co/d/09osT5Dh

Who needs fiction. This one is $399

‘it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

‘In other words – and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxy-wide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.’

Douglas Adams

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread

The titular story is highly recommended. Published in 2019. Reality got pretty close to that in just 7 years.

edit: and they dare brand it Revolution 😡

Did you know there is a toaster from the 50's which is totally mechanically automatic? It slowly lowers and raises the bread automatically, controls the darkening of the bread by measuring the slice's temperature, and it is all powered by the thermal expansion of the heating coils themselves.

At work we have some boring toasters. It uses a dial for how well burned you want your bread. It works perfectly well. Purely electromechanical.

Why the fuck does it need this is beyond me.

Imagine installing electronics, which are sensitive to extreme heat, into a toaster.

Now imagine someone buying that toaster.

I don't understand the appeal of this crap.

tech enthusiasts be like: my house is soooo smart!

tech workers be like: Fuck that shit.

I wonder if future generations of toasters will require age verification since they are running an OS that can presumably get online? I hate it here, but luckily I have an analog toaster I intend to keep.

Maybe in the future during rolling blackouts caused by ai they'll only permit a light toasting.

The toaster would go well with butter bot.

volume, brightness, time and date... i dont need any of those things out of a toaster

Reminds me of the novella Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow.

Even the toaster is calling for a revolution.

Thing probably uses 4 gb a day 😂

I love tech, I love gadgets, our smart home is full to the brim with automation and information-gathering. So I'm a full-blooded nerd for 45yrs now.

But this? This and cars is where I draw the line. What could possibly be one single tiny benefit of having a toaster like that? Is there even one? I couldn't find one. Except that there's a cool display on it that can't serve any useful info.

the apartments' appliances are designed to extract revenue. The fridge won't chill unauthorized groceries. The toaster won't toast unauthorized bread.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread

The DMCA makes it illegal to toast anything the software refuses to toast. This is legal reality today, despite being featured in (dystopic) science fiction.

The "revolution" written under the screen is just the cherry on top. (+ the irony of my comment saying a thing that is on the bottom of the screen is "the cherry on top".)

Why in the world would you need a screen on a toaster?

Anyone who buys "Smart" products gets what they deserve.

I found it funny at first, but ..... it's not even fake! That DOES exist.

I'd laugh in the face of anyone trying to sell me one of these. I'd laugh so hard they quit their job on the spot.

I mean, anyone who actually bought that gets exactly what they deserve.

This can't be real. I refuse to look it up. I'm going to bed now