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No longer relegated to wild predictions for the future, hi-tech fridges have made the leap into reality. On my last visit to Future Shop I was greeted by a black monolith of a fridge that was displaying the news at me by means of a built-in flat screen LCD TV on its door. Sound and all. Do you know what this means? This means that buying a fridge has just become infinitely more complicated. Can you imagine having to compare the watts on the built-in amplifier in the refrigerator along with the energy consumption rating? Can you imagine asking if the screen comes in Plasma along with the cubic cm of volume? Can you imagine having to call the cable guy to help hook up your fridge? Yes, it is indeed a new era. On the other hand of course, I have a similar setup right now that costs about $4000 less than this fridge. I put an old 13” TV on TOP of my fridge and pretty much have the same thing. Oh well, I guess it’ll appeal to the same people that like to buy DVD players with built-in VCRs that cost more than if they bought them separately. But hey if the built-in TV ever breaks, they can always just use my solution and stick a TV on top of it. It sure will be a lot cheaper than shipping the fridge off for repairs – or calling the Rogers guy, or would that be the Maytag guy. This is getting confusing.
So moving along the isle at Future shop I also spotted a great big sticker on a Samsung fridge that proudly proclaimed that the fridge was coated in Nano particles. My first reaction was: why would they do that? Nano particles, for the uninitiated are very, very tiny engineered things. You could make a nano machine so tiny that you would not see it. They are being considered for such uses as injecting them into people and programming them to hunt down cancer cells. Or for spying purposes. Well, the next line on the sticker claimed that it was “anti-microbial” and that fingerprints did not stick to its nano surface. Well, that’s quite a trick, but how would it exactly do this? Are these little nano things eating the bacteria and fingerprints? How do they know where my fingerprint ends and my finger begins? What do they do with all the bacteria they kill – do they get absorbed into the nano-collective? I have read about the “Grey Goo” doomsday scenario of nano particles in which a slight programming error causes them to built copies of themselves without ever turning off. Slowly the earth would become engulfed in the grey goo as they replicate without end. It would only take once for this to happen. So, with all this in mind, I decided to touch it. It was warmer than my fridge. And given that it looked like it was made of stainless steel (which, of course, it wasn’t) it was rather surprising. And lo and behold, there was no trace of a fingerprint to be found either. I guess that would be good information of any would-be thieves. And so far my finger is still unconsumed by the nano-machines as I write this. Apple should take note – they have already borrowed an idea from the appliance industry and made the fronts of their iPods fridge-white. But as for the metal back, I’m sure you can read the prints of the last five people who touched it at any given moment. Looks like Fridges are currently at the forefront of technology. Hurry up Apple, you have an image to uphold!
