My favorite things

When I was growing up, my family was on a strict budget. We stretched the life span of our home appliances until, for instance, the last remaining electron in our TV set pleaded to retire like a dying star. My two siblings and I now laugh, amazed at how the gadgets in the house where we grew up did not confuse our sense of scale as children. First, we had a TV set that was as big as a refrigerator that had accordion doors that my mom would lock when it was time to do homework. Then, we had a refrigerator that looked like an upright car with a bulging body and rounded corners that (don’t ask) also had a door with a latch. To complete the looping scale, our car, at one time, was only slightly bigger than our TV set. Since then, so many things in the typical home have changed and they are relatively much more affordable now because of the mass production of what used to be exclusive designs and/or expensive limited production of parts and gadgets. Come now the age of PCs, cellphones and the Internet. I am computer-literate and I do depend on it for a living and for the pleasure of communications but I still cannot bring myself to play even one game on it especially when I can play live "charade-like" games with friends and family instead. I do keep my cellphone turned on all the time but still feel I need to keep flexible "ignore hours" in order to concentrate on something else. While I do think the Internet is a wonderful space of possibilities, I do not and cannot float on it aimlessly. I am not at all a portrait of a balanced human being but I enjoy the challenge of technology while managing to retain a critical mind for it.

Looking at some gadgets, personal and for the home that are already in the market and some in the next year or so, according to the newest science and technology magazines, I wonder whether we will be ready for them if at all we could afford them or even need them. For instance, looking at gadgets-in-the making in the March 2004 issue of Popular Science, I saw an oven that would download recipes from the Internet given the ingredients already in the fridge. The oven would know this because the ingredients in the fridge are packed with labels that give off radio signals to the oven, letting the oven know that not only that they lurk there but that they will expire soon. Others are cooking appliances like rice cookers and roasters that would eventually learn your cooking habits and anticipate your needs. Now, I am not so sure that is a good thing for everyone to own. After decades of trying and by a unanimous decision arrived at by my family and friends, it is now certain with the best level of confidence there is, that I have the lowest culinary IQ they have ever come across. They all keep an open line for me – some sort of the culinary version of the Superfriends when they know I am for some reason trying to cook something on my own. For an oven to learn my cooking habits would amount to technology defeating itself. Just in case, by some fluke and my characteristic stubborn insistence, I still let that oven learn my habits and that on its own, it churns out the dishes that could endanger life and limb, science happily came up with safeguards in turn. A material scientist named Jeff Brinker in Sandia National Laboratory in California came up with a way to embed live yeast cells in the bodies of cockroaches so that these yeast cells would glow when they encounter something harmful. So we just let loose a couple of these babies on the dishes and we get the problem solved without a need to call the Superfriends. Yes, it is disgusting but it is real science.

Then there is the TV set that disguises itself as a mirror. But why? Unless as a mirror it can gauge by the reflection it bears my nutritional deficiencies and my weight imbalance and tune in to either the Food Channel or the Fitness Channel, depending, I do not get the dual purpose of this mirror-cum-TV at all.

Out of the kitchen now for a little exercise and the market offers an "inversion gravity table." No, it is not your patio version of NASA’s space environment simulators. It is a rectangular table that has body belts to hold you if you want to do handstands. Now, I think that is really the height of loneliness or self-reliance. Why can’t you just ask anyone of your family members or friends to hold you and be on the watch if you come crashing down? You may have to answer a few questions as to why you really want to do handstands but are you really willing to blow almost P10,000 for such a gadget?

Now we come to cars. As long as it takes me where I want to go, I do not care what kind of car it is. (I, however, draw the line when the car does not have doors like what my father had when I was 11 that really looked like Fred Flintstone sold it to him). Looking at car descriptions in auto and truck magazines, I was overrun by specifications of 21st century superlatives in speed, power and size! Could someone please tell me why I should care if the car is a super-mega turbo-charged quadruple-engine ran by dark energy like the Starship Enterprise? I am not going to Alpha Centauri; I just want to go to the grocery! I even saw the newest Hummer H2SUT that boasts of a full bed at the back! I do not understand why the Hummer engineers (all males – I checked) spent so much time, energy and resources designing and making the ultimate testosterone-faithful vehicle that could take one from point A to B before you could say "hum" when all one wants to do is sleep in it. This, it seems, is a good metaphor for the typical complaint of women with middle-aged partners: that their Ys get all hyped up about size and speed but end up sleeping before performing.

To top the gadget list, the market is now selling atomic clocks for anyone who wants it. Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers. How precise? It is accurate to one second in a million years. It means it can only lose at the most one second after a thousand millennia (Sorry for overstating it but again, it is 1,000 X 1,000 years!). I fully appreciate the concept and the use it serves physics experiments but what would the average human being really lose if she or he cannot keep her time loss within a second every million years when the oldest human being now is disputably, only 143 years old? And if by some weird turn of events, your heirs retain your atomic timepiece after a million years and then they find out that it had lost 1.5 seconds, what would be their recourse? Claim a guarantee? The watchmakers will probably give you another atomic timepiece to last for five billion years good to a nanosecond, and again if your persistent heirs retain the timepiece and check at the appointed time, the Sun may just have given up by then as estimated by scientists and you will look at your timepiece go pfft. Why? It is solar-powered. (Yes, I do appreciate the fact that you, with the rest of the planet, will perish as soon as the Sun goes out but let’s have fun). I do not think there is a gadget yet you can use to keep a middle-aged star like our Sun from collapsing when it is time. But if there is, I am sure it will be in the market soon at a good price, plus tax, shipping and handling. So, Sun savers, anyone?

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