Pop quiz! What recently announced household consumer item has a 27-inch, high-definition touchscreen display, built-in speakers, and Wi-Fi connectivity?
A.) Car
B.) Television
C.) Microwave
D.) Aaron Rodgers
Did you guess C? They always said to guess C back in school when you didn’t know the answer on a multiple choice test. Anyway, ding ding ding. C is the correct answer. Ahead of the CES trade show, LG announced the Signature Microwave, a microwave so gloriously over-packed with unnecessary complications that we at the VICE offices are taking bets on whether it’ll have a cameo in the next Terminator movie.
when in doubt, add wi-fi
Or Bluetooth, or “AI.” Or make an NFT out of it, if the company is perpetually stuck in 2022. Or say something about blockchain. Mature technologies don’t see the same sort of rapid innovation as they do in their earliest days, so manufacturers need gimmicks.
Look at the first decades of the automobile, the personal computer, or the smartphone. Manufacturers were constantly one upping themselves and each other with quickfire innovations and evolutionary improvements. It was messy, it was glorious.
At some point, it’s only natural that the pace of innovation slows down. Improvements come more incrementally, and perhaps more infrequently. Here is where manufacturers start to panic. Their consumer base begins to complain and grow restless. They got used to the excitement of massive advancements in every upgrade cycle. Microwaves have looked the same for the past two decades. So here come the unnecessary additions to try to convince us all to run out and buy a new one.
inventing the solution before the problem
“The screen also provides access to the LG ThinQ Smart Home Dashboard, allowing users to control all LG AI appliances and compatible Matter and Thread devices in the home,” reads LG’s press release. And also, “when paired with the induction range, the microwave’s LCD display conveniently shows the cooking progress of dishes in the range, eliminating the need to bend down and check the oven manually.”
Oh, great. So there’s a Signature Oven, too. At least I can see more of a point for that. You’re upstairs giving the kids a bath and want to check your phone’s LG app to see how dinner is coming along in the oven. Fine. But microwaves are much quicker affairs. In what situation would you be away from an operating microwave and need to check its status?
I guess that now they’ve given up on making Blu-ray players, LG has decided that touchscreen microwaves are what the people really want. Given that LG’s televisions have recently started to display advertisements while the screens are left idle, I’m left wondering what LG really has planned for that microwave display.
I, for one, can’t wait until a near-future when I stumble into the kitchen first thing in the morning, functionally lobotomized from lack of coffee, and I’m slapped in the face by an advertisement for Bitcoin. Can’t. Wait.
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