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The killer app
Occasionally I invent an imaginary gadget which would solve a particular problem, and then I wish I had that gadget.
People have probably heard me talk before about the stasis fridge (time stops inside it, so it doesn't even have to be cold to stop your food going off, and also you can keep hot food in it and it'll still be hot the next day), and the force-
But one thing I notice is that when I invent these things, other people always seem to come up with the real killer applications for them. For example, when I described the stasis fridge to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
drswirly, his reaction was ‘Aha, and when you go on holiday for a week you can put the dog in it’, which clearly outdid any of my own ideas.
Just now in the office, a colleague has been playing with his new gadget, a ‘digital photo frame’. He mentioned this yesterday, and so last night I was idly wondering what one of those might be. My best idea was that it should be a static display: able to retain the same image indefinitely with no power consumption, and only requiring power to change the picture. Then you could plug it into your computer and download a picture of (say) your girlfriend to it; unplug it and stick it on your bedside table miles away from any computer; and when she leaves you six months later, just download a picture of something else instead. An end-
The actual photo frame in question isn't a static display, as it turns out; it's just a small and gadgetty monitor. The static idea sounded like a more interesting gadget to me –
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I think ferroelectric LCDs didn't take off, because power gives you more flexibility (illumination and dynamic display) and it is fairly cheap.
Your (say) girlfriend would only be a reflective display, and she might need to be refreshed every few months. I hate to think what sort of metaphor that is for the relationship...
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In what way can't you (that's a generic, and rather unscrupulous 'you') do this with a regular picture frame?
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(Anonymous) 2007-02-13 11:22 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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His digital picture frame sort of makes sense. Well, if it's cheaper than a flatscreen monitor... I mean, it's not technically satisfying (yours is much better), because it's overkill, but like ipod or wii it just does what you want without faff.
And I have a nasty feeling that that would indeed be the most profitable market for the thing…
You can tell valentines day is coming up :) But I have to say, wow, you seem to have invented a mirror! :)
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Then of course when they get to the toddler stage, people would put them in the fridge when they had a tantrum and take them out again when they felt like a hug, but the child would still be screaming and angry so would go straight back in. Said stupid people wouldn't understand why their children were always screaming, would decide even more than before that the child was just out to make their lives miserable, and child abuse cases among the stupid would increase massively. (Or, would be carried out by means of violence, rather than by means of turkey twizzlers.) Maybe nobody would ever grow above the age of two, except in places where people can't afford stasis-fridges. Then the adults in first world countries would die, electricity generation would stop, and these toddlers in the fridges would all come back to life and start getting out of the fridges. Meanwhile, people from third world countries would hear all these toddlers screaming as they sailed past in their boats and go and rescue these children.
World population would be dramatically reduced and carbon dioxide output would be decimated. I think we should invent this right now. Except that a substantial portion of the toddlers would subsequently undergo genital mutilation at the hands of their new adoptive parents, so maybe we shouldn't.
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!!!but I just realised - if babies don't have night-time because they're in the fridge, then they won't develop circadian rhythms at all. EVERYBODY WILL BE LIKE ME IN THE FUTURE. Yahahaaaaa.
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I could shut him in a room the other side of the house too when he cries, but I don't do that, and nor do most parents.
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1) Don't put your baby in the stasis fridge, and breastfeed if possible
2) Use a stasis fridge and feed nothing but formula after the first six weeks
This is turning into a pretty crap future...
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*reads it again*
*reads it a third time*
What??
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