LG if on fire, so lit
Every year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), companies unveil the latest and greatest new technological innovations. For lack of any better ideas, some companies are simply taking their regular products and outfitting them with Internet connectivity. Because heaven forbid that we be disconnected from wifi for even a second.
In the kitchen, for example. Sure, you could plop your smartphone or tablet on your kitchen counter and Snapchat, Facetime, and look up recipes to your heart’s content while stirring your sauce or downing some Ben & Jerry’s.
But LG wants to relieve you of the strain of having to move your device from one room to the next by connecting your refrigerator to the Internet, and better yet, to Amazon Alexa.
The fridge of the future
Last year, LG debuted a refrigerator with a door that would become translucent if you knocked on it, allowing you to see the contents of your refrigerator while bypassing the arduous task of opening the door. Their newest product, the Smart Instaview Refrigerator, which was unveiled yesterday at CES in Las Vegas, takes these “conveniences” even further by fitting the door with a 29” LCD touchscreen that functions much like a tablet.
On the screen, you can leave notes for your roommates or family (because who has a paper and pen anymore?), play music, or pull up recipes. You can tag food items with their expiration dates and receive a notification when they are about to spoil. The ‘fridge will even remind you of appointments and birthdays.
And because there aren’t enough cameras in the world, the Smart Instaview comes with an internal, panoramic camera that you can view remotely, for example, while you’re at the grocery store, to check and see if you’ve forgotten any items on your shopping list or need to replenish the milk.
But why bother going to the grocery store, when you can simply bark commands at Alexa, who will order them for you (from Amazon.com, of course)?
A data free-for-all
There’s no price tag for the Instaview yet, nor any indication of the security features, whether or not the refrigerator will show you ads, or whether or not the company will let law enforcement agencies take a peek into your kitchen.
Despite theses concerns, LG’s marketing VP David VanderWaal announced at the company’s CES press conference that “starting this year” they would enable “advanced wifi connectivity” on all – that’s right, all – of their appliances. Why miss an opportunity to collect more customer data? And in exchange for having LG’s eyes in your kitchen, you’ll be spared the chilly discomfort of standing in front of the open door of your icebox.
#SmartFridge
