“Prego Introduces a Dinner-Conversation-Recording Gadget, Got the Scoop?”
“Prego Has a Dinner-Conversation-Recording Device, Capisce?”
“Browsing through an IKEA in suburban Washington, these were the products one could find bearing the “Made for Google” sticker wave:…Yet surprisingly, there was also a $150 pasta sauce jar, made by the jarware startup Smalt—to be paired with the $15 Prego pasta sauce—which the packaging insisted had a microphone and was to be connected with Google Assistant for your ‘kitchen entertainment, ambient lighting, and hands-free cooking help’.”
Right off the shelf, it’s clear that these aren’t your mama’s kitchen gadgets. The age of smart tech has seeped into the most surprising corners, even pasta sauce. With a $150 jar by Smalt eager to assist your culinary efforts via Google Assistant, one can only wonder if we’re over complicating the traditional spaghetti night.
A concept first seen in the dystopian TV series Black Mirror, where everyday items were equipped with cameras and microphones, is now kind of, sort of, a reality. While it’s not a camera, the notion of a pasta sauce jar with a microphone aiding in ‘kitchen entertainment’ does send one’s mind into a whirl.
Naturally, demand for a hands-on cooking experience hasn’t evaporated, so the ‘hands-free cooking help’ from a jar is a debatable feature. Do we acknowledge the convenience, or question why we can’t just find the energy or tenacity to manually operate our own kitchens?
However, some might say the most impressive (or bewildering) feature is the ‘ambient lighting.’ Logically speaking, who doesn’t want their pasta sauce jar to double as a mood light, setting the tone for the all-important marinara simmering night?
Perhaps, it signals a leap in artificial intelligence technology and its integration into our daily lives. We might be at a precipice where tech-enhanced devices are no longer novelty items, but slowly becoming the norm. Are we living in the future or just befuddled with the undue complexity of it all?
One can’t help but yearn for the simplicity of boiling water, stirring the sauce, and quietly enjoying homemade pasta without the constant collaboration with a speaker in your sauce jar. It’s almost poetic in a dystopian tech kind of way.
Just remember that, Gillian Jacobs’s character in the series love declared, “I regret having a smart home.” Let’s hope, much like an overstuffed lasagna, we are not biting off more than we can chew. Because, at the end of it all, pasta is just pasta. It doesn’t have to be ‘smart.’