My Toaster Wants a Firmware Update and I Want a Divorce
GRIEVANCE NO. 003. FILED AT 6:41 A.M., HUNGRY. RESPONDENT: THE SMART-APPLIANCE ERA, ITS HEIRS AND ASSIGNS.
Let the record reflect that the toaster has one job. It is arguably the most solved problem in the history of human engineering. Bread goes in. Heat is applied. Bread, now improved, comes out. Humanity nailed this before we nailed penicillin.
And yet this morning, standing in my own kitchen holding two slices of rye like an idiot, I was informed — by the toaster, via an app, on my phone — that toasting was unavailable pending a firmware update.
Firmware. On the bread heater. I want a divorce.
The Courtship Was a Scam
I'll admit fault: I bought a "smart" toaster. It had seven bread settings and a little screen and I was weak. But nobody reads you the vows. Nobody tells you that before your first slice you will:
- Download an app.
- Create an account. For toast. With a password that requires a capital letter, a number, and a symbol, to protect my toast data from — who? Toast criminals?
- Accept a 34-page privacy policy that I skimmed just enough to learn my toaster would like to know my location. It's in the kitchen. It's ALWAYS in the kitchen. That's the one thing WE both know.
- Connect it to wifi, so that my toaster — my toaster — now has a better relationship with a server farm on another continent than it has with bread.
The 2 A.M. Betrayal
And now, the update. Version 4.7.2, which per the release notes contains "stability improvements." Stability. It's a box that sits on a counter. It has never moved. It is the most stable object I own. What it does not contain, apparently, is the ability to make toast until I let it phone home, reboot, and think about what it's done for eleven minutes.
A machine whose entire purpose is heat and gravity looked me in the eye and said "not until my servers say so."
The Full Household Indictment
Because the toaster didn't act alone. The record shall reflect a pattern:
- The lightbulb that requires a login. A LOGIN. Edison did not die — okay, Edison did a lot of things, but he didn't do THAT.
- The doorbell with a monthly subscription, meaning I now pay recurring rent on the concept of knowing someone is at my door, a service previously provided free of charge by the dog.
- The washing machine that sends push notifications like a needy coworker. "Your cycle is complete." I know. I live here. I heard the bonk.
- The fridge with a screen on it, because the one flaw in the fridge design of the last century was that you couldn't watch it buffer.
Relief Sought
The petitioner demands the following:
- Immediate return of one (1) slot of dumb, loyal, apocalypse-proof toasting capacity, of the type owned by every grandmother, which has never once asked for a password and will outlive us all.
- A lifetime injunction barring any appliance with one job from having opinions, accounts, or "release notes."
- Recognition, in law, of the principle that a machine too dumb to betray you is not a lesser machine. It is the superior machine.
Until these terms are met, this grievance stands, the rye stands down, and breakfast is cereal — from a box that has never once needed to reboot.
Filed cold. Like my toast would have been. If I had any.