Honey, I shrunk the appliances....

I remember at the end of the 60’s, my dad brought home one of the first so-called ‘pocket’ calculators; a chunk of beige plastic the size of a housebrick. (Were pockets bigger in those days?) To us kids as we were then, it was magic - the stuff of science-fiction, seeing the glowing green numbers on the screen change with each push of our sweaty digits. Previously we’d enjoyed the luxury of doing sums on the old adding machine we had at home. (Yes, we had finally progressed from the abacus.) We had only just replaced our huge cumbersome black and white telly with a spiffy new colour set and sat watching “Lassie” in colour, and in awe. Mum’s ancient washing machine, complete with mangle, had recently been superceded by a wonder-tub that did all the hard work for you. We didn't even KNOW what computers were, but apparently, they took up a whole room because they were so vast.

Now, as technology advances, things are getting ever smaller. Ok, so washing machines have stayed more or less the same size despite our smalls shrinking too, (Who in Hades invented thongs???) but you can now hang your TV on the wall like an ever-changing picture, the calculator I use at work could be mistaken for a credit card, and with the advent of modern computers, you no longer need a whole room to house the thing; my latest, a microscopic Mac Mini, is just a tad bigger than a pile of 6 CDs, and is often obscured by the cat, who wraps herself around it! Early ‘portable’ phones were huge black chunky monsters connected via a curly cable to a separate battery which one carried around in a wheelbarrow it was so heavy. Now the world, his wife and their in-laws have mobiles which are so small, I often lose mine in the depths of my handbag, which seems to expand disproportionately in relation to the size of my phone.

However, the kitchen is one area where appliances tend to remain the same size. After all, how would you fit a Christmas turkey in a shrunken oven? We'd be reduced (no pun intended) to eating dehydrated food such as astronauts have to suffer whilst in space. Mind you, supermarkets are now selling 'baby' vegetables, such as baby corn, carrots and cauliflower, so if you bought a poussin, you could have a whole miniaturised dinner! I'd hazard a guess that things are going to start shrinking soon, but for the moment, while your oven and freezer may outwardly stay the same, the wizardry inside them has changed beyond recognition. The latest domestic appliances now have on-board computers; when you use the last of the marge, your fridge adds it to the shopping list, then orders the weekly shop over the internet. How far will computers go in taking over our everyday chores? When you open the fridges of the future, will they be stacked out with porn DVDs that your dodgy appliance ordered when your back was turned? Will we be unable to cheat on our nearest and dearest because we’re using videophones, and they can see that we’re NOT ‘working late at the office’? Will our white goods throw a wobbly when we’re late home and complain we never take them out? Indeed, will we be able to find our household equipment if it has all been so reduced in size? Where will it all end?