I Hate My "Smart" Oven

When low-tech solutions are better

Our house came with a “smart” oven. It’s sleek and modern-looking. It has a touch screen and it even connects to the internet. It’s also the worst oven I’ve ever used.

It’s big, pretty, and overpriced.

Why my oven sucks

The biggest problem is the oven’s touchscreen. It does not have buttons or dials. This is bad is because the screens fogs up every time you open the oven and it’s warm. When the screen is fogged, you can’t do anything including turning it off. Another problem is that using the interface is unintuitive. Due to its minimalist design, there is little information on the features of this oven. It took us a week to figure out how to turn the oven off.¹ There is no off symbol, instead you tap on the area indicating whether you are using the top or bottom oven. But, it’s finicky, and it doesn’t work when the screen is fogged up. Also, it’s not obvious whether the oven is turned off.²

The gimmicks do not make up for these problems. They aren’t useful. I am not turning my oven on when I’m not at home. That’s a fire hazard. I don’t care to set up my favorite meal defaults because going to that section of the display takes just as much time as choosing an oven temperature. Maybe some people like these features but I can’t imagine they make the downsides worth it.

Of course, I’m grateful to have an oven at all, especially a double one. The point I’m making is that this oven did not have to be this horribly designed. These problems are obvious the first time you try to cook and most are unique to a “smart” design. There is no reason this oven should be as bad as it is.

What does this have to do with solarpunk?

A feature of solarpunk is the intentional use of technology in ways that benefit people and the earth. Currently, new technology is almost always about making money. Whether these new devices provide any real benefit is incidental. In many cases, there is more money to be made by creating technologies that harm people and the environment rather than help them. Unfortunately, when people criticize the current state of technology they often do so by romanticizing the past. Their solution is to return to an earlier era.

Solarpunk provides a middle path. One where we can still embrace modernity and technological solutions. It’s about figuring out whether a technology is serving people well or if the costs (on the environment, our health, communities etc.) are too high. In solarpunk settings, you see people embrace “low-tech” solutions — i.e. things that are older methods of doing things, are simpler, or are less energy/resource intensive. A common example in solarpunk art is seeing people farming by hand rather than using machines.

“Solarpunk - Rooftop Farms” by Jessica Woulfe

Going back to my oven, it’s a perfect example of an unnecessarily high-tech solution. The people who bought the smart oven likely did so because they assumed it would be better than a dumb oven. Maybe they felt pressure to upgrade the house to fit trends in the market. Perhaps they wanted a simple reliable oven, but had a hard time finding one. For some things, it’s becoming increasingly harder to find low-tech versions.

I thought about these problems while visiting my grandmother. Her parents built her house in the 1960s and she still uses the original oven. It’s small by modern standards. Other than that, it’s great. The design is intuitive. The buttons never fog up. It’s easy to turn off. Her oven has lasted for over 60 years and is working just fine. I don’t want to overstate how good older appliances are. Often they’re more energy intensive than newer models and may contain harmful materials. But, I do want to challenge the assumption that newer is always better. I’d trade ovens with my grandmother if she wanted to (she wouldn’t). While I’d take her oven I’d rather have a newer model designed with the best of modern engineering to be energy-efficient, reliable, and easy to repair. In the meantime, I’ll complain about my smart oven until it gives out.

Low-tech solutions

For more ways to think about this, I highly suggest low tech magazine. It’s a website dedicated to finding low-tech solutions to modern problems. Also, the entire website is solar powered!

Some of my favorite articles include:

• How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops

• Can We Make Bicycles Sustainable Again?

• How to Build a Practical Household Bike Generator

• The Messy World of Fermentation³

It’s a neat website. I don’t agree with all the views presented. Some are fairly extreme and impractical like this article on replacing guns with bows during wars. Even the less practical articles are worth checking out. They help us imagine what a world that embraces low-tech solutions could look like.

1. We should’ve looked up how to turn off the oven sooner, but also I don’t think people should have to use the internet to find out how to turn off an oven!

2. Just last night this came up. One of my roommates was cooking and didn’t realize the oven was still on. This happens because the same button that turns it off also makes the display go to its home screen. So sometimes you try to turn it off, it looks like it’s turned off, and then someone realizes its still going.

3. This is a pet topic of mine. I love fermentation and I recommend the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. It has so many recipes for food, drinks, and vinegars. It also has interesting passages about the author’s life in an intentional community, the history of various recipes, and political issues related to fermentation.