[bflesch]

Yes, of course I use it a lot. It is a great hobby. But only use it because it is kind of forced upon us. It's just so inefficient nowadays. Cooking used to be for the whole homestead or for the large family. Now it is mostly only for the immediate family. All the machines are not utilized properly. When people discussed car sharing it was exactly the same argument and I feel it also applies to kitchens.

With the "tableware" argument I meant something like a standardized (magnetic?) adapter for grabbing plates, forks and knives so they can easily be moved by machines/robots.

I feel a company like Ikea is perfectly set up to make this idea a reality, but they'll never do so because they make much more money when every single household buys all these appliances and items for their own kitchen.

Just from the perspective of a single household in a densely populated city I think it'd be nice to have freshly cooked, reproducibly prepared meals with high-quality ingredients available to me. Like an automated soup kitchen with cleanup. Without all the layers of plastic wrapping needed to move produce from large-scale distributors into single-household fridges and so on.

[criddell]

I think what a lot of people missed when they were talking about shared cars a few years ago is that people seem to mostly like their cars. They spend far more on them than they need to. The average price for a new car is almost $50k now when a vehicle costing half that would satisfy most people's needs.

I'm guessing people mostly overspend on kitchens as well. When our renovation happens, I'm sure we will and I'll feel pretty good about it.

For cars and kitchens, utilization considerations seem to be ranked way, way below things like comfort and convenience and beauty.