Cooking with fire. At the top of the month, as if with a gunshot start to 2023, America was blessed with an almost perfectly idiotic controversy when a previously unknown government bureaucrat declared his desire to ban gas stoves. From classism and elitism to “expert” deception, the bureaucrat’s interview struck every necessary chord to polarize the previously benign topic of your kitchen along standard tribal lines, and ignite a fierce national debate on the question of how you should fry your morning eggs. But the foodcel knife fight was different from the standard culture war story in one significant way: while both sides of the debate pitched arguments on behalf of their chosen tool’s superior cooking ability, support for gas stoves came mostly from regions where people don’t use them, and support for induction came mostly from regions committed to gas. In other words, given revealed preferences in opposition to stated opinions, the battle had nothing to do with the actual function of technology. For most, this was a fight over what the future should look like, and for the first time in over half a century most of the country preferred the look of fire to “the future.” A major problem for technologists.

Aesthetics are a hell of a drug.

Designed to evoke the Jetsons, induction stoves sell the story of smooth metallic happy robots serving humans in utopia. We kick our feet back in the clouds, replicate a dinosaur steak, and watch the holographic evening newsmen chatter over dinner. It is an accessible, immediately recognizable, technologically progressive aesthetic that has driven the country forward for over six decades — American Futura, let’s call it, or what the future looked like according to your grandma. But, in the post-war 1950s, nobody had to force your grandma to buy a dishwasher. This is because the dishwasher worked.