Hoax or Game-Changer?

Every once in a while you see a news story that will prompt you to wonder if things have gone too far – in this case, if technology has final left the tracks and is now careening down the street leaving chaos in its wake. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of developments of the humble ink-jet printer; from machines that can print a full-color photograph onto the top of a cake in colored icing (resulting in a better picture quality than most desktop printers AND a better tasting dessert than most people can make at home) to molecular-level devices that can actually produce living cells by layering them one microscopic level at a time (which could, at least in theory, build living replacement organs that exactly match your DNA requirements). But this time, I have to wonder…

According to a story I found online this week, the MIT Fluid Interfaces Group is working on a device that will create food – literally, any kind of food you like – using a layering process similar to the one used by an ink-jet printer. The system, which the FIG is calling Cornucopia, uses a series of refrigerated canisters to store whatever raw ingredients you like to eat and a sophisticated sprayer head to put down layers of food, creating (at least in theory) almost anything you could ever want to eat. The central cavity of the machine then either heats or flash-freezes your meal, depending on what it is and how you like it; in theory, it should be able to handle gazpacho or conventional soup just as easily. But that’s really not the point…

If the storage canisters are properly climate controlled (they’d have to be) and the Cornucopia unit is interfaced with your computer (it’s hard to imagine why it wouldn’t be) then you could probably remote-program it to produce food whenever you like, even remotely from work or from you web-enabled phone. If you can work out the supply and delivery aspects of the system (fresh canisters once a week? Automate/computerized/robotic delivery systems?) then you should be able to just program the unit with your meals in advance, and never cook or shop for groceries again. The time and space-savings would be absolutely insane (no refrigerator, no stove, no over, no microwave, not even a can opener), and at least in theory, everyone who owned such a device could eat nutritionally-balanced meals that tasted like whatever they really like to eat. And even that isn’t the most mind-blowing implication of all of this…

Remember the molecular printer? If this technology can be used to build someone a new liver or pancreas, programming it to create generic chicken or beef muscle tissue shouldn’t be much of a challenge. So, in theory, you could put the raw ingredients (amino acids and carbohydrates?) into the top, and the Cornucopia could build you a cheeseburger or a steak that has never been within fifty miles of a cow. Food that a vegan could eat that would be visually, chemically, and taste-indistinguishable from an actual animal-product cheeseburger – and, again in theory, would have the perfect number of calories to maintain weight and nutrients to keep you healthy in a size with the perfect bulk to satisfy your hunger…

Devotees of the “Star Trek” television franchise will already be familiar with the concept of a “food replicator” – a microwave-oven-sized device that can fabricate almost any food item you want on demand. Later versions of the show featured voice-activated examples that could produce anything from “Tea, Earl Grey, hot” to alien delicacies never heard of on Earth, but all of it was simply dismissed as fantastical; science-fiction plot devices that would never exist in the real world, or if they did, would require another few centuries to be practical. Which is exactly the same reaction people had to the idea of a portable computer the size of a notebook with hundreds of gigabytes of memory and a wireless interface connecting it to virtually every other computer (and user) on the planet…

You know, like the one I’m using to write these words…

It hasn’t even been one lifetime since the “replicator” appeared on Star Trek in 1966, and if anything the technology curve seems to be speeding up as we go forward. If this article is correct, we could all be telling the kitchen systems to whip up a meal for us in a few years, and then going and playing video games on the Wii until it’s ready. Unless this is all a hoax, of course…