The Ikan: For Those Who Kan’t Do It Themselves
The Ikan is a new countertop appliance whose mission is to eliminate trips to the grocery store. In essence it serves as a barcode scanner that offers a color screen, a laser scanner, and an interior Wi-Fi antenna that connects to your home’s wireless network. Basically every time you’re about to throw away an empty container you pass it under the scanner like you would at a price-check machine at Wal-Mart. The Ikan will beep, consult its online database of products, display the name and description of the item, and then add it to your shopping list saved somewhere in cyberspace. Every few days you can review the list online at Ikan.net and click to have your groceries delivered to your house at a time that you specify.
Reactions from users so far have been pretty varied. Some people can’t believe how much time it saves while others don’t think it takes much more effort to just maintain a handwritten list. With services like Stop n’ Shop’s Peapod grocery delivery service, the added benefit of delivery via the Ikan isn’t all that alluring. Yet others praise the “environmental benefit” the company claims to imbue.
This is where my head starts to explode.
Just because a green recycle logo appears on the screen when you scan a package that’s recyclable does not make Ikan a ‘green’ company. Plus, the gadget is always on. Even though it only uses a little bit of electricity, seeing the lit up screen night and day “will bug the environmentalist in you” says the New York Times. Oh, and when they deliver the items each comes in its own white plastic bag- every package of cheese, every tub of butter. That, my friends, is not ‘green’ by any means. I’m a huge proponent of ‘environmentally friendly’ but the millions of companies that gloat just because they hired a ‘green consultant’ (what does that even mean?) or because they recycle are not really ‘green’ at all.
Back to the Ikan though. So even if it’s not quite environmentally green there should be some other benefits right? Wrong. The Ikan encourages us to buy processed foods, be completely unimaginative and buy exactly what we’ve bought before, disregard seasonal, local, and fresh foods, and avoid an occasion to get out of the house and go to the grocery store (and even potentially bond with mom or dad or daughter or son).
We are already overly reliant on our smart phones to remind us about events, birthdays, important dates, etc. We really don’t need another $400 device to further weaken our memory, make us lazier, and reinforce bad eating habits.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:50 am
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