Author: waltmguire

Letter to the Editor

Some D.E.I. initiatives are better than others; we should be studying that, and not abandoning the whole idea.

If your customer base is offended by a transgender spokesperson, that has nothing to do with how you run your accounting department. The greater threat is using this as an excuse to roll back civil rights.

We Should Improve D.E.I., Not Erase It, New York Times [March 28, 2025]

At Home In The Far Distant 2001

This short McGraw-Hill film from the 1960s is remarkably accurate about 21st century homes. Surprisingly, where it’s off the mark is 21st economics.

This short McGraw-Hill film from 1967 gets most of the technology right and some of the design details wrong, but it’s remarkably accurate about 21st century homes. Surprisingly, where it’s off the mark is 21st century economics. Even though the 2020 pandemic field-tested many longstanding ideas about working and learning from home, many of the economic concepts about health insurance and working conditions are still far distant future concepts in 2021.

Something it gets half-right: the kitchen. Between modern appliances (the microwave, the smart crockpot) and mail-order meal ingredients (Blue Apron, Hello Fresh), the Kitchen of the Future is here now, but we’ve dropped the idea of incinerating our dishes at the end of every meal and re-molding the plastic. We can’t even recycle milk cartons properly. And imagine the smell and particulates.

The interesting thing is an interview with an industrial designer; after a tour of the glamorous new world of robotic cooking, they cut to a distinguished older man who designed this smart kitchen. “I think people will continue to make food the old-fashioned way,” he says sheepishly. “Because they enjoy doing it.”

One other oddity: In every 60s conception of the home of the future, from this to Disney to the Jetsons, living room ceilings are always at least 20-feet high, even in apartments.