Always open to anonymous feedback, I noticed one reader very fairly pointed out of Lithium; “Where, in the kids’ apartment, is the kitchen?” – it’s a good question. And honestly, I pondered this as well.
Where do they cook?! What if they wanted a cuppa?! How did they swish a mouthful of bad yogurt down the sink if there’s no sink????????? I know, I know.
While making the very first comic, I thought to myself … “I can’t be bothered to create a full-on kitchen scene just so they can swan in there and make an occasional cuppa; the lounge area’s scene enough.” so I did it the lazy way; I purposefully left a void in the apartment that we never saw into.
The apartment’s front door could have opened straight into the lounge, but it doesn’t; there’s a short corridor. I even avoided the angle that would reveal the kitchen, to save me the effort of building it in 3D. So as you walk into the apartment from the outside, the kitchen would be on the left – we never see that angle, even though there’s easily space for a door there.
… so there we are. A real life imaginary kitchen.
Now you could argue that kitchens won’t exist that far in the future – but I disagree. Removal of kitchens assumes the non-stop rise of the subscribe-to-everything business model we currently suffer on everything from Huel (DON’T GET ME STARTED ON THIS DYSTOPIAN GRUEL) to Adobe Creative Cloud to f*CKING HEADPHONES **tries to stop shouting** … ahem … the subscription business model we currently see trying to crowbar its way in everywhere, can do one.
It can get in the sea, as far as I’m concerned. Subscription is billionaires playbook – they become the gatekeeper of a service you need/love/had anyway. Reading. Sleeping. Cooking. Art. Writing. Creating. Watching TV – you can now subscribe to watch tv and you still get f*cking adverts! Oh you want less adverts? SUBSCRIBE EVEN HARDER YOU SERFS and thank us as we add more adverts anyway and you have to get Platinum Platinum accounts to reduce the adverts for a few years. Even rent is just subscription to a building that already exists and you could live in for free. It’s capitalist bullshit and can absolutely do one.
And don’t get me started on interest. Paying interest on a loan used to be called Usury, and was considered so bad that it was a MORTAL SIN FOR A THOUSAND YEARS!!!! Madness. We seem to have forgotten that. Oh you want me to pay money for my money? Sure. Makes sense. Waaiiiit a minute …
But. But. I believe there’s a deep part of all our humanity that can’t be erased, and there are signs that our society is pushing back, things like the Human Line Project, or the general increasing numbers of articles I’m seeing about landowners and investors quickly backing away from AI. Can AI be a useful tool? Sure. Should a language calculator be used for everything? Nope. Things like the rise in ethical businesses working towards Net Zero Carbon on everything from web hosting to mobile phone networks. The simplification. The stepping-back.
Not that I’m entirely against it, but it does seem technology too often tries to remove all inconvenience from our lives, and in doing so it is missing a few very important points about humans. Why drive to the coast and watch the actual sunset when you can look at this picture of a sunset? Um … because sunsets. It seems that love and suffering are two sides of the same coin, and if we dedicate ourselves to removing all suffering and pain, we seem to find ourselves in loveless scenarios, devoid of purpose, connection and meaning. As is discussed in One Human, Being; it seems to be one of those human maths things.
If you’re not ready to hurt, maybe you’re not ready for love. And yet we do seem to be built for it. Maybe even built from it.
So … I don’t think humanity will ever remove kitchens entirely, living from one dystopian subscription meal to the next, manufactured and delivered by robots; I truly don’t believe that will ever happen.
For a very simple reason; I’ll let Steph and Jen spell it out:
Good food. Good stink. Good friends.
Okay, I admit, I wrote this when I was hungry.
I had assumed a small “butler pantry” was tucked away somewhere in a closet. You know, something the size of the kitchen in a 1980’s RV.
Before I eat my evening meal I give thanks that I can cook it.