My Friend the Coffee Robot
A cup a day boosts productivity and staves off existential dread…
Hey, you awake?
yeah…
What’cha thinking about?
Same thing I think about every night: the inevitable obsolescence of humanity due to increasing automation. Every night I just lie in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering when I will be rendered meaningless by the coming of our robot overlords and what I’m supposed to be doing about it…
That’s bad right? I mean, a good night’s sleep is one of the most critical steps in maintaining good productivity in the few years you have left as a useful cog in the machine before your robotic overlords take over, correct?
Correct. being tired is one thing, and it’s exponentially worsened by not having a reason to get out of bed in the morning in the first place.
luckily, there’s a way to kill two birds with one stone, and not break the bank in the process.
…uh…
It’s a $20 Mr. Coffee machine. See, I may not have the means to utilize quantum computing and deep-learning convolutional antagonistic neural-networks, but the integrated-circuit revolution of the 20th century does give me cheap and available access to accurate timing and basic digital decision-making capabilities.
…and by that you mean…?
I CAN PROGRAM IT TO DELAY MY BREW!
The original Mr. Coffee machine, debuted in 1972, was pretty good. It provided set-it-and-forget-it, higher-quality coffee at the push of a button. But the programmable timer model available post-1989 was the real game-changer in my mind.
…
Shut up and hear me out! If I had to wake up, walk all the way to the kitchen, and then push the “brew-now” button, I could procrastinate. Instead, I set the coffee to finish brewing right as I should be getting out of bed. I have to get out of bed because the coffee is getting cold!
Don’t those things have warming plates though?
Haha! You fool! You complete moron! The warming plate has a timer too! After one hour the warming plate shuts off automatically!
…and that’s great because it makes the solution simple: I take the time I want to get up, and then subtract one hour and ten minutes. And that’s my start time. by the time I wake up, the coffee has been cooling for ten minutes. It’s do-or-die at that point. DO OR DIE!
Somehow this one little quartz crystal ticking away the seconds makes the difference. With an automatically brewed cup waiting for me, I can make myself a promise: Get up, put the sacred liquid in your mouth, and then if you still feel tired, you can crash on the couch.
That just sounds like sleeping with extra steps…
YOU’D LIKE TO THINK SO WOULDN’T YOU!?!?
Except here’s the kicker: the act of standing up, putting on a robe, walking around, not spilling my coffee as I pour it into the mug… all of this combines to get me up and moving. Am I still tired? yes. But have I gotten started with the day enough to spend my time reading random self-improvement articles and memes instead of lying in bed for another 12 hours? absolutely!
None of this solves your “about-to-be-destroyed-by-a-robot-economy” problem though…
Nope. But every day that I wake up feeling grateful for my own robot coffee-butler is a day that puts the grand historical march of technology in perspective.
For every job destroyed by automation in history, more than one has so far been created. And many jobs are not wiped out by the addition of automation, but instead see less meaningless busywork as we create machines to solve machine problems leaving humans to solve human problems.
I don’t know if there’s cause for hope yet. But every morning I drink a fresh cup of reason to not fall into complete and total despair.
All images by TheWalkingGee unless otherwise noted
