July 13, 2013 - 1 - "Does Your Dishwasher Know Too Much?"

 Knowledge Is Power

    It's true.  I spent an entire morning watching videos about my dishwasher.  

     Lest you think I have a lot of free time on my hands, perhaps due to an enforced stay in a mental health facility, allow me to share my very good, and perfectly normal, reason for looking into the inner life of my dishwasher...  

I suspect it's spying on me.

  Paranoid Fantasies or Reasonable Suspicion?

     I know what you're thinking:   "Dishwashers don't spy on people. Refrigerators do." 

     But you are wrong, and I will soon make you a believer.

     When we bought our dishwasher the salesperson really pushed their WowWash with PowerPulverizers and SixthSensors.  (Not the actual names of their registered trademarks...but disturbingly close.)  

     Apparently Alliteration Sells Stuff.   

      The salesperson said the dishwasher could detect the load size (PlatterPlentitude) and the amount of soil on the dishes (DirtData). 

     We assured the salesperson that we were exceptional pre-rinsers, and these features were overkill.  But, since we couldn't get a better deal by lowering our standards, we went ahead and bought the thing.

     As time went by it began to weigh on my mind:  Just how does it know so much about the state and amount of our dishes? 

    This is what brought me to the manufacturer's website this morning. 

    After viewing the riveting dishwashers-in-action video series, I began researching their WowWash feature in earnest:  WowWash, they explained, is the customized wash/rinse/dry program created to best meet the needs of our dishes, based on the information gleaned through its sensors.

     Built-in sensors.  Hmph.

     What kind of sensors can tell how many dishes there are, and how dirty they are? 

     I imagined that these sensors might be built-in cameras that regularly send images back to Dishwasher Headquarters. 

     Are they cyber-narc-ing on the real truth about our pre-rinsing habits?  Does HQ analyze the data, then send back information on how to proceed?

     Or is it even more sinister than that? 

  Getting to the Bottom of This Issue

      Does the dishwasher have the ability to interpret the sensor input for itself? 

     Then I had to ask the deeper, and more chilling, question:    What else is my dishwasher sensing?

     Does it sense a certain presence in the room around 2 a.m. standing at the freezer scarfing Ben and Jerry's directly from the carton?

   Does it sense how often the five-second rule is invoked in our kitchen...and what guests were the recipients of a pork roast that visited the floor only minutes before being delivered to the table with a heaping side-order of plastered-on hostess-y smiles?

    Could it sense the chill in the air when my husband mentioned how good his ex-girlfriend looked at the reunion?

    This is when I began to realize that technology has changed my relationship with kitchen appliances forever. 

Strange New World

    They are no longer just the workhorses of our homes, mindlessly knocking out chores we don't want to do. 

   They now know things; things about our personal lives and habits.

     I wouldn't worry so much about our dishwasher if I thought the contraption could be counted on to keep secrets. But I've learned from experience that its so-called "QueenlyQuiet" feature can be heard all the way out in the front yard.

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"The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb.  So the light bulb is what wired the world.  

And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world.  They...weren't putting electricity into the home.  They were putting lighting into the home."

-Jeff Bezos

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"The wonderful world of home appliances 

now makes it possible 

to cook indoors with charcoal 

and outdoors with gas."

-Bill Vaughan

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