The Liberal Order

The Meaning of Competition

MIT Media Lab's Counter Intelligence Group, which develops innovative kitchen designs, has created a machine that makes dishes on demand and recycles them after diners have finished a meal. The dishes are made from food-grade, nontoxic acrylic wafers, which are shaped into cups, bowls and plates when heated, then resume their original wafer shape when they are reheated and pressed.

Story here.

This isn't the only useful kitchen item produced by the brains at MIT. In addition to the plate press are:

The group has designed smart countertops that display recipes in large type so chefs don't have to flip cookbook pages or fumble with stained recipe cards. The system lights up cabinets and drawers and displays messages to indicate where ingredients and cooking tools are located.

Another invention involves a kitchen sink that automatically raises or lowers to accommodate the height of the person using it.

An X-ray refrigerator uses an interior camera to project the fridge's contents onto the outside door so people can see what's inside without opening the door and wasting energy. The camera takes a snapshot of the fridge each time the door is opened, when the contents are likely to change. Future designs would transmit the image to a cell phone or other handheld device so shoppers could see what's in their fridges while strolling the grocery store aisles.

Bonanni has also created a "living cabinet" that grows and preserves food. The prototype uses light and carbon dioxide recycled from a kitchen stove to act as a "life support" system for store-bought produce. A sprig of basil or lettuce placed in the cabinet would not only keep for months, but would grow more leaves. Bonanni says the process works even if the produce doesn't have roots.

Technology serving the interests of the poor

How can you reduce the interest rates for car loans made to the highest risk borrowers?

Note lots have long been the auto industry's roughest segment. But without them, industry officials say, many working-class people would have to rely on public transportation to get to their jobs. About 35 percent of the nation's 54,000 used-car dealers operate buy-here/pay-here lots and contend with default rates as high as 40 percent.

Systems such as On Time permit dealers to "drill down" even deeper with severely credit-damaged customers and still have some assurance that their only collateral on the high-risk loans - the vehicles - can be retrieved if the buyers default.

"Nearly every Saturday, we talk with someone who has been to seven or eight different buy-here/pay-here lots and were turned down at all of them," Williamson said.

"More people in this country have bad credit than have good credit," added James Ziegler, a retail auto consultant in Duluth, Ga. "If somebody didn't take a chance on these people, they wouldn't be able to work."

Simon of On Time said the systems dramatically reduce late payments.

"We have taken a 70 percent delinquency rate in the buy-here/pay-here business and transformed it to a 96 percent on-time rate," he said. "Now some mainstream finance companies are even saying, 'I'll finance these cars.' "

And what exactly does it do?

They're attached to a black box on the dashboard and start flashing on the first day a car payment is late. On the fourth day, after two more days of warning lights, the car won't start.

The Meaning of Competition

Although not new, this is another example of how credit card companies seek to improve consumer interests.

The Meaning of Competition

To pay homage to Friedrich Hayek, I begin a new category, "Competition," as in "The Meaning of Mompetition." Here is the first post in this category.

The common electric socket will serve as your home's connection to broadband with a new chip developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. — doing away with all the Ethernet cables or the hassle of hooking up to a wireless network device.

Thanks to Fark for the link.