Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer 2002 | Page 12

Popular Culture Review kitchens across the country. Here an exuberant and haphazard collage of bits and pieces mascaraded as a message center and the visual pulse of daily hfe. The second page provided a stark contrast. The page itself was predominantly white and, with the exception of a compact plastic device and a bit of black text, quite empty. Below the device (which based on its shape and graphic monitor might have recorded blood pressure or radon levels) was written “Audrey™, anyone?” At the bottom of the page was written “Is this what your refrigerator looks like? Thought so. That’s why we invented Audrey. Audrey™ is an onhne family organizer, with a date book, address book and calendar. You get a new way to access pre-selected sites on the Internet with the turn of a dial. Plus e-mail you can send by scribbling, talking or typing.” The stinger was the company logo: “Simple sets you free.” The message was clear: the era of chaotic refrigerator communication was over. There was no longer any need to hve with, or to tolerate such a random and physically cumbersome system. Now one, decidedly female, hand-held, electronic instrument would introduce efficiency and order into all comers of family hfe. I was simultaneously fascinated and flabbergasted. As I sat pondering the message and its assumptions several questions spmng to mind. What is the matter with a decorated refrigerator that it should inspire such an austere and expensive (i.e., $499.00) technological fix? And why are we so dedicated to order, especially order for order sake? The refrigerator, it would appear, is an assault on our senses. Not only is it messy, but “essential” information must compete with a riot of color, a hodge podge of shapes and quirky personal presentations. Audrey™ will remove the distractions, she will isolate the messages, and she will organize them in a functionally efficient manner. Every family member wherever they may be will now know that the dog has not been fed, that there are three suits at the cleaners, and that Grandma will be serving dinner at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Regardless of whether they knew such things before, they will now know them by interacting with Audrey™ and not with each other. Unhke the advertisers, I find something wrong with this picture. In the first place, it privileges “facts” over context. A note on a napkin, an address on a match book cover, or a recipe on a sweat sock are irrelevant (and invisible) to Audrey™. So are the personalities and the relationships of those who produced them. There is nothing particular or singularly expressive in her management of information. She selects for the quantifiable and not for the humorous, the aesthetic or the interpretive. The latter are not germane to an ordered hfe. In the second place, Audrey™ “disappears” one of the few remaining free or “wild” spaces in our domestic lives. While a decorated refrigerator is hardly equivalent to an old-growth forest, a mountain range, or a school of salmon, it is.