Tasting Technoscience: The Language of the Kitchen in Silicon Valley

• In Event: Technoscience, Aesthetics, and the Senses - II

Abstract

The kitchen has long been an experiment in the labs of Silicon Valley. In 2014, Rob Rhinehart reimagined Soylent as a tasteless but nutritious food stuff that can replace the “dirty”, “torture chamber” kitchen and achieve greater productivity. For Rhinehart, his creation was streamlined for a particular community - software engineers, coders, tech specialists - but the popular rhetoric of DIY science in the kitchen has now created new imaginations of food and taste might beyond the tech crowd. These fantastical ideas are framed as visions for the future, where robots may be the next hostesses, corporate chains can deliver pizzas via their autonomous vehicles, or the elusive 3D food printer may actually become another kitchen gadget.

By following the kitchen as a metaphor for the lab, I argue that the scientized forms of food, tastes, and the kitchen enforce “the selling of science” as an economic ideology of hyped innovation and technoscience that largely asks for legitimation and trust. By using food as the everyday object, I connect sensory practices and the act of consumption to an existing sociotechnical imaginary (Jasanoff, 2015) where technoscience is available on the road via UberEats or at the automated kiosks at McDonald’s. Rebranded visions of health and taste are actually obscured by assumptions that technoscience is benevolent; thus, it is important to highlight the historical political dimensions of the senses (Howes & Classen, 2015) which enforce elite creations of social order (Shapin & Schaffer, 2011) that continue to exclude marginalized voices.

Author

• Anna Nguyen, Institut national de la recherche scientifique