Cool future

LG Electronics announced the availability of a a TV refrigerator equipped with digital multimedia features (in 2004, here) -- a computer in a refrigerator. The buzz in the industry has been that every appliance would eventually be connected to the Internet so you can turn on the oven from your car as you drive home. Or your refrigerator would detect that you're out of milk and automatically send an order to the grocery store. Or the refrigerator computer could give you seventeen recipes that use the contents of your refrigerator (chicken-fried-steak pizza with lime pickles and hummus, mmm, mmm, good!).

I've never really figured out the allure of this, but I have recently finally understood the real motive. It is both simpler than I thought - and deeper.

It's to keep the microprocessor cool.